Allen W. Wood Quotes - Page 3

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• It seems to me self-evident that it is worthwhile to understand the best thoughts of the past, to appropriate them, to criticize them.

  Allen W. Wood

  Past, Self, Worthwhile

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• 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

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• I do not know how much my own work has achieved, and I must not pretend it has done more than it has.

  Allen W. Wood

  Done, Know How, My Own

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• In my acquaintance with John Rawls, I found him to be a simple and honest man, who just by chance also happened to be the greatest moral philosopher of the twentieth century. I would like to think that I could emulate at least his modesty - his refusal to exaggerate his perception of himself and his place in the larger scheme of things - even if my work never compares with his in its importance.

  Allen W. Wood

  Simple, Men, Thinking

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Those who employ their modest talents as best they can do make a contribution to a better human future.

  Allen W. Wood

  Talent, Modest, Contribution

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• As Kant says, the contribution of any common laborer would be greater than that of the greatest philosopher unless the philosopher makes some contribution to establishing the rights of humanity.

  Allen W. Wood

  Rights, Humanity, Would Be

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Leaders of nations, and people whose wealth or fame gives them power over the lives of others quite often do more harm than good.

  Allen W. Wood

  People, Giving, Leader

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• It is a culturally interesting (but also deeply depressing) fact that many religious claims seem to retain their emotional power for believers only if taken in ways that are intellectually unsupportable and even morally contemptible.

  Allen W. Wood

  Depressing, Religious, Taken

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• 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 the problem here is that Kant faces up honestly to the fact that how freedom is possible is a deep philosophical problem to which there is no solution we can rationally comprehend.

  Allen W. Wood

  Silly, Philosophical, Sea

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• In fact, if you read what Kant has to say about feeling, desire and emotion, you see that he is not at all hostile to these. He is suspicious of them insofar as they represent the corruption of social life (here he follows Rousseau), but he also thinks a variety of feelings (including respect and love of humanity) arise directly from reason - there is, in other words, no daylight between the heart and the head regarding such feelings.

  Allen W. Wood

  Heart, Thinking, Feelings

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• From the beginning, there has been a tension in the reception of the Kantian idea of autonomy. If you emphasize the 'nomos' (the law), then you get one picture: the objectivity of ethics. If you emphasize the 'autos' - the self - you get the idea that we make the law. Kant never hesitated in his choice between the two emphases. He emphasizes the nomos (the universal and objective validity of the law).

  Allen W. Wood

  Self, Objectivity, Law

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Kant's description of most ethical duties reads more like a description of moral virtues and vices. Once we see this, we see that Kantian ethics is indeed a kind of virtue ethics, and that it does not "divide the heart from the head" (to anticipate one of your later questions) but instead recognizes the deep truth that reason and emotion are not opposites.

  Allen W. Wood

  Heart, Reason And Emotion, Opposites

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Kant's system of duties constitutes a Doctrine of Virtue because the duties also indicate what kinds of attitudes, dispositions and feelings are morally virtuous or vicious.

  Allen W. Wood

  Attitude, Feelings, Doctrine

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Kant attempted to work out a view of religion and religious belief according to which existing religions could be brought into harmony with modernity, science and reason.

  Allen W. Wood

  Religious, Views, Work Out

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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

  Allen W. Wood

  Expression, Healthy, Emotion

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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

  Allen W. Wood

  Thinking, Practice, Mind

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• 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 virtue, the second main part of the Metaphysics of Morals; and then finally an act of judgment, through which these duties are applied to particular cases.

  Allen W. Wood

  Principles, Doe, Doctrine

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• The relation of the law to the self is only a helpful way of thinking about the law, that helps us better understand its validity for us.

  Allen W. Wood

  Thinking, Self, Law

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Kant says that we may regard ourselves as legislator of the moral law, and consider ourselves as its author, but not that we are legislators or authors of the law.

  Allen W. Wood

  Law, May, Moral

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I don't think Kant's approach to religion is any longer viable in its original form. But that does not mean it is simply wrong or that we cannot learn from it.

  Allen W. Wood

  Mean, Thinking, Doe

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Virtues consist not only of acting in certain ways, but in ways of caring and feeling.

  Allen W. Wood

  Caring, Feelings, Acting

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Some empirical feelings, such as sympathy, are indispensable parts of certain moral virtues.

  Allen W. Wood

  Feelings, Moral, Virtue

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• What is central to morality is rational self-constraint (acting from duty), in cease where there is no other incentive to do your duty except that the moral law commands it.

  Allen W. Wood

  Self, Law, Acting

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• If being "iron headed" is to be lacking such feelings, then Kant's position is that an ironheaded person could not be a moral agent because such a person would not be rational.

  Allen W. Wood

  Iron, Feelings, Agents

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Kant does not think that the silly commandment "universalize your maxims" is the be-all and end-all of ethics or that it provides us with some sort of general decision procedure that is supposed to tell us what to do under all circumstances.

  Allen W. Wood

  Silly, Thinking, Decision

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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