110+ Allen W. Wood Quotes On War, Philosophical And Engaging

Professor Allen W. Wood is a professor of philosophy at Stanford University. He is best known for his work on the history of moral and political philosophy, particularly the works of Immanuel Kant. He is the author of several books, including Kant's Ethical Thought, Kant's Moral Religion, and Kant's Rational Theology. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Allen W. Wood on life, war, leadership.

Top 10 Allen W. Wood Quotes

1. I think the term "Kantian constructivism" as an oxymoron. Kant was a constructivist about mathematics, but not about ethics.
2. Fichte is a necessary step to both Hegel and Marx.
3. 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 of our state or condition) is a distinctively modern view.
4. Fichte would identify all states of our minds with states of our body - perhaps not merely of our brain, but the whole body as an acting organism.
5. Teaching and writing about philosophy is about the only thing I've ever been really good at.
6. No theory about our bodies as mere objects of observation and calculation (as distinct from partners in communicative interaction, assumed to be free) can comprehend human nature.
7. Hegel's theory of recognition is basically derived from Fichte, who is its real author.
8. That Hegel's theory is derivative from Fichte's does not prevent it from being strikingly original and of independent value.
9. Fichte thinks that the mutual recognition of one another as free beings belongs among the transcendental conditions of self-consciousness itself.
10. The moral law is simply the way we think our own freedom as self-determination.

Allen W. Wood Short Quotes

• Freedom is an unprovable but unavoidable presupposition, not an article of faith.
• What I most fear now is that within a century or so there may not be any human future at all.
• Clearly no working class movement ever came about that was able to do what Marx was hoping for.
• There is a lot in Adam Smith that reflects the insights of Rousseau and anticipates those of Marx.
• Capitalism has not proven to be a transitional form, a gateway to a higher human future.
• Kant was a rational theologian. He did not pretend to be a biblical or revealed theologian.
• Empiricist philosophy always tends to be anti-philosophy (and is often proud of it).
• Some empirical feelings, such as sympathy, are indispensable parts of certain moral virtues.
• Virtues consist not only of acting in certain ways, but in ways of caring and feeling.
• Descartes recommended that we distrust the senses and rely on the ... use of our intellect.

Allen W. Wood Quotes About Philosophical

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

When Marx, in the Theses on Feuerbach, says that only idealism up to now has understood the active side of material Praxis, what he says is more true of Fichte than of any other philosopher in the classical German tradition. — Allen W. Wood

What Smith and Marx have in common is that they were both philosophers of great vision and perceptiveness, deep humanity, and a sense of social reality that has been lost in the abstractly formalistic economic theories that have dominated the field since the last third of the nineteenth century. — 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 methodology. — Allen W. Wood

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

It was an important part of Mendelssohn's philosophical and religious view that the traditional rationalist proofs for God's existence should be sound an convincing. Kant thought they were not. So Kant's critique was world-shaking for Mendelssohn. — Allen W. Wood

The picture of Kant as the 'theological Robespierre' or the "world-crusher" was first suggested by someone with whom Kant stood in a relation of philosophical disagreement but also great mutual respect: namely, Moses Mendelssohn. — Allen W. Wood

It is often difficult to know about one's own era which philosophers in it will be remembered as the most important ones, but I think it is already clear that John Rawls is the greatest moral philosopher of the twentieth century. — 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

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

Allen W. Wood Famous Quotes And Sayings

The problem I see with utilitarianism, or any form of consequentialism, is not that it gets the wrong answers to moral questions. I think just about any moral theory, worked out intelligently, and applied with good judgment, would get just about the same results as any other. — Allen W. Wood

When consequentialist theories are developed in terms of an equally shallow psychology of the good - such as a crude form of hedonism - the results can sometimes strike sensible people as revolting and inhuman. People can be reduced to simple repositories of positive or negative sensory states, and their humanity is lost sight of entirely. — Allen W. Wood

Popular religion since the time of Kant and Fichte has gone in a direction they tried to prevent and that has been disastrous for the humanity both of believers and of the rest of us. Look at the role of religion in Republican presidential primaries if you need any confirmation of this last statement. — Allen W. Wood

Adam Smith saw the greed of modern capitalism for what it was - a form of destructive ambition that may have favorable effects on the productive capacities of society, but which is of no direct benefit to anyone - not even to the greedy themselves, whose illusory chase after a will-o-the-wisp leaves them morally bankrupt and unhappy. — 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 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

Those who employ their modest talents as best they can do make a contribution to a better human future. — Allen W. Wood

