That is intriguing.
It makes me think of her description of the Boers starting to resemble their enemies after fighting for a while (in the Origins of Totalitarianism). A theme she uses in a number of places.
And the Talking Heads: "Lost my shape, trying to act natural."

Intelligence seems to me to be a faculty to model or mirror reality. This is possibly the strongest argument I can imagine for the correspondence theory of language and meaning. But, then the question seems to arise that how is "grasping" of concepts possible. To "grasp" a concept seems like some fundamentally transcendent conception of the mind a priori. — Shawn

Aristotle presented the process as a mirror of a kind. Whatever worked to allow you to perceive the world must be connected somehow to how those things actually exist. The concordance is a phenomena before it is an argument. It is like this:

Crazy but true, you are equipped to perceive when you are mostly like the other organisms who cannot to varying degrees.

I have read a lot of Gnostic texts, including the Gospel of Thomas.
I have a different view of it than yours. I am not sure how to go there from your premises.
I will have to mull upon ti.

The toxic element I was referring to was the description of your experience when you said:

"Many Christians have not only expressed hate for what I am saying. Ive been excommunicated from a number of churches."

I wasn't saying that You were toxic.

I wasn't saying that you were subscribing to any intention.
The point I wish to make, without regard to what I may think is/was the case, is that mixing narratives of what one approves with those one does not approve needs an overarching structure that you have not provided.

Toxic is well represented by the long tradition of destroying communities because they did not belong to a larger one.
So, all the terrible moves to remove people because of what they think/believe.

There is something toxic in what you observe. But it ultimately is not about what happens to you or me because we say stuff.
The only thing is what is happening to all of us. My narrative is limited in that regard, not so much because it is missing information but because it draws back from what some thoughts require.

I am not sure history is something that can be discussed as a fact like what you and I are able to claim happened to us.
I recommend not looking at it as a matter of what pisses people off.
All the angry places have been taken. That is the Christianity I understand.

You are using various accounts of what happened against various accounts you question. Fine. But what will separate your preferred narrative from what you object to?

I have read it.
I have read a lot of the text you are referring to.
So, whatever.

Before you get to something like considering whether something happened or not, there is all this work relating to accounts of what happened or not to be considered.

If one has decided to weigh accounts upon a scale a number of other people agree to use as a system of measure, then the method is the result. Nothing can be "verified" through using it because the use of the measure is also an argument for its use.

The results of this study were never shown or published. And the host of this case never accepted to talk about this experiment. — Mathias

It seems you want to stand on both sides of a divide.

Say that science is not something or another but also use its language to lodge your complaint against it.

You have presented the question as a phenomenon (or phenomena, if you will)
The burden is upon you to argue what such a result would entail.

One kind of disagreement is whether "Debate about the conclusion is then parlayed into debate about a premise or an inferential step." is bug or a feature.
Maybe saying anything involving the relationships between ideas and things requires being "too strong."
Daly seems to object that the process never gets to the last word in different arguments. That expectation is itself an element in many arguments.
There ain't no easy way out.

The way time is treated in Kant is something a person is experiencing in the context of being a person experiencing things. Einstein is claiming that our experience of time is exactly not the way to go about understanding what it might be.

So, how do those two completely separated ways to think about it meet? Maybe they don't.

One thing to wonder about is how much "freedom" is happening before the alarm clangs and we are all called to carry buckets of water.
Most of us don't know where the well is. A large number are surprised that there is a well at all, as a concept.
It is not an ideal situation for collective action.

Evil can be defined or not by various means and for different purposes.
Different ways to approach it as an experience are inextricably joined with whatever narrative brings it into view.
Is it something that has its own life or a myth of some kind? The only way to find out is to try and find out by using yourself. Maybe that won't be enough.
I encourage feelings of inadequacy regarding the topic.

The one uniting factor of all Gnostic sects is that we put man above god. We recognize that they are all man made. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Care to support that statement? It does not make sense of what I have read.

Ortega y Gasset took a dim view of Descartes and the German Ideology thing.
I don't have the books with me any more (they were not returned after loaning) but the criticism against them mostly took the form of making things more mysterious than they required.
But Ortega y Gasset had a sense of humor and the exact location of where such a text appeared in his work would help in finding the meaning.
Chance are, his view of Pascal was tempered by other points of view.

The civilian control of the DoD is exerted through the Secretary of the Defense along with the coordinating influence of the NSA.

Maybe one way to look at it is that we don't live within many of our convictions. They are experienced as boundaries of our experience. They are preserved, not because of any action repeated by the "believer" but because nothing else came along to require a reassessment.

When I apply that measure to my own beliefs, it is kind of scary. The reassessment is starting to look pretty darn important.

I think the virtue of patience is being connected to habit as a method.
If one has the habit of patience, it is because it has provided many benefits in the past.
Aristotle expresses this confidence that how we go about getting better at things is that we try them and they work.

The FBI, along with the Department of Defense (along with the other Federal agencies) are under the administrative control of the Executive Branch with the President being the Commander and Chief.

Congress is the agency to oversee what the Executive Branch is doing. If enough people from the Executive Branch corrupt that process, then you have a problem.

The Judicial Branch is supposed to be independent of the other two. If enough people from the Executive Branch corrupt that process, then you have a problem.

