Allen W. Wood
| Allen William Wood | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1942 Seattle, United States |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Revival of Kantianism |
|
Main interests
|
trolley problems, Kant, ethics, German idealism, social philosophy |
Allen William Wood (born October 26, 1942) is an American philosopher specialising in the work of Immanuel Kant and German Idealism, with particular interests in ethics and social philosophy. He is the Ruth Norman Halls professor of philosophy at Indiana University and has held professorships and visiting appointments at numerous universities in the United States and Europe. In addition to popularising and clarifying the ethical thought of Immanuel Kant, Wood has also mounted arguments against the validity of 'trolley problems' in moral philosophy.
Born in Seattle, WA, he has held professorships at Cornell University, Yale University, and Stanford University, where he is now Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor emeritus. Additionally, he has held visiting appointments at the University of Michigan, University of California at San Diego and Oxford University, where he was Isaiah Berlin Visiting Professor in 2005, and has been affiliated with the Freie Universität Berlin in 1983-84 and the Rheinische-Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn in 1991-1992.
Wood has written prolifically on many subjects in moral and social philosophy, and publications he has authored include: Kant's Moral Religion (1970),Kant's Rational Theology (1978),Karl Marx (1981),Hegel's Ethical Thought (1990),Kant's Ethical Thought (1999),Unsettling Obligations (2002),Kant (2004),Kantian Ethics (2007) and The Free Development of Each: Studies in Freedom, Right and Ethics in Classical German Philosophy. He is also working on a book continuing his 'Ethical Thought' series entitled Fichte's Ethical Thought, 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. He has also edited Self and Nature in Kant's Philosophy (1984),Hegel: Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1991),Kant: Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (2002),Fichte: Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation (2010), and the Cambridge History of Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century (1790-1870), with Songsuk Susan Hahn (2012).
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 suggested that John Rawls and Onora O'Neill have "made people pay more serious attention to Kantian ethical theory." He suggests that many of the problems reported in respect of Kantian ethics are shared by all ethical theories, and that in the context of the problems concerning free will "no rival theory has a satisfactory solution to it."
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