Allen W. Wood

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

My own view is that Kant's conception of the duality of the good (morality and happiness, the good of our person and…

— Allen W. Wood

We can establish empirical criteria for free actions, and investigate human actions on the presupposition we are free.

— Allen W. Wood

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

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

Kant can provide, and has provided, a good model for philosophers to think about the relation of metaphysics to science and scientific…

— Allen W. Wood

I think it is clear that what we ought to do has to be independent of our decisions about what to do,…

— Allen W. Wood

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

There is a tradition of "modernist" theology arising out of post-Kantian thought - Fichte was the real father of it, but Schleiermacher…

— Allen W. Wood

One rational standard of action is how well it promotes the end it seeks. Another standard is whether it aims at ends…

— Allen W. Wood

Some of Kant's particular moral opinions, either because he shared the prejudices of his time, or because of his own personal crotchets,…

— Allen W. Wood

Marx is thought of as an implacable foe of capitalism. But go back and read the first section of the Communist Manifesto.…

— Allen W. Wood

In my acquaintance with John Rawls, I found him to be a simple and honest man, who just by chance also happened…

— Allen W. Wood

As long as the Republican party exists in its present form, our nation cannot endure as a free society. Still worse, under…

— Allen W. Wood

Until I was a junior in high school, I was a "boy scientist" type and expected to go into chemistry. Then I…

— Allen W. Wood

The Russian revolution did not occur until a generation after Marx's death. He was not involved with it, or with what came…

— Allen W. Wood

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

It is absurd for anyone to think that Soviet "Marxism" is a correct application of the thought of Karl Marx. No doubt…

— Allen W. Wood

Kant does not think there is anything wrong with being beneficent from sympathy. He thinks we have a duty to cultivate sympathetic…

— Allen W. Wood

“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

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

It has taken me a long time to realize where I most disagree with Marx. His assessment of capitalism is far too…

— Allen W. Wood

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

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

We can make mistakes about what we ought to do, and these are not the same as making bad decisions about what…

— Allen W. Wood

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

That Hegel's theory is derivative from Fichte's does not prevent it from being strikingly original and of independent value.

— Allen W. Wood

We usually can't know how, and we probably should not even ask, how our lives contribute to a better world.

— Allen W. Wood

It is probably not a good idea to ask someone to expound a position they do not accept and do not feel…

— Allen W. Wood

Reason necessarily expresses itself through emotions and emotions are healthy only insofar as they are expressions of reason.

— Allen W. Wood

Fichte thinks that the mutual recognition of one another as free beings belongs among the transcendental conditions of self-consciousness itself.

— Allen W. Wood

Kant thinks of judgment as a special faculty or talent of the mind, not reducible to discursive reasoning but cultivated through experience…

— Allen W. Wood

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

No theory about our bodies as mere objects of observation and calculation (as distinct from partners in communicative interaction, assumed to be…

— Allen W. Wood

Consequentialist theories begin with a very simple and undoubtedly valid point: Every action aims at a future end, and is seen as…

— Allen W. Wood

Kant attempted to work out a view of religion and religious belief according to which existing religions could be brought into harmony…

— Allen W. Wood

Kant's system of duties constitutes a Doctrine of Virtue because the duties also indicate what kinds of attitudes, dispositions and feelings are…

— Allen W. Wood

The species of anti-Enlightenment religion we find among evangelical protestants is far more impoverished, anti-intellectual and downright wretched.

— Allen W. Wood

Kant certainly was sympathetic with the metaphysical tradition of rational theology that he criticized.

— Allen W. Wood

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