Ilit Ferber is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Tel-Aviv University. She is the author of Philosophy and Melancholy: Benjamin's Early Reflections on Theater and Language (Stanford University Press, 2013) and co-editor of three books on the philosophy of moods and on the language of lament. She has published numerous articles on Leibniz, Herder, Freud, Benjamin, Heidegger, Scholem, and Améry.

If we attempt to know another person's pain, or understand it, to reach a common language that describes this, we will always encounter the problem that we cannot inhabit another person's body or think their thoughts. We know in the age of identity politics that this inability to inhabit another person's body is a political dilemma. But it is also the dilemma of all language. Language may describe, it may perform and communicate, but it always reaches the point where it cannot penetrate another person's world. This is where Ferber's book offers striking insights into the fundamental act of sympathy that marks language as attempting to cross an unbridgeable chasm, and in doing so, creating a strong bond of humanityFerber takes us through a clearly described, well argued discussion concerning pain,representation, expression, communication, and the interlocking of selves that is language.

Ilit Ferber is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Tel-Aviv University. She is the author of Philosophy and Melancholy: Benjamin's Early Reflections on Theater and Language (Stanford University Press, 2013) and co-editor of three books on the philosophy of moods and on the language of lament. She has published numerous articles on Leibniz, Herder, Freud, Benjamin, Heidegger, Scholem, and Améry.

If we attempt to know another person's pain, or understand it, to reach a common language that describes this, we will always encounter the problem that we cannot inhabit another person's body or think their thoughts. We know in the age of identity politics that this inability to inhabit another person's body is a political dilemma. But it is also the dilemma of all language. Language may describe, it may perform and communicate, but it always reaches the point where it cannot penetrate another person's world. This is where Ferber's book offers striking insights into the fundamental act of sympathy that marks language as attempting to cross an unbridgeable chasm, and in doing so, creating a strong bond of humanityFerber takes us through a clearly described, well argued discussion concerning pain,representation, expression, communication, and the interlocking of selves that is language.

Ilit Ferber is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Tel-Aviv University. She is the author of Philosophy and Melancholy: Benjamin's Early Reflections on Theater and Language (Stanford University Press, 2013) and co-editor of three books on the philosophy of moods and on the language of lament. She has published numerous articles on Leibniz, Herder, Freud, Benjamin, Heidegger, Scholem, and Améry.

If we attempt to know another person's pain, or understand it, to reach a common language that describes this, we will always encounter the problem that we cannot inhabit another person's body or think their thoughts. We know in the age of identity politics that this inability to inhabit another person's body is a political dilemma. But it is also the dilemma of all language. Language may describe, it may perform and communicate, but it always reaches the point where it cannot penetrate another person's world. This is where Ferber's book offers striking insights into the fundamental act of sympathy that marks language as attempting to cross an unbridgeable chasm, and in doing so, creating a strong bond of humanityFerber takes us through a clearly described, well argued discussion concerning pain,representation, expression, communication, and the interlocking of selves that is language.