One way to think about it is to compare Marx with Veblen.

Veblen emphasized how people bought stuff to fit in with the winning crowd. That is not a hazy vision of the "social value" of a product but a direct exchange of value to serve a specific need of the moment:

Namely, to be perceived by the people who have power as a player, willing to play.

That willingness to play is obviously a part of Marx's observations of class but it does not make all other observations along those lines "Marxist."

There is a range of phenomena that was claimed by an explorer many years ago and the interesting stuff about the discovery is oddly not just about those claims. But it is also true that the claims cannot be dismissed simply because we have proof that we have gotten past them and now live in a different place.

We don't have that proof.

I recommend starting with The Genealogy of Morals. The book is contiguous with all his other works but gives the reader a chance to see the argument as an argument.
It is difficult to reconstruct the environment he was reacting against with much of his writing.
The gaps are the interesting thing.

In regards to the discussion of the fetishism of commodities, it seems pretty clear from Marx that he was chastising identification of personal fulfillment with the acquisition of particular things. However one interprets his program to make the world better, that observation is his rebuke to others and the device by which his insight is turned against him.

If one is going to have a solipsism, it only seems right that only one person exist at the end of the process.
A category or principle or idea of the noumena is, by definition, a separation from something it is not. It is the separation that gets argued about, whether the participants are Wittgenstein or Aristotle. The term requires the algebra surrounding it to become recognizable. Otherwise, noumena would be another phenomena, something that theoretically does not require interpretation.
But it turns out that even that is not a commonly agreed upon point of departure.

I think there was a consensus that g/G is an idea but not any kind of separately existing being or thing. — tim wood

Theologically speaking, the role of the creator as being imminent or transcendent has been mostly dealt with as differences of opinion to how closely such an agent may be involved with the concerns and affairs of a single person. So, in one sense, it has always been a problem of accepting an idea because thinking one way or another changes the decisions a person makes.

But making decisions of that kind is not the same thing as deciding what is valid to accept as evidence for one state of affairs or another in a discussion of our creation as a shared reality and wondering what made it the way it is. Nobody starts their journey as an ethical being by making sure it can be defended through philosophy.

Kant, particularly in the Critique of Judgement, makes a distinction between the two approaches. In that tome, he complains that Spinoza was too dark in his view of the person and what they could hope for.

So I propose it is difficult to move forward with these considerations because we, as people trying to sort things out, cannot simply point to this or that articulation of the problem as a shared point of departure.

The narrative setting up the crappy things that happen to Job is not a theology so much as an exploration of how persons are tested by situations that would encourage them to curse the creator and their existence.

Most of the text is devoted to having Job's "friends" try to convince him that he is to blame for what is happening to him. Whatever staying faithful means in the situation is being directly related to a refusal to accept blame where it does not belong.

I am keenly interested in the psychological register, both in the ways it fits in with some philosophical points of view while being rejected altogether by others. I am not sure how to see your point of view against that backdrop.

Whether one takes any model as a rule or not, the need to understand how persons develop is an old thing and not just the darling of a certain time.

Good observations regarding the points of view separating Freud and Jung.

Perhaps it would not be remiss to note that what they agreed upon is how "unconscious" elements are a major player in how conscious stuff comes about or not. They approached that element as phenomena, not as a possible interpretation of it.

I was just using Freud as an example, not focusing on issues in psychology. — tim wood

It is confusing to set that comment against another one you made:

"But is all such belief pathological? Is some - any - of it a good or in the service of a good? Is there an ultimate yardstick, measure, bottom line by which I may judge that guy over there a nutcase, him and his worth leaving to the professionals?"

It is confusing from the point of view that Freud was a professional. Someone hired to address problems. It is one thing to argue that he got all his ideas wrong but to cast all those ideas as objects outside of all common rational experience is odd. The theory he formulated was an attempt to understand what was happening in front of him.