The "agency of oversight" you are thinking about has already been established.
The Constitution's separation of powers was designed to have the jobs assigned to each of the three not be overturned by one of the others.
So I am all for the DOD doing some things but not to make sure we aren't handing our country to a traveling salesman.

The dilemma you propose by saying: "Life cannot be both worth living and acceptable in ending", assumes your life belongs to you just because you are given life. It is yours to live or not but it does not belong to you on the basis of being able to end it. It only belongs to you if you try to live.

Not having a really shitty life depends on many coincident elements. Many of them are well outside of our control. But some margin of possibility in us can either be preserved or not. You don't have to kill yourself to let yourself die. You do have to live in order to live.

If the primary value of existentialism is authenticity and if it's primarily associated with 19th and 20th century European philosophers, then it fails. — Rand

I don't think "authenticity" is the "primary value of existentialism." If one is going to herd such a large group of thinkers (who disagree with each other for the most part) into a corral, it should be something along the lines that the ideas of self, soul, and human nature are not starting points one can assume but are problematic and rife with contradiction.

The slow pace of a moral philosophy emerging in the wake of such considerations is not a flaw but a feature.

Hegel was wrong about deciphering history. It really has no rythm or reason — Gregory

Whether one considers his ideas of value or not, to describe the process Hegel is describing as "deciphering" overlooks a challenge he puts forward in his works. Hegel is not arguing for a particular interpretation of a widely accepted process. He is saying that the very idea of "History" is only possible if one accepts it as a starting point that a process is underway.

In various places, he accepts that other people may not agree with that idea.

One way to look at it is that Sartre inserted Kant between your question and Descartes.
Unless there is some text that would underline what you are asking for.

One of the excellent things about Kierkegaard's Works of Love is his insistence that we love one another.
The assignment of such a task is also the acceptance of how difficult it is.
That element is more important to me than figuring out the meaning of historical struggles.

I recognize where many of these quotes come from but not all of them.
As a general principle, I would appreciate it if the text was located by work and paragraph.

I am not on board with the idea of "deeply rooted beliefs." Belief is not a function separable from others. I can breathe. I can chop wood. Belief is neither a function of an organism nor an action upon a set of objects.
When someone is wrong about what they believe, it is not a defect like a missing member or a badly designed machine. Any story about incorrect belief is always welded to another story of really good belief.
I don't understand the idea that being able to change another person by one means or another is a measure of value. The original question assumes that a right thinking person is trying to stop the wrong thinking person from their worst impulses. The stubbornness goes much deeper than that.
Righteousness may be a way to organize and see oneself and other people. But I am not certain of that either. It would be wrong to make it an article of faith.

This is an accurate description of Hobbes' view, but I'm trying to ascertain whether the example he provides really serves to establish this conclusion. — Alvin Capello

In so far as Hobbes points to how we guard ourselves against violence and theft, he is contrasting those measures with the desire to not live that way. He is not saying that wanting to live differently is wrong.

By asking: "Does he not there as much accuse mankind by his actions as I do by my words?" he is challenging the idea that "we" are all beyond that because of a standard of community we celebrate. The social order is an advance over anarchy but not a complete victory.

In that way, his embrace of the Monarchist point of view is to make the desire to live without war higher than any other concern. The position is not an argument for the best system, it accuses those who speak in those terms of not being honest with themselves on some level.

One way to look at it is that the language of the mystics will never square with that of those who are interested in the boundary between the possible and what have you.
For myself, the two registers are too far apart to have an argument with each other.
But others do not feel or think that way.
My point of view is not close enough to others to make an argument either way.
I accept the criticism that such a point of view doesn't try to sort out a lot of issues.
But I own that lack of clarity. I don't blow it off as unimportant.

On the contrary. More space should be given to individual experience without the need for explaining why.

We have had this discussion before but what the heck, let's try again. Maybe it will get better.

If you are having conversations with God, what is there to prove? The whole thing about proof, as something that people do, is to make something necessary beyond any doubt. If God starts talking to me in clear language that my tiny mind understands, it will be life changing and incommunicable to others. Other people don't want to hear about the good time I am having with God.

And I don't blame them for their resentment. It is really annoying to have other people claim a relation to stuff that others don't feel, share, or understand.

What could make for a different outcome?

There was no metaphysics in Aristotle. "First philosophy" is his physics, and what's later called "metaphysics" is just as much physics. — Xtrix

Perhaps you could argue why this is so.
It is not immediately apparent to me as a phenomenon.

Yes, Hobbes says an authority is the only way to suspend the war of all against all.
He is also a Monarchist who dismisses forms of the Republic that would presume to provide such authority as is needed to stop that war.
The two ideas are obviously intertwined but are not identical.
Unless you agree with Hobbes on the matter.

Good observation.
Kant is creating problems with his solutions, not solving problems with his creations.

In the entry to Liddell and Scotts' Lexicon, the definition of the word starts with this:

"The nature, natural qualities, powers, constitution, condition of a person or thing."

That suggests that events that occur outside of such conditions and qualities are rare if possible.

in regard to etymology, the Greek word is similar to saying something like: "Events keep Happening."
It is relentless and leaves us poor mortals trying to get a grip when we control very few things.
The idea that many things can be determined is closely combined with the idea that we control nothing.
Not because of some idea of nihilism but because of the original idea of not being able to do certain things being an acceptance of some inevitable process.