Quote

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

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
Thought
Aim
Disastrous
Trying
Totally
Marx
Later
Aims
Name
Successes
Either
Anticipation
Names
Failures
Acting
Modest
Read
Contribution
Misunderstand

More quotes by Allen W. Wood

Image
It is a culturally interesting (but also deeply depressing) fact that many religious claims seem to retain their emotional power for believers only if taken in ways that are intellectually unsupportable and even morally contemptible.
Allen W. Wood
Image
Kant did think he had a moral route back to rational faith in God, for those who need it, and he thought that at some level, we all do need something like it.
Allen W. Wood
Image
What I most fear now is that within a century or so there may not be any human future at all.
Allen W. Wood
Image
Those who employ their modest talents as best they can do make a contribution to a better human future.
Allen W. Wood
Image
Kant thinks of judgment as a special faculty or talent of the mind, not reducible to discursive reasoning but cultivated through experience and practice.
Allen W. Wood
Image
Fichte thinks that the mutual recognition of one another as free beings belongs among the transcendental conditions of self-consciousness itself.
Allen W. Wood
Image
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
Image
Capitalism now seems more likely a swamp, a bog, a quicksand in which humanity is presently flailing about, unable to extricate itself, perhaps doomed to perish within a few generations from the long term effects of the technology which seemed to Marx its greatest gift to humanity.
Allen W. Wood
Image
We can treat human responses to cognitions as involving law-like connections grounded on free choices which show themselves in our character.
Allen W. Wood
Image
As long as the Republican party exists in its present form, our nation cannot endure as a free society. Still worse, under their policies the human race is being rapidly propelled toward its extinction.
Allen W. Wood
Image
I don't think Kant's approach to religion is any longer viable in its original form. But that does not mean it is simply wrong or that we cannot learn from it.
Allen W. Wood
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Those who see Smith as a defender of capitalism - as it existed in Marx's day, or as it exists today - show above all that they are not living in the real world. They are behaving as though the undeveloped form of capitalism Smith studied is still with us.
Allen W. Wood
Image
We are generally forced to choose one way or the other of distancing ourselves from Kant. I suppose I tend to choose the irreligious way. But I regret that Kant's path has not been followed.
Allen W. Wood
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Virtues consist not only of acting in certain ways, but in ways of caring and feeling.
Allen W. Wood
Image
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
Image
Kant was a rational theologian. He did not pretend to be a biblical or revealed theologian.
Allen W. Wood