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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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Allen W. Wood
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: January 1
Academic
Philosopher
Professor
University Teacher
Seattle
Washington
Allen William Wood
Enough
Rules
Good
General
People
Whatever
Happiness
Sufficiently
Fact
Establish
Facts
Definite
Ends
Conception
Form
Pursuit

More quotes by 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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Kant considers belief in God and immortality to be items of faith because he relates faith to the pursuit of ends - in this case, the highest good.
Allen W. Wood
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Kant did think he had a moral route back to rational faith in God, for those who need it, and he thought that at some level, we all do need something like it.
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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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
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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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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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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
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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
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I am a one-trick pony. But I have worked hard at something I would have liked to do even if I weren't paid a penny for it, and made a good living at it. You can't be luckier than that in this life, no matter who you are or what you do.
Allen W. Wood
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Not only in order to act morally, but even to formulate theoretical questions, devise experiments, choose which ones to perform and what conclusions to draw from then - we must presuppose that we are free. That's the sense in which it is true that for Kant we must assume we are free.
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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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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Descartes recommended that we distrust the senses and rely on the ... use of our intellect.
Allen W. Wood
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We can treat human responses to cognitions as involving law-like connections grounded on free choices which show themselves in our character.
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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Teaching and writing about philosophy is about the only thing I've ever been really good at.
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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Freedom is an unprovable but unavoidable presupposition, not an article of faith.
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