It is also confusing because you seem to be equating attempts to understand people with problems as judgments upon them. While it is true that these activities have a history of being conflated in many ways, one virtue of the appearance of psychological science and language is the opportunity to separate what in the past was all mixed up with each other.

Perhaps you could aim your criticism to a specific claim or set of claims. In the Protestant traditions, for example, this issue has come up many times. There is nothing that is being touted now that has not already traveled many times around many a town's square.

But is all such belief pathological? Is some - any - of it a good or in the service of a good? Is there an ultimate yardstick, measure, bottom line by which I may judge that guy over there a nutcase, him and his worth leaving to the professionals? — tim wood

Before anyone would have to make a judgment or decision about some one else's condition, there would have to be some period of time where they are perceived. Freud's and other psychologist's descriptions of pathology are systems of observation. The different points of view that separated Freud and Jung, for example, were expressed as contrary theories of development but were also divergent responses to the people they interacted with.

I think the bottom line is that people suffer and we try to make sense of what is going on. The attempt will always be problematic because it happens in an environment where judgments happen. That environment is not strictly the creation of psychologists.

Thank you for the clarification. The aporia is what I was focused upon.
I will need to mull over the role or momentum of institutions as an agent opposing the observation of the impasse. It seems that both sides are preserved in the traditions and language of the established religions.

Do you mean, a non-fit, an impasse? If it is a non-fit, then explanation creates a story which claims to represent the action as true. If it is an impasse, then one knows that there is no explanation other than physics. — uncanni

You present an either/or I never thought of. When putting the matter as broadly as I did, I figured the observation was not evidence for any state of being but a possible point of departure as a beginning of the kind the OP asked for.

I think the Taoist perspective says it is a non-fit and an impasse at the same time. It is a non-fit in so far as the referent can never be captured in any explanation and it is an impasse in regards to what change we can directly bring about. The two perspectives come from accepting our limited degrees of freedom. It is presented as a discovery of a situation, not a project for what must be. But it also argues for what should not be.

Tricky stuff.

Well, you have put your finger on the odd quality of Marx insisting that that all processes of the human enterprise are bound up with the material while also pointing to the fetishism of commodities.

When you ask how the statement can be verified, one may not be constrained by the geometry of Marx.

I see merit in all the perspectives offered in this thread. I don't know if it helps to make this observation but it is interesting to me how trying to say that religion is one sort of thing is bound up with separating it from what it is not. I am drawn to the language of Zhuangzi as a way to approach the problem of referring to experiences while trying to have them. The way that mysticism and reason are engaged with each other as countervailing forces requires a lot of assumptions before the scrum can commence.

It is difficult to approach the matter from that direction.

But the OP asked for more than muttering into my beard. So, I will assert that the intersection of the cultural and personal frames of experience, the distance between past expressions and the needs of the present moment, involve a desire to embrace a disproportion between explanation and action. The flickering messages of what must be done and the call to make your own way are not the consequences of this or that set of beliefs but reflects the problem of our existence.

Why does a perfectly normal person infer a designer/occupant from a well-ordered room/space and then contradict him/herself by rejecting a designer for the universe which too is well-ordered? — TheMadFool

It is interesting to compare the role of a human designer to something like a creator of all that we know as our universe. We are in an awkward position to opine upon the matter.

Valentinus' point was existence precedes essence. — TheWillowOfDarkness

You are right, of course, as the matter is expressed in the vernacular of "existentialists" who speak of matters that way.
In addition, Kierkegaard was opposed to the formulation as a matter of logic, per se. In that sense, he was arguing with the Hegelians while also arm wrestling with the "Scholastics."

The quote is not a metaphysical claim regarding essence.
If you can't see how it challenges the premise of your OP, then I have gone as I can and will now turn the bike around to head back home.

Fare forward.

"I reason from existence, not towards existence." — 3017amen

You mean like this:

"

One never reasons in conclusion to existence, but reasons in conclusion from existence. For example, I do not demonstrate that a stone exists but that something, which exists, is a stone. The court of law does not demonstrate that a criminal exists but that the accused, who does indeed exist, is a criminal. Whether you want to call existence an addition or the eternal presupposition, it can never be demonstrated.

