I think it is clear that what we ought to do has to be independent of our decisions about what to do, and independent of any procedures we might use in making such decisions.
Allen W. WoodKant does not think that along with choice of an action we also choose in each case the motive from which we do it. He thinks all is well if I act beneficently, realizing that it is my duty but also having sympathetic feelings for the person I help. But I ought to strive to be the sort of person who would still help even if these feelings were absent. And it is such a case that he presents when the sympathetic friend of humanity finds his sympathetic feelings overclouded by his own sorrows, and still acts beneficently from duty.
Allen W. WoodReason necessarily expresses itself through emotions and emotions are healthy only insofar as they are expressions of reason.
Allen W. WoodFichte 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.
Allen W. WoodIn my view, there was a long period in which analytical philosophy had little to say about ethics. I think their intellectual tools did not do well with it, and analytical philosophy was above all about revolutionizing the philosophical tool box. It was more or less assumed that the Truth about ethics was some form of utilitarianism (perhaps because some consequentialist calculus looked to them like a respectable tool). Kantian ethics was then interpreted as a particularly odious version of the False - "deontology" - and treated with contempt.
Allen W. Wood