Allen W. Wood - Human Quotes

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Thus Kantian autonomy, once it is understood, will (and ought to) disappoint those shallow minds and immature souls who are attracted to the doctrine of autonomy for the wrong reasons. They were hoping for some radical individualist revolution in morality, in which paroxysms of human self-will overthrow the divine will's numinous majesty (thereby replacing, as many such revolutions sadly do, one arbitrary and unjust tyranny with another and bringing to power merely a different mob of unprincipled scoundrels). The sober rationalism of Kantian ethics is equally incompatible with voluntarism in its theological and its Promethean forms.

Allen W. Wood
Kantian ethics is fundamentally committed to a radical critique of human social life, especially of social life in its civilized form. This critical tendency is not a mere ancillary feature or contingent concomitant of Kantian ethics. It conditions the fundamental conception of Kantian ethical theory.

Allen W. Wood
Those of us who are sympathetic to Kantian ethics usually are so because we regard it as an ethics of autonomy, based on respect for the human capacity to govern our own lives according to rational principles. Kantian ethical theory is grounded on the idea that the moral law is binding on me only because it is regarded as proceeding from my own will.

Allen W. Wood
Help given to others, even on moral grounds, is not the result of sticking to a principle. Beneficence to others carried out from such a mindset is bound to strike us as grotesque. In Kant's own terms, however, the motive of duty in this example would be much more plausibly regarded as love of human beings – that is, the sorrowful man helps others because he has moral grounds to care about them and make their well-being his end. Realizing that this option is open to Kant may help us to correct many common errors about what Kantian ethics must say in such cases.

Allen W. Wood
There are two main reasons that Kant refuses to allow that sympathy or any other empirical sentiment or desire could constitute the foundation of morality. One is that no sentiment of this kind can yield the kinds of objective and universal principles that morality requires. They can approximate to this only by claiming a greater empirical uniformity in human nature than experience shows to be there. […] Kant's other main reason for rejecting sympathy or love as the basis of morality involves his view of the empirical psychology of these feelings as they arise in us in our social condition, and especially in the civilized condition of modern European society.

Allen W. Wood