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I think that both Mill and Sidgwick are great and admirable philosophers, from whom we still have a lot to learn. I would not favor a form of Kantianism (if there is such a form) that treats Mill's or Sidgwick's moral philosophy with disrespect.

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
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Mill
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Disrespect
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More quotes by Allen W. Wood

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As Kant says, the contribution of any common laborer would be greater than that of the greatest philosopher unless the philosopher makes some contribution to establishing the rights of humanity.
Allen W. Wood
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Marx's writings still have something to teach us about capitalism. They have little or nothing to teach us about any alternatives to it. Anyone who had read them knows that.
Allen W. Wood
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When consequentialist theories are developed in terms of an equally shallow psychology of the good - such as a crude form of hedonism - the results can sometimes strike sensible people as revolting and inhuman. People can be reduced to simple repositories of positive or negative sensory states, and their humanity is lost sight of entirely.
Allen W. Wood
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As long as the Republican party exists in its present form, our nation cannot endure as a free society. Still worse, under their policies the human race is being rapidly propelled toward its extinction.
Allen W. Wood
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Kant certainly was sympathetic with the metaphysical tradition of rational theology that he criticized.
Allen W. Wood
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We totally misunderstand both his aims and his contribution if we try to read into Marx some anticipation of either the modest successes or the disastrous failures of those who later thought they were acting in his name.
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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In fact people do not know enough about themselves and what is good for them to form a sufficiently definite conception of the general happiness (or whatever the end is) to establish definite rules for its pursuit.
Allen W. Wood
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Kant does not regard freedom as an item of faith because it is too basic to our agency to be related to any end.
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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Kant attempted to work out a view of religion and religious belief according to which existing religions could be brought into harmony with modernity, science and reason.
Allen W. Wood
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I do not know how much my own work has achieved, and I must not pretend it has done more than it has.
Allen W. Wood
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What Smith and Marx have in common is that they were both philosophers of great vision and perceptiveness, deep humanity, and a sense of social reality that has been lost in the abstractly formalistic economic theories that have dominated the field since the last third of the nineteenth century.
Allen W. Wood
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Kant is not saying - about freedom or any other subject - anything of the form: Not-p but we must assume that p. That's close to self-contradictory, like Moore's paradox: p, but I don't believe that p.
Allen W. Wood
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It is often difficult to know about one's own era which philosophers in it will be remembered as the most important ones, but I think it is already clear that John Rawls is the greatest moral philosopher of the twentieth century.
Allen W. Wood
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Many who are committed to reason and science have turned against religion altogether and treat it with fear and contempt.
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 does represents a distinctively modern view of the human condition in contrast to that of ancient high culture, found in ancient Greek ethics and also in ancient Chinese ethics.
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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What I most fear now is that within a century or so there may not be any human future at all.
Allen W. Wood