Timothy Sommers

Background

Tim Sommers teaches applied ethics, normative and metaethics, and the philosophy of law. In 2022, Tim received his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. He previously earned an MA from Brown University in philosophy. He has taught at Georgetown University, Louisiana State University, Pace University, and elsewhere, including community colleges and Angola prison. Tim has written sixty essays over the last five years, on a wide-variety of topics in philosophy, for the website 3 Quarks Daily (including a recent exchange with Danielle Dennett on artificial intelligence (AI)). Tim also writes a monthly applied ethics and current events column for the Prindle Post - a publication of the Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University.

Research Interests

Tim’s research is primarily in political philosophy and ethics and is currently focused on how various kinds of equality (formal, moral, and substantive) are related to justice - and to more specific inequalities like gender, race, and income and wealth. His article “Can There be Relational Equality Across Generations? Or at All?” is forthcoming from Res Publica. He’s currently at work on “Range Egalitarianism: A Novel Principle of Distributive Justice” and “Why Formal Equality is Not Egalitarian.”