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The picture of Kant as the 'theological Robespierre' or the world-crusher was first suggested by someone with whom Kant stood in a relation of philosophical disagreement but also great mutual respect: namely, Moses Mendelssohn.

Allen W. Wood

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Allen W. Wood
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: January 1
Academic
Philosopher
Professor
University Teacher
Seattle
Washington
Allen William Wood
Great
Philosophical
Kant
World
Relation
Disagreement
Picture
Namely
Respect
Suggested
Someone
Theological
Also
Moses
Firsts
Stood
Robespierre
First
Mutual
Mendelssohn

More quotes by Allen W. Wood

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Until I was a junior in high school, I was a boy scientist type and expected to go into chemistry. Then I discovered the humanities. I read the plays of Shakespeare voraciously, some novels, such as Pasternack's Dr. Zhivago and Sinclair Lewis' Main Street, and I got into philosophy by reading Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.
Allen W. Wood
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I don't think Kant's approach to religion is any longer viable in its original form. But that does not mean it is simply wrong or that we cannot learn from it.
Allen W. Wood
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Kant was a rational theologian. He did not pretend to be a biblical or revealed theologian.
Allen W. Wood
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It was an important part of Mendelssohn's philosophical and religious view that the traditional rationalist proofs for God's existence should be sound an convincing. Kant thought they were not. So Kant's critique was world-shaking for Mendelssohn.
Allen W. Wood
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For the utilitarian, there is a fact of the matter about the good (the general happiness, or whatever conception of the good the utilitarian adopts) and about which actions or moral rules would contribute to maximizing the good. For the rational intuitionist, there are truths about which actions should be done and not done.
Allen W. Wood
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Surely the world will be a better place, at least marginally, if people have a better understanding of Kant and Hegel, if Marx's thought its studied and appreciated, if people gain a better understanding of Fichte, whose philosophy is far more important than people realize.
Allen W. Wood
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What is central to morality is rational self-constraint (acting from duty), in cease where there is no other incentive to do your duty except that the moral law commands it.
Allen W. Wood
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Philosophy is about getting the facts right, but it is also about thinking rightly about them. Philosophy is more about the latter than the former.
Allen W. Wood
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Consequentialist theories begin with a very simple and undoubtedly valid point: Every action aims at a future end, and is seen as a means to it.
Allen W. Wood
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In any matter of moral importance, our first task, before we plunge ahead and decide what to do, is to figure out what we ought to do.
Allen W. Wood
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It is a culturally interesting (but also deeply depressing) fact that many religious claims seem to retain their emotional power for believers only if taken in ways that are intellectually unsupportable and even morally contemptible.
Allen W. Wood
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Clearly no working class movement ever came about that was able to do what Marx was hoping for.
Allen W. Wood
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Teaching and writing about philosophy is about the only thing I've ever been really good at.
Allen W. Wood
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Marx is thought of as an implacable foe of capitalism. But go back and read the first section of the Communist Manifesto. Notice how it contains a paean of praise for the way capitalism and the bourgeoisie have both enriched the human powers of production and also enabled us to see with clear vision the nature of human society and human history.
Allen W. Wood
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Some empirical feelings, such as sympathy, are indispensable parts of certain moral virtues.
Allen W. Wood
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Our procedures of deliberation are not ways of finding out independent moral truths but instead ways of constructing these truths, in the process of deciding what to do.
Allen W. Wood
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Leaders of nations, and people whose wealth or fame gives them power over the lives of others quite often do more harm than good.
Allen W. Wood
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It is a cause of shame to any member of the human race to be a member of the same species some of whose members could vote for any candidate for president that has been offered by the Republican party. Such people seem to be motivated only by short-sighted greed, ignorance, fear and hatred.
Allen W. Wood
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Kant says that we may regard ourselves as legislator of the moral law, and consider ourselves as its author, but not that we are legislators or authors of the law.
Allen W. Wood
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The problem I see with utilitarianism, or any form of consequentialism, is not that it gets the wrong answers to moral questions. I think just about any moral theory, worked out intelligently, and applied with good judgment, would get just about the same results as any other.
Allen W. Wood