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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

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Allen W. Wood
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: January 1
Academic
Philosopher
Professor
University Teacher
Seattle
Washington
Allen William Wood
Way
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Theory
Replaced
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Also
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Accurate
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Higher
Capitalism
Find
Society
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Abolished
Humans
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Karl
Giving
Others
Works
Freer
Needs
Shows
Beyond
Marx

More quotes by Allen W. Wood

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Kant can provide, and has provided, a good model for philosophers to think about the relation of metaphysics to science and scientific methodology.
Allen W. Wood
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Virtues consist not only of acting in certain ways, but in ways of caring and feeling.
Allen W. Wood
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I think Fichte did take it further than Kant by arguing that we can regard the moral law as objectively valid only by seeing it as addressed to us by another being, even though Fichte thought God could not literally be a person who could address us.
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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Kant thinks that a free will is a will under moral laws and that freedom and the moral law are distinct thoughts that reciprocally imply each other. Fichte thinks they are the same thought.
Allen W. Wood
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Some empirical feelings, such as sympathy, are indispensable parts of certain moral virtues.
Allen W. Wood
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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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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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For the utilitarian, there is a fact of the matter about the good (the general happiness, or whatever conception of the good the utilitarian adopts) and about which actions or moral rules would contribute to maximizing the good. For the rational intuitionist, there are truths about which actions should be done and not done.
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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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
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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
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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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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
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I don't think Kant's theory looks bad to people except insofar as they have misunderstood it (for instance, as heartless and ironheaded, or as committed to an absurd metaphysical conception of freedom that violates Kant's own philosophy).
Allen W. Wood
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Our procedures of deliberation are not ways of finding out independent moral truths but instead ways of constructing these truths, in the process of deciding what to do.
Allen W. Wood
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Kant was a rational theologian. He did not pretend to be a biblical or revealed theologian.
Allen W. Wood
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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
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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
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Hegel's theory of recognition is basically derived from Fichte, who is its real author.
Allen W. Wood