Allen Wood

In his reading of Kant’s moral philosophy and its grounding in freedom of the will, Allison is best know for giving an exclusively “practical” reading to doctrines about noumenal agency, so that they are taken to have none of the outlandish metaphysical implications often thought to be associated with the Kantian conception of freedom. The central feature of Allison’s interpretation is that Kant operates with a theory of agency in which, from the agent’s standpoint, reasons do not act as causes, but operate only insofar as they are taken up by the agent into principles or “maxims.” According to this “Incorporation Thesis,” sensuous impulses or desires are not causes of an action. So there is no reason to regard the motive of duty as a “noumenal” cause competing with sensuous or “phenomenal” causes. Instead, Kant’s “two standpoints theory” is to be understood as distinguishing the action as viewed from the agent’s practical standpoint from causal conceptions governing the theoretical standpoint.

Immanuel Kant’s _Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals _is_ _one of the most important texts in the history of ethics. In it Kant searches for the supreme principle of morality and argues for a conception of the moral life that has made this work a continuing source of controversy and an object of reinterpretation for over two centuries. This new edition of Kant’s work provides a fresh translation that is uniquely faithful to the German original and more fully annotated than any previous translation. There are also four essays by well-known scholars that discuss Kant’s views and the philosophical issues raised by the _Groundwork. _J.B. Schneewind defends the continuing interest in Kantian ethics by examining its historical relation both to the ethical thought that preceded it and to its influence on the ethical theories that came after it; Marcia Baron sheds light on Kant’s famous views about moral motivation; and Shelly Kagan and Allen W. Wood advocate contrasting interpretations of Kantian ethics and its practical implications.

Kant was among the first[i] to break decisively with the eudaimonistic tradition of classical ethics by declaring that the moral principle is entirely distinct and divergent from the principle of happiness (G 4:393, KpV 5:21-27).[ii] I am going to argue that what is at issue in Kant’s rejection of eudaimonism is not fundamentally any question of ethical value or the priority among values. On the contrary, on these matters Kant shares the views which led classical ethical theory from Socrates onward to embrace eudaimonism. Instead, where Kant breaks with classical ethics is in the conception of human nature. Kant’s conception of human nature so altered the application of moral principles that it forced a change in the way happiness was conceived, leading to a reversal of what had earlier been thought about the relation of the principle morality to the pursuit of happiness.

One of the principal aims of Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals, especially of the Doctrine of Virtue, is to present a taxonomy of our duties as human beings. The basic division of duties is between juridical duties and ethical duties, which determines the division of the Metaphysics of Morals into the Doctrine of Right and the Doctrine of Virtue. Juridical duties are duties that may be coercively enforced from outside the agent, as by the civil or criminal laws, or other social pressures. Ethical duties must not be externally enforced (to do so violates the right of the person coerced). Instead, the subject herself, through her own reason and the feelings and motives arising a priori from her rational capacities -- the feelings of respect, conscience, moral feeling and love of other human beings, must constrain herself to follow them (MS 6:399-404).1 Among ethical duties, the fundamental division is between duties to oneself and duties to others. Within each of these two main divisions of ethical duty, there is a further division between duties that are strictly owed, requiring specific actions or omissions, and whose violation incurs moral blame, and duties that are wide or meritorious, the specific actions not strictly owed, but deserving of moral credit or merit. Kant treats these latter as ‘duties’ (eschewing any category such as ‘supererogation’) because the actions in question are conceived as fit objects of self-constraint – things we can make ourselves do through the exercise of reason and the moral feelings arising from the application of practical reason to our faculty of desire. Regarding duties to oneself, this division is between ‘perfect’ and ‘imperfect’ duty; regarding duties to others, the strict or narrow...

The bulk of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is divided, in its philosophical content if not its formal organization, into two parts. The first, encompassing the Introduction, the Aesthetic and the Transcendental Analytic, presents a theory of metaphysical knowledge; its source and nature, its proper objects, and its fundamental principles. The second part, contained in the Transcendental Dialectic, is a theory of metaphysical error, illusion, or pseudoknowledge. For various reasons, students of the Critique have tended to neglect the second part of Kant's project in favor of the first, though there is no evidence that Kant himself regarded it as less important or less essential to the critical philosophy.

