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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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Allen W. Wood
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: January 1
Academic
Philosopher
Professor
University Teacher
Seattle
Washington
Allen William Wood
Use
Nature
Presupposes
Reason
Rationally
Even
Inquiring
Life
Theoretical
Rely
Moral
Free
More quotes by Allen W. Wood
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
Sometimes when a philosopher's views are widely rejected by the world, the fault is not with the philosopher but with the world.
Allen W. Wood
Hegel's theory of recognition is basically derived from Fichte, who is its real author.
Allen W. Wood
Popular religion since the time of Kant and Fichte has gone in a direction they tried to prevent and that has been disastrous for the humanity both of believers and of the rest of us. Look at the role of religion in Republican presidential primaries if you need any confirmation of this last statement.
Allen W. Wood
Kant has been famous for his rejection of eudaimonism, but I think Kantian ethics has a great deal in common with Aristotle, and some things in common with Stoicism as well. The traditions tend, I believe, to talk past each other when it comes to happiness or eudaimonia.
Allen W. Wood
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
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
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
It would be nice, wouldn't it? if we could get comfortable about the problem of freedom. Kant thinks that we can't.
Allen W. Wood
The moral law is simply the way we think our own freedom as self-determination.
Allen W. Wood
In the mid-1960s, as hard to believe as it may be now, choosing to go into academic philosophy was not an imprudent career choice. There were lots of academic jobs in philosophy then.
Allen W. Wood
It is both theoretically mistaken and morally wrong to regard others as objects of investigation rather than partners in free rational communication.
Allen W. Wood
Notice that tearing oneself out of the insensible state is the opposite of remaining in it the man who is beneficent from duty nevertheless acts with feelings, if not with empirical inclinations.
Allen W. Wood
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
Fichte is concerned with freedom as non-domination.
Allen W. Wood
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
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
People are often most proud of precisely those things of which they should most be ashamed.
Allen W. Wood
My own view is that Kant's conception of the duality of the good (morality and happiness, the good of our person and the good of our state or condition) is a distinctively modern view.
Allen W. Wood
When Marx, in the Theses on Feuerbach, says that only idealism up to now has understood the active side of material Praxis, what he says is more true of Fichte than of any other philosopher in the classical German tradition.
Allen W. Wood
