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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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Allen W. Wood
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: January 1
Academic
Philosopher
Professor
University Teacher
Seattle
Washington
Allen William Wood
Facts
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Judgments
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More quotes by Allen W. Wood

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The Russian revolution did not occur until a generation after Marx's death. He was not involved with it, or with what came after it. His works do not describe post-capitalist society, and a fortiori they do not recommend any part of what the Soviet Union did.
Allen W. Wood
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Hegel's theory of recognition is basically derived from Fichte, who is its real author.
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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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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It seems to me self-evident that it is worthwhile to understand the best thoughts of the past, to appropriate them, to criticize them.
Allen W. Wood
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The moral law is simply the way we think our own freedom as self-determination.
Allen W. Wood
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Reason necessarily expresses itself through emotions and emotions are healthy only insofar as they are expressions of reason.
Allen W. Wood
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Kant thinks that a free will is a will under moral laws and that freedom and the moral law are distinct thoughts that reciprocally imply each other. Fichte thinks they are the same thought.
Allen W. Wood
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Freedom is a permanent problem for us, both unavoidable and insoluble.
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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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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Utilitarians are usually empiricists who think they can solve every problem by accumulating enough empirical facts. They do not realize that thinking as well as experience is necessary to know anything or get anything right.
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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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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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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Fichte is concerned with freedom as non-domination.
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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Freedom is an unprovable but unavoidable presupposition, not an article of faith.
Allen W. Wood
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People who enjoy the privileges of success must use these privileges to benefit those who do not have them. These privileges constitute a deep hole they need to climb out of if they are to prevent its being the case that the world would have been better off if they had never been born.
Allen W. Wood
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We cannot predict the effects of our actions, especially our collective actions over generations or centuries, to use instrumental reasoning toward these big final ends to tell us what we ought to do.
Allen W. Wood