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.

I wish that our culture could retain the symbolism and emotional power of traditional religion while combining it with reason and science and using the combination to enhance our humanity rather than impoverishing it by choosing the one side or the other.

Hegel's theory of recognition is basically derived from Fichte, who is its real author.

As with many metaphysical and religious questions, Kant thinks they lie beyond our power to answer them. If you can't stand the frustration involved in accepting this, and insist on finding some more stable position which affords you peace of mind and intellectual self-complacency, then you will find Kant's position "problematic" in the sense that you can't bring yourself to accept it. You may try to kid yourself into accepting either some naturalistic deflationary answer to the problem or some dishonest supernaturalist answer.

Kant regards the universalizability test for maxims as focused on a very special sort of situation: one where the agent is tempted to make an exception to a recognized duty out of self-preference. The universalizability test is supposed help the agent to see, in a particular case of moral judgment, that self-preference is not a satisfactory reason for exempting yourself from a duty you recognize. Kant thinks, as a matter of human nature, that this situation arises often enough and that we need a canon of judgment to guard against it.

The species of anti-Enlightenment religion we find among evangelical protestants is far more impoverished, anti-intellectual and downright wretched.

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.