Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Fichte is a necessary step to both Hegel and Marx.
Fichte is concerned with freedom as non-domination.
Freedom is a permanent problem for us, both unavoidable and insoluble.
We can't coherently deny, or even decline to affirm, that we are free.
The moral law is simply the way we think our own freedom as self-determination.
In general, those who defend capitalism are basically out of touch with reality.
Kant thinks we can show that there is no contradiction in supposing we are free.
Freedom is an unprovable but unavoidable presupposition, not an article of faith.
Empiricist philosophy always tends to be anti-philosophy (and is often proud of it).
Virtues consist not only of acting in certain ways, but in ways of caring and feeling.
Hegel's theory of recognition is basically derived from Fichte, who is its real author.
Capitalism has not proven to be a transitional form, a gateway to a higher human future.
Descartes recommended that we distrust the senses and rely on the ... use of our intellect.
People are often most proud of precisely those things of which they should most be ashamed.
Kant was a rational theologian. He did not pretend to be a biblical or revealed theologian.
Teaching and writing about philosophy is about the only thing I've ever been really good at.
Some empirical feelings, such as sympathy, are indispensable parts of certain moral virtues.
What I most fear now is that within a century or so there may not be any human future at all.
Clearly no working class movement ever came about that was able to do what Marx was hoping for.
There is a lot in Adam Smith that reflects the insights of Rousseau and anticipates those of Marx.
I do not know how much my own work has achieved, and I must not pretend it has done more than it has.
Those who employ their modest talents as best they can do make a contribution to a better human future.
Kant certainly was sympathetic with the metaphysical tradition of rational theology that he criticized.
We usually can't know how, and we probably should not even ask, how our lives contribute to a better world.
Kant does not regard freedom as an item of faith because it is too basic to our agency to be related to any end.
It would be nice, wouldn't it? if we could get comfortable about the problem of freedom. Kant thinks that we can't.
We can make mistakes about what we ought to do, and these are not the same as making bad decisions about what to do.
We can establish empirical criteria for free actions, and investigate human actions on the presupposition we are free.
Many who are committed to reason and science have turned against religion altogether and treat it with fear and contempt.
That Hegel's theory is derivative from Fichte's does not prevent it from being strikingly original and of independent value.
I think the term "Kantian constructivism" as an oxymoron. Kant was a constructivist about mathematics, but not about ethics.
Reason necessarily expresses itself through emotions and emotions are healthy only insofar as they are expressions of reason.
Sometimes when a philosopher's views are widely rejected by the world, the fault is not with the philosopher but with the world.
Leaders of nations, and people whose wealth or fame gives them power over the lives of others quite often do more harm than good.
It is probably not a good idea to ask someone to expound a position they do not accept and do not feel they even fully understand.
I think the contribution people make is not proportionate to their fame or success. In fact, I think the relation is often inverse.
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.
In any matter of moral importance, our first task, before we plunge ahead and decide what to do, is to figure out what we ought to do.
It seems to me self-evident that it is worthwhile to understand the best thoughts of the past, to appropriate them, to criticize them.
The relation of the law to the self is only a helpful way of thinking about the law, that helps us better understand its validity for us.
Adam Smith was aware of the way that economic interests could have a distorting and destructive effect both on the market and on politics.
We can treat human responses to cognitions as involving law-like connections grounded on free choices which show themselves in our character.
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.
Since the Enlightenment, popular religion has rejected the Enlightenment path and transformed itself into a bastion of resistance against reason.
Fichte thinks that the mutual recognition of one another as free beings belongs among the transcendental conditions of self-consciousness itself.
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.
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 can provide, and has provided, a good model for philosophers to think about the relation of metaphysics to science and scientific methodology.
The species of anti-Enlightenment religion we find among evangelical protestants is far more impoverished, anti-intellectual and downright wretched.
It is both theoretically mistaken and morally wrong to regard others as objects of investigation rather than partners in free rational communication.