It seems to me self-evident that it is worthwhile to understand the best thoughts of the past, to appropriate them, to criticize… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share 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 Copy Share Image
The relation of the law to the self is only a helpful way of thinking about the law, that helps us better… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
The moral law is simply the way we think our own freedom as self-determination. — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
Kant is not saying - about freedom or any other subject - anything of the form: "Not-p but we must assume that… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
Fichte takes an I or free will to be not a thing or being but an act which is not undetermined but… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
What is central to morality is rational self-constraint (acting from duty), in cease where there is no other incentive to do your… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
From the beginning, there has been a tension in the reception of the Kantian idea of autonomy. If you emphasize the 'nomos'… — 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
Kant regards the universalizability test for maxims as focused on a very special sort of situation: one where the agent is tempted… — 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
