Profile

Tom is based in the Politics and International Studies Department, as Professor of Politics and Philosophy and Head of the Interdisciplinary Ethics Research Group. Before coming to Warwick, he was John Ferguson Professor of Global Ethics in the Philosophy Dept. at the University of Birmingham (2006-2012) and Professor of Philosophy at Essex University (1992-2006), where he was also co-Director of the Human Rights Centre (2003-2005). He was Faculty Fellow in Ethics at Harvard in 1996-7 and Tang Chun-I Visiting Professor in Philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2013.

He has published extensively in philosophy, with more than a hundred peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. He is the author of eight monographs. Most of his published work is in the history of early modern philosophy, and in in moral and political philosophy His latest book was Emergencies and Politics (Cambridge U Press, 2013). He has also published in epistemology and the philosophy of science. He is on the editorial board of British Journal of the History of Philosophy and the Journal of Applied Philosophy. He is editor or co-editor of eleven volumes of papers, including The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, and a forthcoming collection on the ethics of microfinance (Cambridge).

His current involvement in the Department of Philosophy is as collaborator on Alberto Vanzo’s AHRC project, XPhi.

Tom would be happy to consider research supervision for students of Philosophy in the following areas:

• Descartes;
• Hobbes;
• Historiography of early modern philosophy;
• Naturalism;
• Moral theory and applied ethics;
• Contemporary liberal political philosophy;
• History of political philosophy;
• The relation between philosophy and natural science

Selected Publications

• The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy), Cambridge University Press (1996)
• Descartes: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions), Oxford Paperbacks (2000)
• Moral Theory and Capital Punishment, Wiley-Blackwell (1987)
• Hobbes (Arguments of the Philosophers), Routledge & Kegan Paul (1986)
• Moral Theory Anomaly (Aristotelian Society Monographs), Wiley-Blackwell (1999)

View Tom's page on Amazon.co.uk

Multimedia

• Tom joined a panel to discuss: 'Moral Animals and Our Place in the Universe: Are good and evil unique to humans?'
• Tom joined a panel to discuss: 'Of Lies and Necessity : Is honesty a fantasy?'
• Sorell vs Rowlands: Morality Beyond Humanity - part 1
  
• Sorell vs Rowlands: Morality Beyond Humanity - part 2
  
• Sorell vs Rowlands: Morality Beyond Humanity - part 3
• Tom participated in a Dan Schneider Video Interview - #139: On Scientism
• Tom gave a video lecture on Descartes' Discourse on the Method for Massolit
• Tom wrote an article for The Conversation explaining how Asimov’s laws of robotics aren’t the moral guidelines they appear to be
• Tom Sorell talks to ARTE about policing paedophiles in the UK (video in French)

Visit Tom's PAIS Staff Page

Email: t.e.sorell@warwick.ac.uk
Tel: 02476 528 031
Room: E2.26
Office Hours: Tuesdays 11 am