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There is a lot in Adam Smith that reflects the insights of Rousseau and anticipates those of Marx.
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
Rousseau
Marx
Insights
Smith
Reflects
Anticipate
Adam
Insight
Anticipates
More quotes by Allen W. Wood
I wish that our culture could retain the symbolism and emotional power of traditional religion while combining it with reason and science and using the combination to enhance our humanity rather than impoverishing it by choosing the one side or the other.
Allen W. Wood
Fichte is a necessary step to both Hegel and Marx.
Allen W. Wood
Adam Smith saw the greed of modern capitalism for what it was - a form of destructive ambition that may have favorable effects on the productive capacities of society, but which is of no direct benefit to anyone - not even to the greedy themselves, whose illusory chase after a will-o-the-wisp leaves them morally bankrupt and unhappy.
Allen W. Wood
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
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
I think it is clear that what we ought to do has to be independent of our decisions about what to do, and independent of any procedures we might use in making such decisions.
Allen W. Wood
I think that both Mill and Sidgwick are great and admirable philosophers, from whom we still have a lot to learn. I would not favor a form of Kantianism (if there is such a form) that treats Mill's or Sidgwick's moral philosophy with disrespect.
Allen W. Wood
The problem is that many who reject Marx do not read him, or read him only by bringing prejudices to their reading that prevent them from understanding him.
Allen W. Wood
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
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
That Hegel's theory is derivative from Fichte's does not prevent it from being strikingly original and of independent value.
Allen W. Wood
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
Freedom is a permanent problem for us, both unavoidable and insoluble.
Allen W. Wood
Many who are committed to reason and science have turned against religion altogether and treat it with fear and contempt.
Allen W. Wood
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
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
We usually can't know how, and we probably should not even ask, how our lives contribute to a better world.
Allen W. Wood
We can't coherently deny, or even decline to affirm, that we are free.
Allen W. Wood
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
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