Allen W. Wood

Last updated

Allen William Wood
Born1942
Seattle, United States
Era Contemporary philosophy
Region Western philosophy
School Kantian ethics
Main interests
 Trolley problems, Kant, ethics, German idealism, social philosophy

Allen William Wood [1] (born October 26, 1942) [2] 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, [3] Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor, emeritus, at Stanford University, and before that a professor at Cornell University across parts of four decades. He has also held professorships and visiting appointments at several other universities in the United States and Europe. In addition to popularising and clarifying the ethical thought of Kant, Wood has also mounted arguments against the validity of trolley problems in moral philosophy. [4] [5]

Contents

Life and career

Born in Seattle, Washington, at Reed College Wood obtained a B.A. degree in 1964 which was followed at Yale University by an M.A in 1966 and a Ph.D. in 1968. [3]

Wood held a lengthy professorship at Cornell University, [6] 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. [7] At Cornell, he was known for teaching courses on Kant, [8] but some of the other courses he taught included "Modern Philosophy", "Religion and Reason", "Kant and Hegel", and "Philosophy of Marx". [9] He was elected as a faculty delegate to the University Senate in 1970. [10] Wood departed Cornell in 1996. [8]

He subsequently has held professorships at Yale University, [11] Stanford University, [12] and at Indiana University since 2008. [7] [3] Additionally, he has held visiting appointments at the University of Michigan, University of California at San Diego and Oxford University, [3] where he was Isaiah Berlin Visiting professor in 2005, [13] and has been affiliated with the Freie Universität Berlin in 1983-84 and the Rheinische-Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn in 1991–1992. [3]

Philosophical work

Wood has written prolifically on many subjects in moral and social philosophy, and publications he has authored include: Kant's Moral Religion (1970), [14] Kant's Rational Theology (1978), [15] Karl Marx (1981), [16] Hegel's Ethical Thought (1990), [17] Kant's Ethical Thought (1999), [11] Unsettling Obligations (2002), [18] Kant (2004), [19] Kantian Ethics (2007) [4] and The Free Development of Each: Studies in Freedom, Right and Ethics in Classical German Philosophy (2014). [20] He continued his 'Ethical Thought' series with a book entitled Fichte's Ethical Thought (2016), [21] 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." [22]

Along with Paul Guyer, Wood is general editor of the Cambridge Edition of Kant's Writings in English Translation, [23] having contributed to six volumes, [3] in particular the one of Critique of Pure Reason . [8] He has also edited Self and Nature in Kant's Philosophy (1984), [24] Hegel: Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1991), [6] Kant: Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (2002), [12] Fichte: Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation (2010), [25] and the Cambridge History of Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century (1790-1870), with Songsuk Susan Hahn (2012). [26]

Kantian ethics

Wood is a leading scholar of Kant's moral philosophy. [27] 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." [22] He has suggested that John Rawls and Onora O'Neill have "made people pay more serious attention to Kantian ethical theory." [27] 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." [22]

Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals

Wood edited and produced his own translation to Kant's Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals, [12] which is the book he always uses to introduce Kantian ethics to students, and the only text by Kant he teaches in general course on ethical theory. [22] He has suggested that "the first fifty times I read the Groundwork I did not understand it at all, but accepted many of the common errors, because they were easy to commit and had become hallowed by generations of misreading by others." [27]

Other ethical theories

Although critical of consequentialist moral theories, [11] he has nonetheless engaged with representatives of this tradition and has mentioned that he and renowned consequentialist Shelly Kagan were "always very friendly colleagues at Yale". [27] He has claimed that contemporary virtue ethics has "added another valuable perspective", and traced this to G.E.M. Anscombe's "rather incendiary article" [27] Modern Moral Philosophy. [28]

He has raised doubts over whether moral intuitions are credible data in moral epistemology, [22] and raised especial objections to the use of 'trolley problems' in ethical theory. [4] [5] [29] 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. [30]

Wood has suggested that "all ethical theories are uncertain, questionable, and not apt for justified belief", [22] suggesting that foundational principles for ethics (such as those developed by Kant) remain useful because they allow people with different viewpoints to frame their arguments cogently. [29] He has suggested that basic ethical values, such as human flourishing and the dignity of human persons, "have a role to play in helping people to think better about the terribly problematic situations that face us." [29]

In his keynote address to the Cape Town University Law School in 2007, Wood compared Kant's realm of ends to the African ideal of ubuntu, suggesting that although the two ideas were not the same "I do think they represent very much the same response to the human condition, as manifested in different cultural and historical conditions." [31]

Selected writings

Authored books

Edited books

Journal articles

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Johann Gottlieb Fichte</span> German philosopher (1762–1814)

Johann Gottlieb Fichte was a German philosopher who became a founding figure of the philosophical movement known as German idealism, which developed from the theoretical and ethical writings of Immanuel Kant. Recently, philosophers and scholars have begun to appreciate Fichte as an important philosopher in his own right due to his original insights into the nature of self-consciousness or self-awareness. Fichte was also the originator of thesis–antithesis–synthesis, an idea that is often erroneously attributed to Hegel. Like Descartes and Kant before him, Fichte was motivated by the problem of subjectivity and consciousness. Fichte also wrote works of political philosophy; he has a reputation as one of the fathers of German nationalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Immanuel Kant</span> German philosopher (1724–1804)

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him one of the most influential and controversial figures in modern Western philosophy, being called the "father of modern ethics", the "father of modern aesthetics", and for bringing together rationalism and empiricism earned the title of "father of modern philosophy".