This paper is a critical examination of one central theme in Jon Elster's Making Sense of Marx; Elster's defense of ?methodological individualism? in social science and his related critique of Marx's use of ?functional explanation?. The paper does not quarrel with Elster's claim that the particular instances of functional explanation advanced by Marx are defective; what it criticizes is Elster's attempt to raise principled, philosophical objections to this type of explanation in the social sciences. It is argued that Elster's philosophical critique of functional explanation rests on a caricature of this kind of explanation, just as his critique of Marx's use of teleology in the philosophy of history rests on a caricature of the kinds of teleological claims Marx is concerned to make. The paper ends with a brief discussion of a recently published passage from Marx's notebooks of 1861?1863, where Elster claims to have found Marx explicitly criticizing capitalist exploitation as an injustice to the workers

Allen W.Wood Stanford University Fichte’s overall aim in the Second Chapter of the System of Ethics is to derive the applicability of the moral principle he has deduced in the First Chapter. That principle was: To determine one’s freedom solely in accordance with the concept of selfdetermination.1 To show that this principle can be applied is to derive its application from the conditions of free agency in which we find ourselves. In the section of the Second Chapter that will concern us, Fichte attempts to do this starting with our awareness of ourselves as organic beings of nature, and deriving from this awareness our consciousness of the moral principle as an activity of our freedom, together with the general object of this activity, our interest in this activity, and some preliminary indications of the way we are to identify the particular objects and actions that fall under it. It is important to keep in mind that throughout this discussion, Fichte’s concern is not with deducing philosophical propositions from the transcendental standpoint but rather with comprehending, in the light of this, the standpoint of everyday or nonphilosophical consciousness. The aim will therefore be to help us recognize the transcendental source and estimate the significance for moral philosophy of such ordinary facts of practical consciousness as drive, desire, the ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ faculties of desire, our awareness of freedom

The latest volume in the Cambridge Histories of Philosophy series, The Cambridge History of Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century brings together twenty-nine leading experts in the field and covers the years 1790-1870. Their twenty-seven chapters provide a comprehensive survey of the period, organizing the material topically. After a brief editor's introduction, it begins with three chapters surveying the background of nineteenth century philosophy: followed by two on logic and mathematics, two on nature and natural science, five on mind and language, including psychology, the human sciences and aesthetics, four on ethics, three on religion, seven on society, including chapters on the French Revolution, the decline of natural right, political economy, and social discontent, and three on history, dealing with historical method, speculative theories of history and the history of philosophy. The essays are framed by an editor's introduction and a bibliography.

This is one of the most respected books on Marx's philosophical thought. Wood explains Marx's views from a philosophical standpoint and defends him against common misunderstandings and criticisms. All the major philosophical topics in Marx's work are considered: the central concept of alienation; historical materialism and Marx's account of social classes; the nature and social function of morality; philosophical materialism and Marx's atheism; and Marx's use of the Hegelian dialectical method and the Marxian theory of value.

Kant's moral philosophy is grounded on the dignity of humanity as its sole fundamental value, and involves the claim that human beings are to be regarded as the ultimate end of nature. It might be thought that a theory of this kind would be incapable of grounding any conception of our relation to other living things or to the natural world which would value nonhuman creatures or respect humanity's natural environment. This paper criticizes Kant's argumentative strategy for dealing with our duties in regard to animals, but defends both his theory and most of his conclusions on these topics.

It is commonly thought that exploitation is unjust; some think it is part of the very meaning of the word 'exploitation' that it is unjust. Those who think this will suppose that the just society has to be one in which people do not exploit one another, at least on a large scale. I will argue that exploitation is not unjust by definition, and that a society (such as Our own) might be fundamentally just while nevertheless being pervasively exploitative. I do think that exploitation is nearly always a bad thing, and will try to identify the moral belief which makes most of us think it is. But I will argue that its badness does not always consist in its being unjust.

In this book, Allen Wood investigates Kant's conception of ethical theory, using it to develop a viable approach to the rights and moral duties of human beings. By remaining closer to Kant's own view of the aims of ethics, Wood's understanding of Kantian ethics differs from the received 'constructivist' interpretation, especially on such matters as the ground and function of ethical principles, the nature of ethical reasoning and autonomy as the ground of ethics. Wood does not hesitate to criticize and modify Kant's conclusions when they seem inconsistent with his basic principles or fail to make the best use of the resources Kantian principles make available. Of special interest are the book's treatment of such topics as freedom of the will, the state's role in securing economic justice, sexual morality, the justification of punishment, and the prohibition on lying.

Hegel spent most of his life as an educator. Between 1794 and 1800, he was a private tutor, first in Bern, Switzerland, and then in Frankfurt-am-Main. He then began a university career at the University of Jena, which in 1806 was interrupted by the Napoleonic conquest of Prussia, and did not resume for ten years. In the intervening years, he was director of a Gymnasium (or secondary school) in Nuremberg. In 1816, Hegel was appointed professor of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, then abruptly ascended to the chair in philosophy at the University of Berlin in 1818, where he remained until his sudden death from cholera in 1831.