If, for example, I wanted to demonstrate Napoleon’s exist­ence from his works, would this not be most curious? Isn’t it Napoleon’s existence which explains his works, not his works his existence? To prove Napoleon’s existence from his works I would have in advance interpreted the word “his” in such a way as to have assumed that he exists. Moreover, because Napoleon is only a human being, it is possible that someone else could have done the same works. This is why I cannot reason from the works to his existence. If I call the works Napoleon’s works, then the demonstration is superfluous, for I have already mentioned his name. If I ignore this, I can never demonstrate from the works that they are Napoleon’s. At least I cannot guarantee that they are his. I can only demonstrate that such works are the works of, say, a great general. However, with God there is an ab­solute relation between him and his works. If God is not a name but a reality, his essence must involve his existence. — Soren Kierkegaard

I see belief as being a particular cognitive faculty I have and when faced with a specific question such as deity existence I'd say I lack that particular cognitive faculty for that specific content which is not equivalent to having a particular cognitive faculty for no specific content, hence why I wouldn't term atheism as a belief system and certainly not a religion. — Happenstance

That is very close to St Anselm's expression of God being "greater than can be conceived."
Interesting in the present context of what constitutes evidence.

That is not a bad encyclopedic description as such paraphrasing goes but it is only concerned in placing SK on a map in relationship to other writers and trends of thought.

It does not, however, in any way, reflect the discussion of psychology and the limits of its formulation to the ethical challenge SK puts upon the reader. The language of the Wikipedia is exactly the sort of description Kierkegaard delighted in making fun of.

How about a quote from the man himself to support your view?

Who are you quoting?

As to agreeing to something, the only thing I have stated in this thread is that you are not saying anything remotely "Kierkegaardian."

At the time of Kierkegaard's writings, there wasn't as many discoveries as there are now in physical Science/physics and cognitive Psychology. — 3017amen

Are you suggesting that if SK lived in our time, he would have framed the limits of psychology differently than was done in The Concept of Anxiety?

You will have to point to which text in that or another of his books gives you that expectation. You will find locating those words a difficult task since he wrote so many arguments against your kind of argumentation per se rather than as conclusions or inferences of his arguments for what is the case.

Any belief system requires logic to support one's belief. I use clues from the natural world including my conscious experiences; then chose to make a leap of faith. — 3017amen

The leap of faith, as presented by Kierkegaard, is not about confirming a proposition or reciting the Credo. It concerns taking one's existence as an individual seriously enough to make choices and perceive events through the responsibility it confers upon one.

I suggest that you use an avatar of someone or thing that more closely hews to your view of the world.

A word from the actual SK:

A king’s existence is demonstrated by way of subjection and submissiveness. Do you want to try and demonstrate that the king exists? Will you do so by offering a string of proofs, a series of arguments? No. If you are serious, you will demonstrate the king’s existence by your submission, by the way you live. And so it is with demonstrating God’s existence. It is accomplished not by proofs but by worship. Any other way is but a thinker’s pious bungling. — Soren Kierkegaard, from Charles E. Moore compilation.

The Kierkegaard challenge is not about what can be said to exist or not.
Whatever you are into, please associate it with somebody else.

How would having a proof help you or me?
I am pretty sure of the proof claiming the diagonal of a rectangle is a certain value. I use it all the time with no problems coming up so far.
I don't understand the doubting of existence thing. I have a lot of problems but none of them look like that. I just don't get it.

Your response is helpful to me. I don't mean to say that being virtuous means seeking out circumstances that will assuredly kill a person, especially me.

On the other hand, I did say no to a lot of stuff and that has shaped my life. Those choices could be presented as a matter of principle in the Kantian register or just personal reactions to barely understood circumstances. I think it has been some of both. And my kids will live with some of that. An inheritance, if you will. Just like the one I got.

