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

本書據牛津大學齣版社1987年英文版譯齣。

此書並非一種簡單的介紹笛卡爾思想的普及讀物，應該說它是研究笛卡爾的一部力作，在通俗中可見其功力