In my courses at Widener, I'm committed to teaching philosophical subjects in ways that students can connect to their own lives. Philosophical exploration should be rigorous, but it should also be relevant, exciting, joyful, and, sometimes, deeply uncomfortable. I help students to challenge some of their deepest assumptions about what is good or right or valuable and about how the physical and social world they inhabit is organized, and I aim to provide them with the tools they'll need to reconstruct a rational worldview.
Whether I'm teaching nursing students, business students, or students in the humanities, I connect careful philosophical reflection with current events and topics relevant to students' professional futures.
My primary research focuses on moral language and its practical significance. What do we use it to do? Why would we have a discursive practice with this function? And how does its function shed light on the norms that structure the practice? This was the topic of my dissertation, which I'm now working to turn into my first book.
I also work on our practices of holding one another accountable to shared moral norms. I'm interested in what kind of standing one has to have in order to successfully hold someone to the oughts that bind them and the social practices that either support or undermine this standing. My present project aims to understand how the fragmentation of thick community relations instigated by the rise of social media, the decline in civic organizations and organized religion, and changing economic realities has made it more difficult for us to hold one another accountable.
I'm also interested in jokes, and, in particular, how jokes can be used to ease communication about difficult subjects.
Books:
In on the Joke: A (Mildly) Contractarian Ethics of Joking, with Steven Gimbel, De Gruyter (Forthcoming).
Peer-reviewed Publications:
Widener hosted the university’s first “AI Day” to engage students, faculty and staff in meaningful conversation, exploration and education about artificial intelligence through hands-on workshops, a keynote address and more.
AI Day at Widener is featured. The event, which featured the 2025 Beideman Visiting Scholar lecture as the keynote address, was a day of conversation and education about AI. Thomas Wilk, assistant professor of philosophy, is quoted.
See also: Delaware County Daily Times, The Chester Spirit
This article discusses the ethics and morality of humor and includes comments and work published by Assistant Professor of Philosophy Thomas Wilk. The author references works and conference discussions by Wilk, and discusses his new book "In on the Joke: The Ethics of Humor and Comedy" published with co-author Steven Gimbel of Gettysburg College.
Assistant Professor of Philosophy Thomas M. Wilk wrote this opinion piece in the wake of an open mic night at New College of Florida, where what was said elicited public outrage.
Thomas Wilk, assistant teaching professor of philosophy, has been selected from a competitive pool of applicants to take part in the Council of Independent College’s (CIC) New Currents in Teaching Philosophy Institute in July 2023.
This program, funded by The Mellon Foundation, is designed for philosophy faculty to attend, collaborate, and bring new knowledge and skills back to their classrooms. As part of the institute, attending faculty will also receive a grant to support new curricular activities at their own institutions.
Dr. Wilk is most interested in learning how to grow philosophy at Widener to make it more interdisciplinary as he sees great potential for collaboration between philosophy and many other programs.
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