Allen W. Wood Quotes About Philosophy

Quotes about: Philosophy

• In the mid-1960s, as hard to believe as it may be now, choosing to go into academic philosophy was not an imprudent career choice. There were lots of academic jobs in philosophy then.

  Allen W. Wood

  Jobs, Philosophy, Believe

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• Surely the world will be a better place, at least marginally, if people have a better understanding of Kant and Hegel, if Marx's thought its studied and appreciated, if people gain a better understanding of Fichte, whose philosophy is far more important than people realize.

  Allen W. Wood

  Philosophy, People, Understanding

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• Teaching and writing about philosophy is about the only thing I've ever been really good at.

  Allen W. Wood

  Philosophy, Teaching, Writing

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• It is actually a nice question how far Descartes himself endorses the monological and metaphysically dualistic theory of mind associated with his name and his legacy in early modern philosophy. But Fichte does reject this tradition, by suggesting that an immaterial thinking substance is an incoherent notion, and a rational being whose rationality was not developed through communication with others is a transcendental impossibility.

  Allen W. Wood

  Nice, Philosophy, Communication

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• In my view, there was a long period in which analytical philosophy had little to say about ethics. I think their intellectual tools did not do well with it, and analytical philosophy was above all about revolutionizing the philosophical tool box. It was more or less assumed that the Truth about ethics was some form of utilitarianism (perhaps because some consequentialist calculus looked to them like a respectable tool). Kantian ethics was then interpreted as a particularly odious version of the False - "deontology" - and treated with contempt.

  Allen W. Wood

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Thinking

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• I could identify for virtually every important figure in the history of modern continental philosophy an idea (or more than one) absolutely central to that philosopher's thought, whose original author was Fichte.

  Allen W. Wood

  Philosophy, Ideas, Important

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• I think if there were to be a solution to the problem of free will, it would have to be a compatibilist one. Unfortunately, from that it does not follow that there is such a solution. Many philosophers find this an unwelcome message, and as often happens in philosophy, they punish the messenger by ascribing to him an entirely imaginary but untenable position.

  Allen W. Wood

  Philosophy, Thinking, Doe

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• I think that both Mill and Sidgwick are great and admirable philosophers, from whom we still have a lot to learn. I would not favor a form of Kantianism (if there is such a form) that treats Mill's or Sidgwick's moral philosophy with disrespect.

  Allen W. Wood

  Philosophy, Thinking, Disrespect

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• Philosophy is about getting the facts right, but it is also about thinking rightly about them. Philosophy is more about the latter than the former.

  Allen W. Wood

  Philosophy, Thinking, Facts

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• Empiricist philosophy always tends to be anti-philosophy (and is often proud of it).

  Allen W. Wood

  Philosophy, Proud

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• Until I was a junior in high school, I was a "boy scientist" type and expected to go into chemistry. Then I discovered the humanities. I read the plays of Shakespeare voraciously, some novels, such as Pasternack's Dr. Zhivago and Sinclair Lewis' Main Street, and I got into philosophy by reading Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.

  Allen W. Wood

  Philosophy, Reading, School

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

• I don't think Kant's theory looks bad to people except insofar as they have misunderstood it (for instance, as heartless and ironheaded, or as committed to an absurd metaphysical conception of freedom that violates Kant's own philosophy).

  Allen W. Wood

  Philosophy, Thinking, People

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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