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107Allen 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 …Read more
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49Does Hegel Have an Ethics?The Monist 74 (3): 358-385. 1991.Kierkegaard complained that Hegel’s system, for all its pretensions to completeness, was lacking an ethics. Even readers more sympathetic to Hegel have often agreed with this, saying that Hegel intended to replace ethics with some form of empirical social science.
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181Kant’s Ethical ThoughtCambridge University Press. 1999.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. …Read more
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66Thomas E. Hill, Jr., "Dignity and Practical Reason in Kant's Moral Theory" (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 32 (2): 314. 1994.
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357Allen 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, becaus…Read more
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8815. Ideology, False Consciousness, and Social IllusionIn Brian P. McLaughlin & Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (eds.), Perspectives on Self-Deception, University of California Press. pp. 345-363. 1988.
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76Kant's rational theologyCornell University Press. 1978.This book explores Kant's views on the concept of God and on the attempt to demonstrate God's existence as a means of understanding Kant's work as a whole and of achieving a proper appreciation of the contents of Kant's moral faith.
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16Enlightenment, revolution and romanticism: the Genesis of modern German political thought, 1790–1800History of European Ideas 17 (6): 804-806. 1993.
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26Attacking Morality: A Metaethical ProjectCanadian Journal of Philosophy 25 (sup1): 221-249. 1995.
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54Kant’s DialecticCanadian Journal of Philosophy 5 (December): 595-614. 1975.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 t…Read more
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1209. Self-Deception and Bad FaithIn Brian P. McLaughlin & Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (eds.), Perspectives on Self-Deception, University of California Press. pp. 207-227. 1988.
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31Marx’s Critical Anthropology: Three Recent InterpretationsReview of Metaphysics 26 (1). 1972.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 natur…Read more
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76Hegel 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 a…Read more
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300Kant on Duties Regarding Nonrational NatureAristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 72 (1). 1998.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 dutie…Read more
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184Fichte's intersubjective IInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 49 (1). 2006.The challenge to philosophy of mind for the past two hundred years has been to overcome the Cartesian conception of mind. This essay explores the attempt to do this by J. G. Fichte, especially regarding intersubjectivity or the knowledge of other minds. Fichte provides a transcendental deduction of the concept of the other I, as a condition for experiencing the individuality of our own I. The basis of this argument is the concept of the "summons", which Fichte argues is necessary for us to form …Read more
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211Duties to Oneself, Duties of Respect to OthersIn Thomas E. Hill (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Kant's Ethics, Wiley-blackwell. 2009.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 dut…Read more
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84The Free Development of Each: Studies on Freedom, Right, and Ethics in Classical German PhilosophyOxford University Press. 2014.The Free Development of Each collects twelve essays on the history of German philosophy by Allen W. Wood, one of the leading scholars in the field. They explore moral philosophy, politics, society, and history in the works of Kant, Herder, Fichte, Hegel, and Marx, and share the basic theme of freedom, as it appears in morality and in politics.
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24Kant's Rational Theology.Lectures on Philosophical TheologyPhilosophical Review 89 (2): 285. 1980.
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3Kant and the intelligibility of evilIn Sharon Anderson-Gold & Pablo Muchnik (eds.), Kant's Anatomy of Evil, Cambridge University Press. 2009.
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12Religion and Rational Theology (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2001.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 t…Read more
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21Kant: Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: And Other Writings (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 1998.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 …Read more
Stanford, California, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Normative Ethics |
19th Century Philosophy |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Normative Ethics |
19th Century Philosophy |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |