Allen W. Wood

Allen William Wood (born October 26, 1942) is an American philosopher specializing in the work of Immanuel Kant and German idealism, with particular interests in ethics and social philosophy. One of the world's foremost Kant scholars, he is the Ruth Norman Halls professor of philosophy at Indiana University, one that began as an assistant professor in 1968 and then moved to the associate level in 1973 and then gained the full level in 1980. He was elected as a faculty delegate to the University Senate in 1970. Wood departed Cornell in 1996.

He subsequently has held professorships at Yale University, Stanford University, and at Indiana University since 2008. and has been affiliated with the Freie Universität Berlin in 1983-84 and the University of Bonn in 1991–1992. Kant's Rational Theology (1978), Karl Marx (1981), Hegel's Ethical Thought (1990), Kant's Ethical Thought (1999), Kant (2004), Kantian Ethics (2007) and The Free Development of Each: Studies in Freedom, Right and Ethics in Classical German Philosophy (2014). He continued his 'Ethical Thought' series with a book entitled Fichte's Ethical Thought (2016), fulfilling his earlier suggestion that "having written a book on Hegel's Ethical Thought and a book on Kant's Ethical Thought, I should... write a book... on Fichte's Ethical Thought."

Along with Paul Guyer, Wood is general editor of the Cambridge Edition of Kant's Writings in English Translation, having contributed to six volumes, Hegel: Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1991), and the Cambridge History of Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century (1790-1870), with Songsuk Susan Hahn (2012).

Kantian ethics

Wood is a leading scholar of Kant's moral philosophy. He has worked extensively to revise public and professional perspectives of Kant's moral philosophy, and to elucidate the "proper aims and structure of a moral theory and the way moral theories relate to ordinary moral decisions."

He has raised doubts over whether moral intuitions are credible data in moral epistemology, Furthermore, Wood's objections can be understood as equally indicting the work of moral psychologists such as Joshua Greene and Jonathan Haidt whenever their work depends upon such trolley problems.

Wood has suggested that "all ethical theories are uncertain, questionable, and not apt for justified belief",

Selected writings

Translations

Authored books Kant's Moral Religion, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1970. Kant's Rational Theology, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978. Karl Marx, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. Hegel's Ethical Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Kant's Ethical Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Unsettling Obligations: Essays on Reason, Reality and the Ethics of Belief, Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, 2002. Immanuel Kant: Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten: Ein einführender Kommentar (with Dieter Schönecker), Paderborn, Germany: Schöningh-Verlag (UTB Wissenschaft), 2002 Kant (Blackwell Great Minds), Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2004 Karl Marx (expanded second edition), London: Taylor and Francis, 2004. Kantian Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. The Free Development of Each: Studies in Freedom, Right and Ethics in Classical German Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary (with Dieter Schönecker), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Fichte's Ethical Thought, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Kant and Religion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Edited books Self and Nature in Kant's Philosophy, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984 Hegel, G.W.F. Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen W. Wood, trans. H.B. Nisbet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991 Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork for the metaphysics of morals, trans. Allen W. Wood, with essays by J.B. Schneewind (1930-), et al. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation, ed. Allen W. Wood, trans. Garrett Green, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010 Cambridge History of Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century (1790-1870) (with Songsuk Susan Hahn), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012 Cambridge Edition of Kant's Writings in English Translation, eds. Robert B. Louden, Allen W. Wood, Robert R. Clewis, G. Felicitas Munzel, 2013

Journal articles