We can never prove that we are free or integrate our freedom in any way into our objective conception of the causal… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
I don't think Kant's theory looks bad to people except insofar as they have misunderstood it (for instance, as heartless and ironheaded,… — 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
Kant thinks that a free will is a will under moral laws and that freedom and the moral law are distinct thoughts… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
We can establish empirical criteria for free actions, and investigate human actions on the presupposition we are free. — 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
“In seeing the thinkers in this tradition as embodying a certain fundamental viewpoint, I am far from denying that there is disagreement between… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
Freedom is a permanent problem for us, both unavoidable and insoluble. — 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
Freedom is an unprovable but unavoidable presupposition, not an article of faith. — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
“Lovers of freedom are, of course, also by and large lovers of tolerance and permissiveness. Being tolerant and permissive, especially toward others,… — 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 moral law is simply the way we think our own freedom as self-determination. — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
Our procedures of deliberation are not ways of finding out independent moral truths but instead ways of "constructing" these truths, in the… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
“Western capitalist society, and especially my own American society, is one characterized by great inequalities. In any such society, by the nature… — 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
Kant does not regard freedom as an item of faith because it is too basic to our agency to be related to… — 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,… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
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… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
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 Image
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… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
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