If you are not interested in dichotomy, why pull the beard of your imagined opponents?
I like me some William James. One his virtues is that he tried to separate the arguments about authority from descriptions of what is the case.
Are you helping that cause?

So, the matter of whether God exists or not is central to your focus. Whether what you put forward is a proof or not does not address the intent to dismiss arguments you do not agree with.
I don't know. Pick a lane.

You scoffed at the sad state of atheists guttering in their confusion.

The use of Soren Kierkegaard as your avatar is, in a number of ways, at odds with the argument you give regarding the necessary existence of God.

In his Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard moved away from the traditions of "proving" the existence of God in favor of framing the matter as how an individual learns what is true in the world. The proposition that an individual needs to "receive the condition" to see the truth is the opposite of arguing that everybody needs to recognize what is necessary by the evidence given to us all.

So the approach is similar to Pascal saying that the "scandal" is a better match to our human condition than other descriptions but goes further by declaring that only being conditioned in a certain way would make Pascal's thought sensible.

Sartre tied the vision of individual development to other dynamics than whatever leads to an individual.
He also wanted to put a person in their time, making choices being forced upon them.
That is not presented in the spirit of an argument against what you presented. I am curious if those remarks relate to your thesis.

As someone trying to navigate these problems in real time, the question is perfectly absurd.
The different systems set up to help in this regard are not solutions of the sort one can rely upon but are beneficial or not to particular situations.
The idea that some system has arrived to replace the idea of care is cruel and even funny too.

All these references to philosophers aside, the way I look at it is that the good person walks a tightrope. The need to vouchsafe personal (including whoever one includes as family) safety against a greater principle of the Good is the obstacle course of Life.

I have not been a complete coward so far but I am no hero either.

I am not sure "being a good man" is the intention of those who require that we be virtuous. Put another way, virtue hurts the person who would attempt such a thing. A person attempting such a thing cannot be sure if they or others will call them "good" at the end.
They will just decide stuff and live with the consequences. The Kantian appeal to universal good points to a form of life as perilous as what any saint would have to endure.

Yours is an interesting approach. Aphorism is not like argument in that the expression of something problematic is not an argument for it.
Kafka's Reflections upon Sin, Hope, and the True Way is very different than the aphorisms written by Nietzsche but they share the use of ambiguity as a means to goad the reader.

At a number of points of his enterprise, Wittgenstein made clear that his work did not get past ethics or reach it, if that is the better description. What appeals to me in those various formulations is that he kept himself from inferring what it meant that he could not replace it with something else.

To say what it meant would be a testimony of the kind he was not going to provide.
A boundary like that has something do with testimonies or uses of language he stands resolutely on one side of. The beautiful thing about such stubborn refusal to go further is its quality of remaining open.

Such a point of non departure could never be confused as an article of faith by itself. That is not a bad place to linger before going back to the valley of ten thousand stories.

So, does this mean that hidden in the definition of God is a clue that morality actually has no justification? — TheMadFool

This question confuses me from the point of view of having to choose from the limited menu offered. Creatures are not in a great place to start interrogating the Creator.

I am with Spinoza in seeing a proportion of power attributed to the Divine as a move away from the intention of the maker. If you are going to have a relationship with something closer than is suggested by absolute properties, then the Creator has problems too. And how a person would relate to such a set of problems is another set of problems.

Belief in a fallible god is more difficult than trusting in the idea of a being who always gets it right.

It occurs to me that my observations made above may not be read as an attempt to address the OP regarding the ideas of a self going through changes and how other people may perceive them. I mean to challenge that framework as inadequate to the task of dealing with the suffering that prompted people to start trying to understand this sort of thing.

I am more open to the idea that people are wrong about the nature of something perceived than saying the entire project of looking into problems is actually an agenda for something else. The first sort of mistake can correct perception. The second leaves the problems for someone else to solve.