Top 146 Quotes & Sayings by Allen W. Wood - Page 3

Kant thinks we can show that there is no contradiction in supposing we are free.

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.

Kant does not regard freedom as an item of faith because it is too basic to our agency to be related to any end.

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.

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

Freedom is an unprovable but unavoidable presupposition, not an article of faith.

Kant has been famous for his rejection of eudaimonism, but I think Kantian ethics has a great deal in common with Aristotle, and some things in common with Stoicism as well. The traditions tend, I believe, to talk past each other when it comes to happiness or eudaimonia.

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.

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.

Kant was a rational theologian. He did not pretend to be a biblical or revealed theologian.

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.

Not only our moral life, but even our use of theoretical reason - on which we rely in rationally inquiring into nature - presupposes that we are free.

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

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

Freedom is a permanent problem for us, both unavoidable and insoluble.

It would be nice, wouldn't it? if we could get comfortable about the problem of freedom. Kant thinks that we can't.

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."

Kant's treatments of rational theology and metaphysics were aimed primarily at theoretical questions. His attitude toward the pseudo-sciences of "special metaphysics" in Wolff and Baumgarten was always double-edged. He did see them as pseudo-sciences but also valued their doctrinal value and especially their regulative value for the empirical sciences. Like his views about religion, I don't think any of this is any longer viable in its original form.

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

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

As with many metaphysical and religious questions, Kant thinks they lie beyond our power to answer them. If you can't stand the frustration involved in accepting this, and insist on finding some more stable position which affords you peace of mind and intellectual self-complacency, then you will find Kant's position "problematic" in the sense that you can't bring yourself to accept it. You may try to kid yourself into accepting either some naturalistic deflationary answer to the problem or some dishonest supernaturalist answer.

There is a tradition of "modernist" theology arising out of post-Kantian thought - Fichte was the real father of it, but Schleiermacher and others also developed it - which might have more promise if it had greater influence on popular religion.

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.

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.

Kant considers belief in God and immortality to be items of "faith" because he relates faith to the pursuit of ends - in this case, the highest good.

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.