Allen Wood

It is the avowed aim of Avineri’s study to "bring out the ambivalent indebtedness of Marx to the Hegelian tradition." This aim determines the central place of Marx’s concept of man in his discussion; for it was from Hegel and the young Hegelians that Marx drew the anthropological problematic which dominates his early writings. The Hegelian concept of Geist served the young Hegelians as the model for a philosophical conception of man, as a being exhibiting the unique dignity of his rational nature in a historical process through which he attains to freedom and self-knowledge. Carrying this aim out with the greatest clarity and completeness was Feuerbach, who, applying to Hegelian philosophy what Avineri calls his "transformative method," attempted to interpret Hegel’s "Spirit" and the speculative concepts through which it knows itself as false inversions of the self-consciousness of man as a natural, sensuous being. It was this method, applied to Hegel’s political philosophy, which resulted in what Avineri describes as "Marx’s first systematic work," the 1843 critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. A full chapter of Avineri’s book is devoted to this "most systematic of [Marx’s] writings on political theory." Avineri views the work as an immanent critique of Hegel’s philosophy of the state, focusing on Hegel’s failure adequately to comprehend the rationality of the actual. The cause of this failure was Hegel’s hypostatization of abstractions as the subjects of the social process; Marx’s application of the "transformative method" was an attempt to understand the specific character of the real human subjects who are the actual foundation of these speculative constructions. Avineri traces in detail the manner in which Marx confronts the speculative functions assigned by Hegel to monarchy, civil estates, and the state bureaucracy with the social realities represented by these speculative categories. Marx argues that the supposed universality of the state is an illusion, mystifying the social practice of modern society and confirmed by Hegel’s philosophical speculation. In fact, he argues, the "universal" interests of the state are only expressions of private interests in what Hegel called the sphere of "civil society," the realm of production and exchange. It is the relationships of men in this sphere which in Marx’s view constitute the true foundation for the rationality of the actual, and it was Hegel’s speculative inversion of the relationship of civil society and the state which was responsible for his failure to grasp this rationality. Marx’s stress on the sphere of civil society as the foundation for political life, the priority of man’s productive life over all other social relationships, is the characteristic Marxian form of the young Hegelian conversion of a speculative science of spirit into a philosophy of man. It was this priority, which Marx later referred to as the "universal result" of his early research, which continued to guide his later studies. Avineri proceeds to take up this theme in a chapter appropriately titled "Homo Faber."

Those of us who are sympathetic to Kantian ethics usually are so because we regard it as an ethics of autonomy, based on rational self-esteem and respect for the human capacity to direct one’s own life according to rational principles. Kantian ethical theory is grounded on the idea that the moral law is binding on me only because it is a law proceeding from my own will. The ground of a law of autonomy lies in the very will which is to be subject to the law, and this leaves no room for any issue about why this will should obey the law. The idea of autonomy also identifies the authority of the law with the value constituting the content of the law, in that it bases the law on our esteem for the dignity of rational nature in ourselves, which makes every rational being an end in itself.

This is a major new study of Kant's ethics that will transform the way students and scholars approach the subject in future. Allen Wood argues that Kant's ethical vision is grounded in the idea of the dignity of the rational nature of every human being. Undergoing both natural competitiveness and social antagonism the human species, according to Kant, develops the rational capacity to struggle against its impulses towards a human community in which the ends of all are to harmonize and coincide. The distinctive features of the book are twofold. First, it focuses for the first time on the central role played in Kant's ethical theory by the value of rational nature as an end itself. Second, it shows the importance of Kant's systematic theory of human nature and history, and its implications for the structure, formulation, and application of Kant's moral principles. This comprehensive study will be of critical importance to students of moral philosophy, the history of ideas, political theory, and religious studies.

This volume collects for the first time in a single volume all of Kant's writings on religion and rational theology. These works were written during a period of conflict between Kant and the Prussian authorities over his religious teachings. His final statement of religion was made after the death of King Frederick William II in 1797. The historical context and progression of this conflict are charted in the general introduction to the volume and in the translators' introductions to particular texts. All the translations are new with the exception of The Conflict of the Faculties, where the translation has been revised and re-edited to conform to the guidelines of the Cambridge Edition. As is standard with all the volumes in this edition, there are copious linguistic and explanatory notes, and a glossary of key terms.

Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason is a key element of the system of philosophy which Kant introduced with his Critique of Pure Reason, and a work of major importance in the history of Western religious thought. It represents a great philosopher's attempt to spell out the form and content of a type of religion that would be grounded in moral reason and would meet the needs of ethical life. It includes sharply critical and boldly constructive discussions on topics not often treated by philosophers, including such traditional theological concepts as original sin and the salvation or 'justification' of a sinner, and the idea of the proper role of a church. This volume presents it and three short essays that illuminate it in new translations by Allen Wood and George di Giovanni, with an introduction by Robert Merrihew Adams that locates it in its historical and philosophical context.

Wood reiterated his previous papers of view - "For Marx, economic, trade or social system of justice or not depends on its mode of production with the established relationship" that Hussami the "justice is not only determined by the mode of production and determined by class position, "the view attributed to Marx is a misconception that Marx was a capitalist from the standards of justice to go after the critique of capitalist society, it is a misreading of Marx's text. In his view, Marx's critique of capitalism is based on the analysis of the overall critique of social production, the criticism is based on freedom, community and self-realization and other non-moral good criticism, and not based on moral rights or justice, good criticism

Allen Wood “What is the human being?” Kant sometimes treated this question as the most fundamental question of all philosophy: “The field of philosophy in the cosmopolitan sense can be brought down to the following questions: 1. What can I know? 1. What ought I to do? 1. What may I hope? 1. What is the human being? Metaphysics answers the first question, morals the second, religion the third, and anthropology the fourth. Fundamentally, however, we could reckon all of this to anthropology, because the first three questions refer to the last one”.[i]

When we read Karl M&IX,S descriptions of the capitalist mode of production in Capital amd other writings, all our instincts tell us that these are descriptions of an unjust social system. Marx describes a. society in which one small class of persons lives in comfort and idleness while another class, in ever-increasing numbers, lives in want and vvrctchedncss, laboring to produce thc Wealth enjoyed by the fixst. Marx speaks constantly of capitalist "exploitation" of the worker, and refers to the creation of surplus value as the appropriation of his "unpaid 1abor" by capital. Not 0nly docs capitalist society, as Marx describes it, strike us as unjust, but his own descriptions of it themselves seem to connote injustice. When we look in the writings of Marx and Engels for a detailed account 0f the injustices of capitalism, however, We discover at once that not only is there no attempt at all in their writings to provide an argument that capitalism is unjust, but there is not even the explicit claim that capitalism is unjust 01* incquitablc, 01* that it violatcs anyonds rights. We find, in fact, explicit denunciations and sustained criticisms of social thinkers (such as Pierre P:roudhon and Ferdinand Lassalle) who did condemn capitalism for its injustices or advocated some form of socialism as a. means of securing justice, equality, or the rights of man. We even find, perhaps to our surprise, some faixly explicit statements to the effect that capitalism, with all its manifold defects, cannot be faultcd as far as justice is concerned. Whatever else capitalism may be for Marx, it docs not seem that it is unjust.

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.