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W. Jay Wood was a philosopher who, during a nearly 40-year career as a professor at Wheaton College in Wheaton, grappled with key questions regarding knowledge and understanding.
In his scholarship and teaching, Wood also focused on virtues, colleagues said, delighting in moral qualities like meekness, patience, prudence and charity.
“Jay was a connoisseur of the virtues,” said Richard Hughes Gibson, a Wheaton College English professor who co-taught a course with Wood. “A virtue was a treasure — something to be held up to the light and delicately turned to be viewed from multiple angles.”
Wood, 71, died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease on Aug. 9 at his home in West Chicago, said his son, Adam. Previously a longtime Wheaton resident, Wood had struggled to recover from a fall and a hip fracture in early July, his son said.
Born in Bethesda, Maryland, in 1954, William Jerome Wood grew up in a family that moved around a good bit. He graduated from Torrance High School in Torrance, California, and earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1976 from Westmont College in California.
Wood picked up a master’s degree in philosophy in 1980 from the University of Notre Dame before earning a doctorate from Notre Dame in 1986.
In 1982, Wheaton College hired Wood as a philosophy professor, and he later also served as a department chair and as vice chair of the faculty. He quickly built a reputation as an educator who focused on developing students who were not afraid to ask questions. Wood also studied epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, and he examined existential concerns over what constitutes a well-lived, moral and intellectual life.
Sarah Borden, a philosophy professor at Wheaton, noted the wealth of illustrative stories that Wood shared with students in his classes as a way to enlighten them.
“For almost any complex idea, whether philosophical or theological, Jay could share a story or example that pinpointed what it was like to live that set of commitments,” she said.
Wood taught a variety of philosophy classes, including introduction to philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of religion, and virtues and vices.
“His passion was teaching, as anyone who was ever in class with him could tell you,” said Adam Wood, who is a professor of philosophy at Wheaton.
When Wood and Gibson co-taught a seminar on Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” Wood exhibited one virtue — humility — that he valued, Gibson said.
“Jay did not lord his knowledge or imposing physique over the students or me, his junior colleague,” Gibson said. “He was the first of learners in the class, eagerly collecting pearls of wisdom from the old poet and the remarks of others in the room. Indeed, I was struck by Jay’s ability to coax insights out of the students — insights the students didn’t know that they were capable of until Jay started asking questions.”
Philosopher Robert C. Roberts, a former Wheaton College professor who later taught at Baylor University, called Wood both a “popular and lovable teacher” as well as a “deeply human scholar fixed on the most important questions.”
“He was an epistemologist — that is, a philosopher of topics like knowing and understanding,” Roberts said. “What is it to know something, to understand something? He was trained in traditional contemporary analytics epistemology, but became convinced in mid-career of the importance to knowing and understanding of such human virtues as loving knowledge, being truthful, generous, humble and charitable.”
Wood took a particular interest in intellectual virtues — those that should guide people’s thinking and knowing, Gibson said. He was fond of quoting the 12th-century theologian Hugh of Saint Victor, whose motto was that humility is “the beginning of discipline,” Gibson said.
“He taught me Hugh’s three great lessons on humility: hold no knowledge in contempt, be not ashamed to learn from anyone and, once you have acquired some learning, don’t look down on others,” Gibson said.
Popular with students and colleagues, Wood declined job offers elsewhere to become a dean, his son said, because he had a strong commitment to continuing to teach in the classroom. Wood also was “thoroughly committed to growing in virtue,” Borden said.
“He worked on being empathetic, compassionate, just, attentive and generous. He made it a point to habituate the virtues daily, hourly, that he wrote about,” she said. “Jay played a key role in bringing virtue conversations — both Aristotelian and Thomistic — into larger epistemological discussions, and (into) Christian philosophy generally. It was both a theoretical and a lived concern for him.”
Wood wrote or coauthored several books, including a widely used textbook on epistemology, “Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous,” which first was published in 1998. His 2011 book, “God,” tackled moral arguments for God’s existence along with ontological arguments and examined the debate over whether theism is rationally justifiable.
Wood also coauthored a 2007 book with Roberts, “Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology.”
Battling cognitive decline, Wood retired from Wheaton College in 2021.
Outside of work, Wood enjoyed singing in his church choir, reading literature, listening to classical music, running, traveling and hiking.
In addition to his son, Wood is survived by his wife of 49 years, Janice; another son, Samuel; two daughters, Diana Soerens and Gillian Conrad; 10 grandchildren; and two brothers, Michael and Chris.
A memorial service was held at the Church of the Resurrection in Wheaton.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
3/15/1954 – 8/9/2025
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Bob Goldsborough
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