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

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