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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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Allen W. Wood
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: January 1
Academic
Philosopher
Professor
University Teacher
Seattle
Washington
Allen William Wood
Also
Ancient
Distinctively
Doe
View
Kant
Human
Conditions
Represents
Humans
Views
Contrast
Modern
Greek
High
Chinese
Culture
Ethics
Found
Condition

More quotes by Allen W. Wood

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What is central to morality is rational self-constraint (acting from duty), in cease where there is no other incentive to do your duty except that the moral law commands it.
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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Freedom is a permanent problem for us, both unavoidable and insoluble.
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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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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There is a tradition of modernist theology arising out of post-Kantian thought - Fichte was the real father of it, but Schleiermacher and others also developed it - which might have more promise if it had greater influence on popular religion.
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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Teaching and writing about philosophy is about the only thing I've ever been really good at.
Allen W. Wood
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People are often most proud of precisely those things of which they should most be ashamed.
Allen W. Wood
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Kant thinks we can show that there is no contradiction in supposing we are free.
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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Empiricist philosophy always tends to be anti-philosophy (and is often proud of it).
Allen W. Wood
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Fichte is concerned with freedom as non-domination.
Allen W. Wood
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Philosophy is about getting the facts right, but it is also about thinking rightly about them. Philosophy is more about the latter than the former.
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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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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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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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
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Capitalism has proven to be a far more terrible system than Marx could ever bring himself to imagine. Those who are so deluded as to find something good in it, or even feel loyalty toward it, are its most pitiful victims.
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