Allen W. Wood - Principles Quotes

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Kant claims that the three formulas also constitute a developmental progression. This strongly suggests, first, that we need all the formulas in order to have a complete account of the content of the supreme principle, and, second, that the later formulas FH and above all FA and FRE should be considered more complete and adequate statements of the law than FUL and FLN.

Allen W. Wood
I suggest that a Kantian should think of any formulation of the supreme principle of morality (including all of Kant's own formulations) as provisional expressions of a principle to the conception of which we limited and fallible rational beings must always aspire.

Allen W. Wood
It is far from self-evident why Kant chooses this triad as his vehicle for systematizing the formulas of the moral principle.

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
The standard or dominant conception of ethical theory has two main characteristics, the first having to do with moral epistemology, the second with the nature of moral principles–the demands made on them, and the way they are to be applied. [...] The dominant model takes intuitions about particular cases as the primary ground of appeal for the authority of moral principles. A moral judgment is not counted as an 'intuition' in this sense unless it is generally accepted and made after careful consideration. But even the best intuitions about particular examples are not regarded as infallible.

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
Kantians may in turn be skeptical about all such projects, and whether anything deserving to be called either 'morality' or moral 'reasons' could ever be got out of them. A long philosophical tradition claims that there are powerful reasons to meet the requirements of morality, reasons that are necessarily connected with being a rational agent at all, and hence that conduct which violates moral principles necessarily constitutes a significant failure of rationality (even if we don't customarily apply to it the term 'irrational'). Kantian ethics does not need to apologize for adhering to that tradition.

Allen W. Wood
What interests Kant in all these cases is only this: Did the agents in these cases have to constrain themselves through respect for moral principles in order to perform the dutiful action? If they did, and the agent did the dutiful action, then that action was done from duty. If they did not, then the agent is not acting from duty in the sense intended in this discussion (whatever the real motive for the action may have been – in case that issue were to come up).

Allen W. Wood