Allen Wood
Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor, Emeritus
Philosophy
Bio
Allen Wood's interests are in the history of modern philosophy, especially Kant and German idealism, and in ethics and social philosophy. He was born in Seattle, Washington: B. A. Reed College in Portland, Oregon, Ph.D. Yale University. He has held regular professorships at Cornell University, Yale University, and Stanford University, where he is Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor emeritus. He has also 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. During year-long periods of research, he has been affiliated with the Freie Universität Berlin in 1983-84 and the Rheinische-Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn in 1991-1992. Wood is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Allen Wood is author of many articles and chapters in philosophical journals and anthologies. The book-length publications he has authored include: Kant's Moral Religion (1970, reissued 2009), Kant's Rational Theology (1978, reissued 2009), Karl Marx (1981, second expanded edition 2004), Hegel's Ethical Thought (1990), Kant's Ethical Thought (1999), Unsettling Obligations (2002), Kant (2004) and Kantian Ethics (2008). His latest book is The Free Development of Each: Studies in Freedom, Right and Ethics in Classical German Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2014), co-authored with Dieter Schönecker Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary (Harvard University Press, 2015). (A German language version of this commentary has gone through four editions since 2002.) His next book, Fichte's Ethical Thought, is due to be published by Oxford University Press in 2016.
Books by Wood have appeared in Hebrew, Turkish, Portuguese, Iranian and Chinese translation. With Paul Guyer, Wood is co-general editor of the Cambridge Edition of Kant's Writings, for which he has edited, translated or otherwise contributed to six volumes. Among the other books Wood has edited are 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, with Songsuk Susan Hahn, the Cambridge History of Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century (1790-1870) (2012). He is on the editorial board of eight philosophy journals, five book series and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
In the past four years, Allen Wood has taught annual three-day intensive mini-courses at Stanford in early June. His co-teachers in these courses have been Marcia Baron (Indiana University), Frederick Neuhouser (Columbia University, Barnard College) and Arthur Ripstein (University of Toronto). At Indiana University Allen Wood has taught courses on the history of modern philosophy, modern political philosophy, Kant, Fichte and existentialism.
Academic Appointments
-
Emeritus Faculty, Acad Council, Philosophy
2024-25 Courses
-
Independent Studies (3)
- Individual Work for Graduate Students
PHIL 240 (Aut, Win, Spr) - Individual Work, Undergraduate
PHIL 197 (Aut, Win, Spr) - Tutorial, Senior Year
PHIL 196 (Aut, Win, Spr)
- Individual Work for Graduate Students
Stanford Advisees
-
Doctoral Dissertation Reader (AC)
Yasin Al-Amin -
Doctoral Dissertation Advisor (AC)
Lis Benossi, Tom Ladendorf -
Doctoral Dissertation Co-Advisor (AC)
Aileen Luo
All Publications
-
The duty to believe according to the evidence
Claremont Conference on the Philosophy of Religion
SPRINGER. 2008: 7–24
View details for DOI 10.1007/s11153-007-9140-y
View details for Web of Science ID 000252468200003
-
Cross-cultural moral philosophy: Reflections on Thaddeus Metz: "Toward an African Moral Theory"
SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
2007; 26 (4): 336-346
View details for Web of Science ID 000254428600002
-
Philosophy - what is to be done?
TOPOI-AN INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF PHILOSOPHY
2006; 25 (1-2): 133-136
View details for DOI 10.1007/s11245-006-0020-3
View details for Web of Science ID 000240952800024
-
Ethics and embryonic stem cell research
STEM CELL REVIEWS
2005; 1 (4): 317-324
View details for Web of Science ID 000240469000008
View details for PubMedID 17142874
-
The objectivity of value
NEW LITERARY HISTORY
2001; 32 (4): 859-881
View details for Web of Science ID 000172940200005
-
The good will
DEUTSCHE ZEITSCHRIFT FUR PHILOSOPHIE
2001; 49 (6): 819-830
View details for Web of Science ID 000173634800001