In my acquaintance with John Rawls, I found him to be a simple and honest man, who just by chance also happened to be the greatest moral philosopher of the twentieth century. I would like to think that I could emulate at least his modesty - his refusal to exaggerate his perception of himself and his place in the larger scheme of things - even if my work never compares with his in its importance.
Allen W. WoodTeaching and writing about philosophy is about the only thing I've ever been really good at.
Allen W. WoodWhen Marx, in the Theses on Feuerbach, says that only idealism up to now has understood the active side of material Praxis, what he says is more true of Fichte than of any other philosopher in the classical German tradition.
Allen W. WoodI am a one-trick pony. But I have worked hard at something I would have liked to do even if I weren't paid a penny for it, and made a good living at it. You can't be luckier than that in this life, no matter who you are or what you do.
Allen W. WoodOur decisions need not be seen as resting on procedures that are merely instrumental in making judgments that are reliably truth-tracking. The procedures might be more directly related than that to truths about what is right or good, or about what we ought to do, or to principles that tell us what is true about these matters. And I have no metaphysical theory about the truth-conditions of such truths, except to say that as objective truths, they must be independent of the attitudes, decisions or actions that they are supposed to justify or for which they are to offer reasons.
Allen W. Wood