Our procedures of deliberation are not ways of finding out independent moral truths but instead ways of "constructing" these truths, in the process of deciding what to do. — Allen W. Wood

Kant takes a free will to be a being or substance with the power to cause a state of the world (or a whole series of such states) spontaneously or from itself. — Allen W. Wood

Kant did think he had a moral route back to rational faith in God, for those who need it, and he thought that at some level, we all do need something like it. — Allen W. Wood

Kant's aim was to develop a religion within the boundaries of mere reason (that is, reason unaided by special empirical revelation) and then to ask about existing ecclesiastical faith (especially about Christianity, and the Lutheran Christianity of his time and place) how this revealed faith must be interpreted if it is to be reconciled with reason, and even seen as a wider (though morally optional) extension of a religion of reason. — Allen W. Wood

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

Since the Enlightenment, popular religion has rejected the Enlightenment path and transformed itself into a bastion of resistance against reason. — 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 after it. His works do not describe post-capitalist society, and a fortiori they do not recommend any part of what the Soviet Union did. — 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 self-determined, in accordance with reasons or norms rationally self-given. — Allen W. Wood

Kant thinks we can show that there is no contradiction in supposing we are free. — Allen W. Wood

Adam Smith was aware of the way that economic interests could have a distorting and destructive effect both on the market and on politics. — Allen W. Wood

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

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

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

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

People are often most proud of precisely those things of which they should most be ashamed. — Allen W. Wood

We commit not only theoretical error but also moral wrong in objectifying ourselves or other rational beings, ignoring their capacities for free action and communicative interaction with us. — Allen W. Wood

Capitalism now seems more likely a swamp, a bog, a quicksand in which humanity is presently flailing about, unable to extricate itself, perhaps doomed to perish within a few generations from the long term effects of the technology which seemed to Marx its greatest gift to humanity. — Allen W. Wood

In general, those who defend capitalism are basically out of touch with reality. — Allen W. Wood

I am a one-trick pony. But I have worked hard at something I would have liked to do even if I weren't paid a penny for it, and made a good living at it. You can't be luckier than that in this life, no matter who you are or what you do. — 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 morally virtuous or vicious. — Allen W. Wood

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

We cannot predict the effects of our actions, especially our collective actions over generations or centuries, to use instrumental reasoning toward these big final ends to tell us what we ought to do. — Allen W. Wood

I think the contribution people make is not proportionate to their fame or success. In fact, I think the relation is often inverse. — Allen W. Wood

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

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

I think Fichte did take it further than Kant by arguing that we can regard the moral law as objectively valid only by seeing it as addressed to us by another being, even though Fichte thought God could not literally be a person who could address us. — 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 duty except that the moral law commands it. — 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 thinks that a free will is a will under moral laws and that freedom and the moral law are distinct thoughts that reciprocally imply each other. Fichte thinks they are the same thought. — Allen W. Wood

As I understand it, Kantian constructivism is partly a position in normative ethics and partly a position in metaethics. In metaethics, it is the position that ethical claims have truth values, but their truth conditions consist not in a set of objective facts to which they correspond, but instead in the outcome of some procedure of deliberation resulting in decisions about what to do. — Allen W. Wood

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

What are we to think of the shortsightedness of the great mass of people who are content to do nothing about it, and even worse, the greed or venality of the rich and powerful who deliberately bar the way to human survival? — Allen W. Wood

Those who see Smith as a defender of capitalism - as it existed in Marx's day, or as it exists today - show above all that they are not living in the real world. They are behaving as though the undeveloped form of capitalism Smith studied is still with us. — Allen W. Wood

Capitalism has proven to be a far more terrible system than Marx could ever bring himself to imagine. Those who are so deluded as to find something good in it, or even feel loyalty toward it, are its most pitiful victims. — Allen W. Wood

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

We can make mistakes about what we ought to do, and these are not the same as making bad decisions about what to do. — Allen W. Wood

Consequentialist theories pretend that we can set some great big ends (the general happiness, human flourishing), provide ourselves with definite enough conceptions of them to make them the objects of instrumental reasoning, and then obtain enough reliable information about what actions will best promote them that we could regulate our conduct by these considerations alone. — Allen W. Wood

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

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

We can never prove that we are free or integrate our freedom in any way into our objective conception of the causal order of nature. — Allen W. Wood

Karl Marx left it to others to find the way beyond capitalism to a higher form of society. He saw his role as giving them as accurate a theory as he could of how capitalism works, which would also show them the reasons why it needs to be abolished and replaced by a freer and more human form of society. — Allen W. Wood

