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Since the Enlightenment, popular religion has rejected the Enlightenment path and transformed itself into a bastion of resistance against reason.

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
Popular
Path
Since
Religion
Bastion
Reason
Rejected
Transformed
Resistance
Enlightenment

More quotes by Allen W. Wood

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I don't think Kant's theory looks bad to people except insofar as they have misunderstood it (for instance, as heartless and ironheaded, or as committed to an absurd metaphysical conception of freedom that violates Kant's own philosophy).
Allen W. Wood
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Not only our moral life, but even our use of theoretical reason - on which we rely in rationally inquiring into nature - presupposes that we are free.
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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Descartes recommended that we distrust the senses and rely on the ... use of our intellect.
Allen W. Wood
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Fichte would identify all states of our minds with states of our body - perhaps not merely of our brain, but the whole body as an acting organism.
Allen W. Wood
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Karl Marx left it to others to find the way beyond capitalism to a higher form of society. He saw his role as giving them as accurate a theory as he could of how capitalism works, which would also show them the reasons why it needs to be abolished and replaced by a freer and more human form of society.
Allen W. Wood
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It is probably not a good idea to ask someone to expound a position they do not accept and do not feel they even fully understand.
Allen W. Wood
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That Hegel's theory is derivative from Fichte's does not prevent it from being strikingly original and of independent value.
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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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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Teaching and writing about philosophy is about the only thing I've ever been really good at.
Allen W. Wood
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Adam Smith was aware of the way that economic interests could have a distorting and destructive effect both on the market and on politics.
Allen W. Wood
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I think the contribution people make is not proportionate to their fame or success. In fact, I think the relation is often inverse.
Allen W. Wood
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One rational standard of action is how well it promotes the end it seeks. Another standard is whether it aims at ends which are good. Both of these, but especially the former, depend on judgments of fact.
Allen W. Wood
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Capitalism has not proven to be a transitional form, a gateway to a higher human future.
Allen W. Wood
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We commit not only theoretical error but also moral wrong in objectifying ourselves or other rational beings, ignoring their capacities for free action and communicative interaction with us.
Allen W. Wood
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Fichte thinks that the mutual recognition of one another as free beings belongs among the transcendental conditions of self-consciousness itself.
Allen W. Wood
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The relation of the law to the self is only a helpful way of thinking about the law, that helps us better understand its validity for us.
Allen W. Wood
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Since we cannot know too much about the long term effects of our particular lives, and since success and fame are not good measures of the value of what we have done, it should be enough for any of us that as far as we can tell, in some small way we have made humanity's future better rather than worse.
Allen W. Wood
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Kant thinks of judgment as a special faculty or talent of the mind, not reducible to discursive reasoning but cultivated through experience and practice.
Allen W. Wood