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Indiana University Bloomington

People | Core Faculty

Allen Wood

Allen WoodRuth Norman Halls
Professor of Philosophy

Office: Sycamore Hall 124
Phone: 856-0912
Email: awwood at indiana.edu

Curriculum Vitae PDF

Education

  • Reed College, B.A. 1964
  • Yale University, M.A 1966, Ph.D. 1968

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 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 next book: The Free Development of Each: Studies in Reason, Right and Ethics in Classical German Philosophy is due to appear with Oxford University Press. He is also currently working on a book on Fichte's Ethical Thought.

Allen Wood is general editor (with Paul Guyer) of the Cambridge Edition of Kant's Writings in English Translation, for which he has edited, translated or otherwise contributed to six volumes. Among the other books he 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).

At Indiana University he has taught courses on the history of modern philosophy, modern political philosophy, Kant, Fichte and existentialism.