Kant certainly was sympathetic with the metaphysical tradition of rational theology that he criticized. — 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 their policies the human race is being rapidly propelled toward its extinction. — 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 which are good. Both of these, but especially the former, depend on judgments of fact. — Allen W. Wood

For the utilitarian, there is a fact of the matter about the good (the general happiness, or whatever conception of the good the utilitarian adopts) and about which actions or moral rules would contribute to maximizing the good. For the rational intuitionist, there are truths about which actions should be done and not done. — Allen W. Wood

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

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

Not only in order to act morally, but even to formulate theoretical questions, devise experiments, choose which ones to perform and what conclusions to draw from then - we must presuppose that we are free. That's the sense in which it is true that for Kant "we must assume we are free." — 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 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

Many who are committed to reason and science have turned against religion altogether and treat it with fear and contempt. — Allen W. Wood

In any matter of moral importance, our first task, before we plunge ahead and decide what to do, is to figure out what we ought to do. — Allen W. Wood

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

If the problem of free will is to see how freedom fits into the order of nature, then Kant's basic view about the free will problem is that it is insoluble. — Allen W. Wood

In fact people do not know enough about themselves and what is good for them to form a sufficiently definite conception of the general happiness (or whatever the end is) to establish definite rules for its pursuit. — Allen W. Wood

Smith could not be expected to have anticipated the horrors that were to come. But even in his own time, he was a defender of certain state actions that he thought necessary in order to safeguard the good effects of commercial society (Smith did not speak of 'capitalism' and was acquainted only with an early undeveloped form of it). Among these state actions the chief was general public education. — Allen W. Wood

Kant does represents a distinctively modern view of the human condition in contrast to that of ancient high culture, found in ancient Greek ethics and also in ancient Chinese ethics. — Allen W. Wood

Utilitarians are usually empiricists who think they can solve every problem by accumulating enough empirical facts. They do not realize that thinking as well as experience is necessary to know anything or get anything right. — 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. Notice how it contains a paean of praise for the way capitalism and the bourgeoisie have both enriched the human powers of production and also enabled us to see with clear vision the nature of human society and human history. — Allen W. Wood

We totally misunderstand both his aims and his contribution if we try to read into Marx some anticipation of either the modest successes or the disastrous failures of those who later thought they were acting in his name. — 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 that prevent them from understanding him. — 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 Soviet propaganda represented it this way. But who believes Soviet propaganda? It is remarkable (but maybe not so remarkable after all, when you consider their motives) that apologists for capitalism, who would not accept Soviet propaganda on any other point, are eager to agree with it on this point. — Allen W. Wood

People who enjoy the privileges of success must use these privileges to benefit those who do not have them. These privileges constitute a deep hole they need to climb out of if they are to prevent its being the case that the world would have been better off if they had never been born. — Allen W. Wood

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

I think it is clear that what we ought to do has to be independent of our decisions about what to do, and independent of any procedures we might use in making such decisions. — Allen W. Wood

I wish that our culture could retain the symbolism and emotional power of traditional religion while combining it with reason and science and using the combination to enhance our humanity rather than impoverishing it by choosing the one side or the other. — 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, can strike sensible people as ridiculous or offensive. But in my view, his own theory provides us with the resources (the best resources available, I believe) to correct his own personal errors or cultural prejudices. — Allen W. Wood

We can't coherently deny, or even decline to affirm, that we are free. — Allen W. Wood

We are generally forced to choose one way or the other of distancing ourselves from Kant. I suppose I tend to choose the irreligious way. But I regret that Kant's path has not been followed. — 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 with modernity, science and reason. — 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 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

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

It is both theoretically mistaken and morally wrong to regard others as objects of investigation rather than partners in free rational communication. — 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 a means to it. — Allen W. Wood

Freedom is a permanent problem for us, both unavoidable and insoluble. — Allen W. Wood

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 to have influence over people's lives. — 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 any end. — Allen W. Wood

Life Lessons by Allen W. Wood

1. Professor Allen W. Wood's work emphasizes the importance of understanding the historical context of philosophical ideas. He encourages us to look beyond the surface of philosophical theories and to consider the implications of their development over time.
2. His work also highlights the need to be aware of our own biases and to approach philosophical questions with an open mind. He encourages us to question our own assumptions and to be willing to accept new ideas.
3. Finally, Professor Wood's work encourages us to think critically and to be willing to challenge accepted ideas in order to arrive at new and better understandings of the world.