Jennifer A. Herdt

Jennifer A. Herdt is Gilbert L. Stark Professor of Christian Ethics at Yale University’s Divinity School. She is the author, most recently, of Assuming Responsibility: Ecstatic Eudaimonism and the Call to Live Well. Her 2019 book, Forming Humanity: Redeeming the German Bildung Tradition, was supported by a research fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. She is also the author of Putting On Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices (selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title), and of Religion and Faction in Hume’s Moral Philosophy, and has published widely on virtue ethics, early modern and modern moral thought, and political theology. She serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Christian Ethics, Studies in Christian Ethics, and the Journal of Religion, and served as the 2020 President of the Society of Christian Ethics. Her current research project on more-than-human creaturely agency flows from a $3.9M, 3-year collaborative grant from the Templeton Foundation supporting projects in science-informed theological anthropology (2020–2023). From 2013-2021, she served as the academic dean of Yale Divinity School, and is now Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs. 

Learn more

• Interview on the Ethical Theory Review podcast

• Syndicate Symposium on Forming Humanity

• Forming Humanity Featured on “The Page 99 Test” Blog

• People Notes - November 2019

• The London Lyceum Podcast: Natural Law and Virtue in the Reformed Tradition with Jennifer Herdt

Books

1. Assuming Responsibility: Ecstatic Eudaimonism and the Call to Live Well (Oxford, 2022)
2. Forming Humanity: Redeeming the German Bildung Tradition (Chicago, 2019)
3. Putting On Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices (Chicago, 2008)
4. Religion and Faction in Hume’s Moral Philosophy (Cambridge, 1997)