Ed Wood Quotes
Capitalism has not proven to be a transitional form, a gateway to a higher human future.
Adam Smith was aware of the way that economic interests could have a distorting and destructive effect both on the market and on politics.
There is a lot in Adam Smith that reflects the insights of Rousseau and anticipates those of Marx.
We usually can't know how, and we probably should not even ask, how our lives contribute to a better world.
Those who employ their modest talents as best they can do make a contribution to a better human future.
Fichte thinks that the mutual recognition of one another as free beings belongs among the transcendental conditions of self-consciousness itself.
Hegel's theory of recognition is basically derived from Fichte, who is its real author.
That Hegel's theory is derivative from Fichte's does not prevent it from being strikingly original and of independent value.
It is both theoretically mistaken and morally wrong to regard others as objects of investigation rather than partners in free rational communication.
We commit not only theoretical error but also moral wrong in objectifying ourselves or other rational beings, ignoring their capacities for free action and communicative interaction with us.
As Kant says, the contribution of any common laborer would be greater than that of the greatest philosopher unless the philosopher makes some contribution to establishing the rights of humanity.
I think the contribution people make is not proportionate to their fame or success. In fact, I think the relation is often inverse.
What I most fear now is that within a century or so there may not be any human future at all.
Kant takes a free will to be a being or substance with the power to cause a state of the world (or a whole series of such states) spontaneously or from itself.
Fichte takes an I or free will to be not a thing or being but an act which is not undetermined but self-determined, in accordance with reasons or norms rationally self-given.
Kant thinks that a free will is a will under moral laws and that freedom and the moral law are distinct thoughts that reciprocally imply each other. Fichte thinks they are the same thought.
Fichte would identify all states of our minds with states of our body - perhaps not merely of our brain, but the whole body as an acting organism.
No theory about our bodies as mere objects of observation and calculation (as distinct from partners in communicative interaction, assumed to be free) can comprehend human nature.
Reason necessarily expresses itself through emotions and emotions are healthy only insofar as they are expressions of reason.
I don't think Kant's approach to religion is any longer viable in its original form. But that does not mean it is simply wrong or that we cannot learn from it.
Kant attempted to work out a view of religion and religious belief according to which existing religions could be brought into harmony with modernity, science and reason.
Many who are committed to reason and science have turned against religion altogether and treat it with fear and contempt.
Sometimes when a philosopher's views are widely rejected by the world, the fault is not with the philosopher but with the world.
Consequentialist theories begin with a very simple and undoubtedly valid point: Every action aims at a future end, and is seen as a means to it.
Philosophy is about getting the facts right, but it is also about thinking rightly about them. Philosophy is more about the latter than the former.
Kant did think he had a moral route back to rational faith in God, for those who need it, and he thought that at some level, we all do need something like it.
Notice that tearing oneself out of the insensible state is the opposite of remaining in it; the man who is beneficent from duty nevertheless acts with feelings, if not with empirical inclinations.
If being "iron headed" is to be lacking such feelings, then Kant's position is that an ironheaded person could not be a moral agent because such a person would not be rational.
What is central to morality is rational self-constraint (acting from duty), in cease where there is no other incentive to do your duty except that the moral law commands it.
Some empirical feelings, such as sympathy, are indispensable parts of certain moral virtues.
Virtues consist not only of acting in certain ways, but in ways of caring and feeling.
It would be nice, wouldn't it? if we could get comfortable about the problem of freedom. Kant thinks that we can't.
Kant considers belief in God and immortality to be items of "faith" because he relates faith to the pursuit of ends - in this case, the highest good.
Kant does not regard freedom as an item of faith because it is too basic to our agency to be related to any end.
Kant was a rational theologian. He did not pretend to be a biblical or revealed theologian.
We are generally forced to choose one way or the other of distancing ourselves from Kant. I suppose I tend to choose the irreligious way. But I regret that Kant's path has not been followed.
Kant certainly was sympathetic with the metaphysical tradition of rational theology that he criticized.
The species of anti-Enlightenment religion we find among evangelical protestants is far more impoverished, anti-intellectual and downright wretched.
Not only our moral life, but even our use of theoretical reason - on which we rely in rationally inquiring into nature - presupposes that we are free.
We can establish empirical criteria for free actions, and investigate human actions on the presupposition we are free.
We can treat human responses to cognitions as involving law-like connections grounded on free choices which show themselves in our character.
We can never prove that we are free or integrate our freedom in any way into our objective conception of the causal order of nature.
If the problem of free will is to see how freedom fits into the order of nature, then Kant's basic view about the free will problem is that it is insoluble.