Allen W. Wood is Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor emeritus at Stanford University. He studied for his PhD at Yale University, and has held regular professorships at Cornell University and Yale University, and 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. He has served as editor of Philosophical Review, between 1974 and 1995, and is on the editorial boards of Kant-Studien, Journal of the History of Philosophy, The Owl of Minerva, Kantian Review, Ethics, Journal of Moral Philosophy.

Allen Wood's The Free Development of Each demonstrates the great range of his scholarship and his deft philosophical skill in handling some of the most complex and challenging philosophers of the modern age. Wood has developed a specialist academic interest in the philosophies of German idealism and Marxism which is almost unique in the English speaking world ... Wood has sought to bring a distinctively American voice to the exposition and use of the systems of German idealism and Marx: this is to be seen in his stern and telling criticisms of the United States' flawed economic, social and political systems; in his intimate knowledge of the main themes of analytical philosophy (which he transcends but also uses to his advantage); and his desire always to connect up his work with that of fellow North Americans active in his field.

• Introduction ; 1. Moral Worth, Merit, and Acting from Duty ; 2. Kant on Practical Reason ; 3. The Independence of Right from Ethics ; 4. The Moral Politician ; 5. Herder and Kant on History: Their Enlightenment Faith ; 6. Leaving Consequentialism Behind ; 7. Fichte's Absolute Freedom ; 8. Fichte's Intersubjective I ; 9. Fichtean Themes in Hegel's Dialectic of Recognition ; 10. Hegel on Responsibility for Actions and Consequences ; 11. Marx on Equality ; 12. Coercion, manipulation, exploitation ; Bibliography ; Index