[5] He wanted to work on philosophy of religion, and so he enrolled at Columbia University; it had a joint master's program with Union Theological Seminary (New York).

However, he signed up for a course on the Critique of Pure Reason taught by Aron Gurwitsch at the New School for Social Research.

"[5] He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at the New School for Social research in 1964 with a dissertation on Lessing written under the direction of Gurwitsch.

[11] His areas of interest were Immanuel Kant, Baruch Spinoza, German idealism, 18th and 19th century philosophy.

[4] Allison was perhaps best known for his 1983 book, Kant's Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense, which proposed a new "epistemological" reading of the Critique of Pure Reason that was both radically different from standard interpretations and offered responses to many of the objections advanced by philosophers like Paul Guyer.