Ferber Ilit

Ilit Ferber is Prof. of Philosophy and Vice Dean for Research at the Faculty of Humanities, Tel-Aviv University. 

Her research focuses on the philosophy of emotions, especially melancholy, suffering, pain and failure. Ilit has published articles on Leibniz, Herder, Freud, Benjamin, Heidegger, Scholem, Ovid, Améry and others. She has also co-edited 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 grammer of the cry in Spanish. Her work was translated into German, French, Spanish, Turkish and Hebrew. 

Ferber's first book Philosophy and Melancholy: Benjamin's Early Reflections on Theater and Language (Stanford University Press in 2013) explores the role of melancholy in Benjamin's early writings and discusses the relationship between Benjamin, Freud and Leibniz.

Her second book Language Pangs: On Pain and the Origin of Language (Oxford University Press, 2019) explores the role of pain in Herder's theory of the origin of language, Heidegger's seminar about Herder, and Sophocles' "Philoctetes". The book was translated into German as Sprachwehen: Über Schmerz und den Ursprung der Sprache, Trans: Peter Brandes (Berlin: Neofelis Verlag, 2023).​

She is now working on Jean Améry's philosophy of temporality (funded by the ISF), The role of acoustics in Walter Benjamin's work, and the concept of the "Irreversible" in Améry and Jankélévitch (funded by the ISF).