Deborah K. Heikes is a philosopher, academic and author. She is a professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Heikes is known for her research in feminism, the philosophy of race, modern philosophy, and 20th-century analytic thought, with a focus on Immanuel Kant, Ludwig Wittgenstein, feminist epistemology, and philosophy of mind. She is the author of the books Towards a Liberatory Epistemology, Rationality, Representation, and Race, The Virtue of Feminist Rationality, Rationality and Feminist Philosophy, and Epistemic Responsibility for Undesirable Beliefs.
Heikes was on the program committee for the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association in 2018, and has been the Treasurer for Southwestern Philosophical Society since 2010.
Education and early career
Heikes earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the University of Kansas in 1991. She then pursued a master's degree in philosophy at Baylor University, which she completed in 1992 and received the Clifford P. Osborne fellowship at the University of Kansas in 1993. During this time, she began her academic career as a lecturer at Illinois State University in 1995 and received the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Fellowship from 1995 to 1996. She then went on to receive a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Illinois in 1998.
Career
Heikes continued her career as an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 1998. In 2005, she was appointed Associate Professor and has been working as a Professor since 2012.
Heikes served as the Chair of Philosophy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville from 2014 to 2017, and serves on numerous faculty committees, including SSAFE Fund and Women's Studies Advisory Committee.
Research
Heikes' research interests include 20th century philosophy, philosophy of gender, race, and sexuality, and 17th/18th century philosophy. She has developed rationality as a virtue concept. Specifically, her interest lies in constructing an account of rationality that incorporates subjective and social elements while preserving an objective foundation for concepts such as reason, equality, and justice. Her research in the areas of rationalism and feminist philosophy has also focused on exploring feminist critiques of rationality and the impact of post-Cartesian rationality on ideas surrounding race.
Works
Heikes has authored three books on the topic of rationality. In her book Rationality and Feminist Philosophy, she challenged Enlightenment rationality's relevance, advocated a virtue-based alternative aligned with feminism, and explored its historical impact on oppression. Alessandra Tanesini in her review for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews remarked, "...there is no doubt that Heikes has produced a salutary antidote to the allure of relativism among some feminists, and as such this book is to be welcomed." Later on, she published The Virtue of Feminist Rationality in 2012 and introduced a feminist theory of rationality, rejecting the notion of reason as inherently masculine. This work outlined a virtue-based rationality aligned with feminist dichotomies and demonstrated its support for feminist moral, political, and epistemic objectives. In addition, she examined the source of exclusion of non-whites and non-males from rationality in modern subjectivism, contrasting it with alternative views and advocating for a diverse, virtue-based understanding of rationality in her 2016 book, Rationality, Representation, and Race.
Heikes also explored the moral and epistemic duties to understand the experiences of others, in her book titled, Towards a Liberatory Epistemology. This work particularly addressed the impact of ignorance on oppression, advocating for reasonableness as a solution in the realms of feminist theory and critical race theory.
Rationality as a virtue concept
Heikes has focused her research on developing a notion of rationality that departs from conventional contemporary perspectives on the human mind. She proposed a virtue-based approach grounded in contemporary rationality, addressing feminist concerns against anti-modern views and responding to Benhabib's query in 'Situating of the Self'. In related research, she examined the concept of reason, its history, constraints, and contemporary alternatives, suggested that treating rationality as a virtue concept offers a far more expansive view, advocating for a virtue-based perspective to overcome limitations in modern thinking.