Prof. Ilit Ferber

Prof. Ferber is an Associate Professor of Philosophy. Her research focuses on the philosophy of emotions, especially melancholy, suffering and pain, from the perspective of language. She has published articles on Benjamin, Heidegger, Leibniz, Scholem, Herder, Freud, Améry and others. She has coedited a book on the role of moods in philosophy, two books in English and Hebrew, on lament in Gershom Scholem’s thought and a book on the grammar of the cry (in Spanish). She has also edited the new translation into Hebrew of Jean Améry’s book on aging. Ferber published two monographs: Philosophy and Melancholy: Benjamin’s Early Reflections on Theater and Language (Stanford University Press in 2013) and Language Pangs: On Pain and the Origin of Language (Oxford University Press, 2019). She is now working on the role of the five senses in Benjamin’s “Berlin Childhood” and on Améry’s philosophy of temporality in the context of his writings on the Holocaust, suicide and aging.

Ferber’s current work explores aging from two perspectives. First, the experience of time and temporality in aging in relation to the body’s decline, transformation of identity, missed opportunities and the expansion of the presence of death in life. Second, the emotional expanse of the aged, specifically, emotions such as resentment, reconciliation, nostalgy, regret, forgiveness, mourning, humiliation and hope.