Freedom is a permanent problem for us, both unavoidable and insoluble. — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
If the problem of free will is to see how freedom fits into the order of nature, then Kant's basic view about… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
The problem I see with utilitarianism, or any form of consequentialism, is not that it gets the wrong answers to moral questions.… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
Utilitarians are usually empiricists who think they can solve every problem by accumulating enough empirical facts. They do not realize that thinking… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
The problem is that many who reject Marx do not read him, or read him only by bringing prejudices to their reading… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
Marx's own illusion was to think that the working class movement, which he devoted his life to creating and strengthening, would both… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
As with many metaphysical and religious questions, Kant thinks they lie beyond our power to answer them. If you can't stand the… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
I think if there were to be a solution to the problem of free will, it would have to be a compatibilist… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
There is a very common, though also very silly, picture of Kant according to which as empirical beings we are not free… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
When people think that moral problems can be solved by some simple strategy of calculation, that sets them up for ghastly overreaching.… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share 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… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share
No theory about our bodies as mere objects of observation and calculation (as distinct from partners in communicative interaction, assumed to be free) can… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share
Kantian ethical theory distinguishes three levels: First, that of a fundamental principle (the categorical imperative, formulated in three main ways in Kant's Groundwork); second,… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share
Some empirical feelings, such as sympathy, are indispensable parts of certain moral virtues. — Allen W. Wood Copy Share
We commit not only theoretical error but also moral wrong in objectifying ourselves or other rational beings, ignoring their capacities for free action and… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share
Kant certainly was sympathetic with the metaphysical tradition of rational theology that he criticized. — Allen W. Wood Copy Share
That Hegel's theory is derivative from Fichte's does not prevent it from being strikingly original and of independent value. — Allen W. Wood Copy Share
It is sad to witness the persistence in our society of the racism and xenophobia that seems to be a permanent part of our… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share
It is rational to choose the right means to your ends to develop very elegant abstract formal theories of rational choice, and then turn… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share
We can never prove that we are free or integrate our freedom in any way into our objective conception of the causal order of… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share
Kant regards the universalizability test for maxims as focused on a very special sort of situation: one where the agent is tempted to make… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share
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… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share
It is actually a nice question how far Descartes himself endorses the monological and metaphysically dualistic theory of mind associated with his name and… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share
In fact people do not know enough about themselves and what is good for them to form a sufficiently definite conception of the general… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share
Empiricist philosophy always tends to be anti-philosophy (and is often proud of it). — Allen W. Wood Copy Share
