Heidi Ravven
Heidi Ravven is a professor of Religious Studies at Hamilton College. She specializes in ethics and philosophy and the intersection between neuroscience and emotions.
Biography
Although originally trained as a historian of medieval and early modern philosophy, Professor Ravven is now an expert on ethics and philosophy, specializing on the 17th century philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, and on the medieval Jewish philosopher, Moses Maimonides. She has also published on Jewish feminism and on the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel. Her work on Spinoza has led her to explore how contemporary neuroscience, especially the neuroscience of the emotions, forces us to rethink what it means for a person to be ethical.
With a four-year grant from the Ford Foundation, Professor Ravven is writing a book called What Happened to Ethics: Searching for Ethics in a New America, in which she will explore how the philosopher Baruch Spinoza's ethics can help us develop a truer and more humane ethical vision that could enable us to rethink American identity and values. She is investigating the history of the way standard philosophy and Western culture in general approaches ethics, its shortcomings, and how it could be improved.
In the last few years, Professor Ravven has discovered that recent neuroscience largely confirms Spinoza's theory of the emotions and the ethical and political theories that Spinoza built upon that basis. Neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, systems theorists, and psychoanalysts have been eager to learn more about Spinoza. Professor Ravven is published widely in interdisciplinary journals and has spoken at conferences around the world. As one of the founding members of the philosophical association, The Society for Empirical Ethics, Professor Ravven has been helping to develop a fruitful dialogue between philosophers and neurobiologists and other scientists about ethics.
Works
- Jewish Themes in Spinoza's Philosophy (State University of New York Press 2002)
Articles
- "A Time for Emil Fackenheim, a Time for Baruch Spinoza." in The Philosophy of Emil Fackenheim. Ed. James A. Diamond, E.J. Brill, 2007.
- "What Spinoza Can Teach Us About Embodying and Naturalizing Ethics." in Spinoza. Ed. Genevieve Lloyd, Moira Gatens, 2006.
- "What Can Spinoza Teach Us Today About Naturalizing Ethics? Provincializing Philosophical Ethics and Freedom without Free Will," in Cognitive, Emotive, and Ethical Aspects of Decision Making in Humans and in Artificial Intelligence 3. (2005)
- Introduction of Benedict de Spinoza: 'Ethics' and ‘On the Improvement of the Understanding.' New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2005.
- "Spinoza's Systems Theory of Ethics." in Cognitive, Emotive, and Ethical Aspects of Decision Making in Humans and in Artificial Intelligence 3. (2004)
- "Was Spinoza Right About Ethics? A Look at Recent Discoveries in the Neurobiology of the Emotions," in Studia Spinoza 14. (2004)
- "Spinoza's Ethic of the Liberation of Desire." in Women and Gender in Jewish Philosophy. Ed. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, 2004.
- "Spinoza’s anticipation of contemporary affective neuroscience," in Consciousness & Emotion 4. (2003)
Works with References to Heidi Ravven
- Spinoza: Logic, Knowledge and Religion (Ashgate Publishing 2007)
- The Myth of Free Will (Café Essays 2007)
- Spinoza's Revelation: Religion, Democracy, and Reason (Cambridge University Press 2004)
- Women and Gender in Jewish Philosophy (Indiana University Press 2004)
- Spinoza's Book of Life: Freedom and Redemption in the Ethics (Yale University Press 2003)