When consequentialist theories are developed in terms of an equally shallow psychology of the good - such as a crude form of hedonism - the results can sometimes strike sensible people as revolting and inhuman. People can be reduced to simple repositories of positive or negative sensory states, and their humanity is lost sight of entirely.
Allen W. WoodKant does not regard freedom as an item of faith because it is too basic to our agency to be related to any end.
Allen W. WoodKant says that we may regard ourselves as legislator of the moral law, and consider ourselves as its author, but not that we are legislators or authors of the law.
Allen W. WoodIn fact, if you read what Kant has to say about feeling, desire and emotion, you see that he is not at all hostile to these. He is suspicious of them insofar as they represent the corruption of social life (here he follows Rousseau), but he also thinks a variety of feelings (including respect and love of humanity) arise directly from reason - there is, in other words, no daylight between the heart and the head regarding such feelings.
Allen W. WoodWe can establish empirical criteria for free actions, and investigate human actions on the presupposition we are free.
Allen W. Wood