Heidi Ravven

Heidi M. Ravven is the Bates and Benjamin Professor of Classical and Religious Studies at Hamilton College, where she has taught Jewish Philosophy and general Jewish Studies since 1983. She is also a Fellow in Neurophilosophy of the Integrative Neurosciences Research Program. Ravven holds a Ph.D. from Brandeis University and is a specialist in the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, arguing that his moral philosophy is a systems theory of ethics and that he anticipated discoveries in the neuroscience of emotions. She has published on Spinoza, Moses Maimonides, G.W.F. Hegel, feminism, and Jewish ethics. Ravven received a significant grant from the Ford Foundation to write "The Self Beyond Itself: An Alternative History of Ethics, the New Brain Sciences, and the Myth of Free Will" (2013), which challenges the notion of free will and proposes a new theory of moral agency influenced by Spinoza and updated with contemporary neuroscience. The book argues that behavior is determined by nature, nurture, and situation, and suggests interventions in social systems to promote moral behavior. Ravven is also working on a book about Spinoza's relevance titled "The Return of Spinoza."