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When Marx, in the Theses on Feuerbach, says that only idealism up to now has understood the active side of material Praxis, what he says is more true of Fichte than of any other philosopher in the classical German tradition.

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
Sides
Philosopher
True
Active
Theses
Material
Praxis
Tradition
Thesis
Materials
Marx
Understood
Idealism
Side
Classical
Says
German

More quotes by 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 can establish empirical criteria for free actions, and investigate human actions on the presupposition we are free.
Allen W. Wood
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The picture of Kant as the 'theological Robespierre' or the world-crusher was first suggested by someone with whom Kant stood in a relation of philosophical disagreement but also great mutual respect: namely, Moses Mendelssohn.
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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Kant certainly was sympathetic with the metaphysical tradition of rational theology that he criticized.
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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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
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Freedom is a permanent problem for us, both unavoidable and insoluble.
Allen W. Wood
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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
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Adam Smith was aware of the way that economic interests could have a distorting and destructive effect both on the market and on politics.
Allen W. Wood
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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
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Clearly no working class movement ever came about that was able to do what Marx was hoping for.
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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I think the term Kantian constructivism as an oxymoron. Kant was a constructivist about mathematics, but not about ethics.
Allen W. Wood
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Being aware of truths about what is good or right or about what we ought to do is not the same as deciding what to do. Nor can the former truths be derived from decisions about what to do, or about procedures for making such decisions, unless these procedures themselves rest in some way on the apprehension of truths about what we ought to do.
Allen W. Wood
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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
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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
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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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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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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