In the 19th century, the philosophers of the 18th-century Enlightenment began to have a dramatic effect on subsequent developments in philosophy. In particular, the works of Immanuel Kant gave rise to a new generation of German philosophers and began to see wider recognition internationally. Also, in a reaction to the Enlightenment, a movement called Romanticism began to develop towards the end of the 18th century. Key ideas that sparked changes in philosophy were the fast progress of science, including evolution, most notably postulated by Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, and theories regarding what is today called emergent order, such as the free market of Adam Smith within nation states, or the Marxist approach concerning class warfare between the ruling class and the working class developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Pressures for egalitarianism, and more rapid change culminated in a period of revolution and turbulence that would see philosophy change as well.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">German idealism</span> Philosophical movement

German idealism is a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with Romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment. The period of German idealism after Kant is also known as post-Kantian idealism or simply post-Kantianism. One scheme divides German idealists into transcendental idealists, associated with Kant and Fichte, and absolute idealists, associated with Schelling and Hegel.

<i>Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals</i> Philosophical tract by Immanuel Kant

Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is the first of Immanuel Kant's mature works on moral philosophy and the first of his trilogy of major works on ethics alongside the Critique of Practical Reason and The Metaphysics of Morals. It remains one of the most influential in the field. Kant conceives his investigation as a work of foundational ethics—one that clears the ground for future research by explaining the core concepts and principles of moral theory, and showing that they are normative for rational agents.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neo-Kantianism</span> Revival of Immanuel Kants philosophy

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karl Leonhard Reinhold</span> Austrian philosopher (1757-1823)

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References

  1. ↑ "Public Listing from Stanford People Search".
  2. ↑ "FamilySearch.org" . Retrieved April 18, 2023.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Indiana University faculty page accessed 12 April 2012 Archived 2012-04-27 at the Wayback Machine
  4. 1 2 3 Wood, Allen W. Kantian Ethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007
  5. 1 2 Wood, Allen (2011). “Humanity as an End in Itself” in On What Matters, Volume 2, Derek Parfit, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
  6. 1 2 Hegel, G.W.F. Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen W. Wood, trans. H.B. Nisbet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
  7. 1 2 "Vita Allen W. Wood" (PDF). philosophy.indiana.edu. July 2016. Retrieved November 8, 2017.
  8. 1 2 3 Shoemaker, Sydney; Pereboom, Derk (n.d.). "History of the Susan Linn Sage School of Philosophy" (PDF). Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved June 30, 2024.
  9. ↑ Cornell University Announcements: College of Arts and Sciences, 1974–75. Cornell University. July 1, 1974. pp. 159, 160.
  10. ↑ "List of University Senate Delegates". The Cornell Daily Sun. June 2, 1970. p. 7.
  11. 1 2 3 Wood, Allen W. Kant's Ethical Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
  12. 1 2 3 Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork for the metaphysics of morals, tr. Allen W. Wood, with essays by J.B. Schneewind et al. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
  13. ↑ Isaiah Berlin Lectures webpage Archived 2012-04-28 at the Wayback Machine accessed 3 June 2013
  14. ↑ Wood, Allen W. Kant's Moral Religion, Ithaqa, NY: Cornell University Press, 1970.
  15. ↑ Wood, Allen W. Kant's Rational Theology, Ithaqa, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978.
  16. ↑ Wood, Allen W. Karl Marx, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981.
  17. ↑ Wood, Allen W. Hegel's Ethical Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
  18. ↑ Wood, Allen W. Unsettling Obligations: Essays on Reason, Reality and the Ethics of Belief, Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, 2002.
  19. ↑ Wood, Allen W. Kant (Blackwell Great Minds), Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2004
  20. ↑ Wood, Allen W. The Free Development of Each: Studies in Freedom, Right and Ethics in Classical German Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2014.
  21. ↑ Wood, Allen W. (2016). Fichte's Ethical Thought. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN   9780198766889.
  22. 1 2 3 4 5 6 McComb, Geordie (2008). "An Interview with Allen W. Wood", Sophia: Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy, vol 11, pp. 2–14.
  23. ↑ The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant page, Cambridge University Books website accessed 3 June 2013
  24. ↑ Wood, Allen W. Self and Nature in Kant's Philosophy, Ithaqa, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984
  25. ↑ Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation, ed. Allen W. Wood, trans. Garrett Green, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010
  26. ↑ Wood, Allen W. and Hahn, Songsuk Susan, Cambridge History of Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century (1790-1870), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012
  27. 1 2 3 4 5 Allen Wood on Ethics (1): Kant and Mutual Respect, Only a Game accessed 3 June 2013
  28. ↑ Anscombe, G.E.M. "Modern Moral Philosophy", Philosophy, vol. 33, no. 124, 1958
  29. 1 2 3 "Allen Wood on Ethics (2): Political Realities", Only a Game accessed 3 June 2013
  30. ↑ Bateman, Chris. Chaos Ethics, Winchester and Chicago: Zero Books, 2014
  31. ↑ Wood, Allen. “Human Dignity, Right and the Realm of Ends”, Keynote Address to the Conference on Dignity and Law, Cape Town University Law School, 2007.
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