Interpreting Kant

AT least in an early phase of his own academic career, Allen W. Wood had a high opinion of Kant's book, RELIGION WITHIN THE LIMITS OF REASON ALONE. In contrast to much of the voluminous literature on that somewhat idiosyncratic item in the Kant canon, Wood thought the book consistent with Kant's three great Critiques as well as consistent with the historical monotheistic faiths.

Wood wrote, "It would be a great mistake to see in the God of Kant's moral faith no more than an abstract, metaphysical idea. For Kant, moral faith in God ... is the moral man's trust in God." Wood, KANT'S MORAL RELIGION (1970).

Wood seemed later to change his view, in two seminal articles in the early 1990s.

Who is Allen Wood, you ask? A philosopher born in Seattle in 1942 who has taught at Cornell, Yale, and Stanford.

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