Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Allen W. Wood
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: January 1
Academic
Philosopher
Professor
University Teacher
Seattle
Washington
Allen William Wood
Even
Questions
Theoretical
Choose
Assume
Ones
Perform
Presuppose
Free
Experiments
Formulate
Sense
Conclusion
Devise
True
Assuming
Kant
Order
Draw
Conclusions
Must
Draws
Morally

More quotes by Allen W. Wood

Image
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
Image
We can establish empirical criteria for free actions, and investigate human actions on the presupposition we are free.
Allen W. Wood
Image
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
Image
Some empirical feelings, such as sympathy, are indispensable parts of certain moral virtues.
Allen W. Wood
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The moral law is simply the way we think our own freedom as self-determination.
Allen W. Wood
Image
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
Image
There is a lot in Adam Smith that reflects the insights of Rousseau and anticipates those of Marx.
Allen W. Wood
Image
If being iron headed is to be lacking such feelings, then Kant's position is that an ironheaded person could not be a moral agent because such a person would not be rational.
Allen W. Wood
Image
Empiricist philosophy always tends to be anti-philosophy (and is often proud of it).
Allen W. Wood
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
We can make mistakes about what we ought to do, and these are not the same as making bad decisions about what to do.
Allen W. Wood
Image
If the problem of free will is to see how freedom fits into the order of nature, then Kant's basic view about the free will problem is that it is insoluble.
Allen W. Wood