Tom Sorell studied at McGill University as an undergraduate and received both the BPhil and the DPhil at Oxford, where he was a Canada Council, Quebec Government and Graduate Scholar at Balliol. He held lectureships at Balliol, St. Anne's and Queen's College, Oxford, before joining the Open University in 1979, and moving to Essex in 1992 and Birmingham in 2006. In 1996-97 he was Fellow in Ethics at Harvard University.

He is the author of: Hobbes (1986); Descartes (1987); Moral Theory and Capital Punishment (1987); Scientism (1991); (with John Hendry) Business Ethics (1994); Moral Theory and Anomaly (1999) and Descartes Reinvented (2005).

He is the editor of The Rise of Modern Philosophy (1993); The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes (1996); Health Care, Ethics, and Insurance (1998); (with R Ariew and John Cottingham); Descartes: Background Source Materials (1998); Descartes (1999); (with John Rogers) Hobbes and History (2000); (with Luc Foisneau) Leviathan After 350 Years (2004); and (with John Rogers) Analytic Philosophy and History of Philosophy (2005).

MAIN INTERESTS

Hobbes and Descartes; epistemology and philosophy of science, moral theory and applied ethics.

CURRENT RESEARCH

historiography of early modern philosophy; moral and political theories of emergency; justifications of human rights.

http://www.philosophy.bham.ac.uk/staff/sorell.shtml

本书据牛津大学出版社1987年英文版译出。

此书并非一种简单的介绍笛卡尔思想的普及读物，应该说它是研究笛卡尔的一部力作，在通俗中可见其功力