It is rational to choose the right means to your ends to develop very elegant abstract formal theories of rational choice, and then turn these into what look like moral theories. Philosophers tend to be ravished by the formal beauty of such theories, and they don't pay much attention to the fact that our human limitations make them pretty useless… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share
There is a very common, though also very silly, picture of Kant according to which as empirical beings we are not free at all, and we are free only as noumenal jellyfish floating about in an intelligible sea above the heavens, outside any context in which our supposedly "free" choices could have any conceivable human meaning or significance. Part of… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share
In the mid-1960s, as hard to believe as it may be now, choosing to go into academic philosophy was not an imprudent… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
Kant does not think that along with choice of an action we also choose in each case the motive from which we… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share 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 Copy Share Image
There is no author or legislator of the moral law. It is simply valid in itself in the nature or essence of… — 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
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 Image
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 Image
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, a set of duties, not deduced from but derived from this principle, by way of its interpretation or specification, its application to the general conditions of human life - which Kant does in the Doctrine of… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share
Some empirical feelings, such as sympathy, are indispensable parts of certain moral virtues. — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
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 Image
Kant certainly was sympathetic with the metaphysical tradition of rational theology that he criticized. — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
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 Image
It is sad to witness the persistence in our society of the racism and xenophobia that seems to be a permanent part of our political culture. It is shameful to see politicians exploiting these human weaknesses in order to gain political power. It is most depressing of all to contemplate a future in which politicians who do this will continue… — 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 these into what look like moral theories. Philosophers tend to be ravished by the formal beauty of such theories, and they don't pay much attention to the fact that our human limitations make them pretty useless… — 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 Image
Kant regards the universalizability test for maxims as focused on a very special sort of situation: one where the agent is tempted to make an exception to a recognized duty out of self-preference. The universalizability test is supposed help the agent to see, in a particular case of moral judgment, that self-preference is not a satisfactory reason for exempting yourself… — 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 Image
