Tuesday 21 April 2026 at 18h CEST
Prof. Dr. Ilit Ferber (Tel Aviv University) and
Prof. em. Dr. Irène Heidelberger-Leonard (ULB)
Lecture in English, organized within the framework of the "Network for European Philosophy and the Jewish Tradition".
Lecture in room R.013, Rodestraat 14,
2000 Antwerpen.
Free admission. The lecture is also available via Zoom.
To register, click .
This dialogical encounter brings together Prof. Irène Heidelberger-Leonard and Prof. Ilit Ferber in a conversation centered around Ferber’s forthcoming book, Jean Améry: Identity, Time, Failure (Oxford University Press, 2026).
Heidelberger-Leonard, Améry’s biographer and editor of his collected works in German, enters into conversation with Ferber, a philosopher of emotions whose work engages Améry from a philosophical perspective shaped by questions of affect, temporality, and selfhood. Their dialogue unfolds around the book’s three central themes—identity, time, and failure—while reflecting more broadly on a tension that runs through Améry’s life and writings: the simultaneity of necessity and impossibility.
Borrowed from Améry’s own reflections on Jewish identity, this conceptual pair serves as a key to understanding both his thought and the fragile, fractured life and identity his work persistently interrogates.
Ilit Ferber is Professor of Philosophy and Vice Dean for Research at the Faculty of Humanities, Tel Aviv University. Her research focuses on the philosophy of emotions, with particular attention to melancholy, suffering, pain, and failure. She has published widely on figures including Benjamin, Herder, Heidegger, Scholem, Freud, and Améry, and her work has been translated into German, French, Spanish, Turkish, and Hebrew. She is the author of Philosophy and Melancholy: Benjamin’s Early Reflections on Theater and Language (Stanford University Press, 2013) and Language Pangs: On Pain and the Origin of Language (Oxford University Press, 2019) translated into German as Sprachwehen (2023). Her forthcoming book, Jean Améry: Identity, Time, Failure (Oxford University Press, 2026), offers a comprehensive philosophical interpretation of Améry’s writings, revealing the coherence of his thought around the themes of identity, time, and failure.
Irène Heidelberger-Leonard, Dr. phil., Professor Emeritus of the Université libre de Bruxelles (1980-2009), and Honorary Professorial Fellow at Queen Mary College, University of London (since 2009).
Member of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung since 1999. Over 100 publications on German/Austrian postwar and Holocaust Literature. Books on Günter Grass, Alfred Andersch, Ruth Klüger, Jean Améry, Jurek Becker, Peter Weiss, Thomas Bernhard, Ingeborg Bachmann, W. G. Sebald. Her biography on Jean Améry. Revolte in der Resignation (Klett-Cotta: Stuttgart, 2004) was the „Sachbuch des Jahres von der Deutschen Bundeskulturstiftung“, won the Raymond Aron Preis, and was awarded the international „Einhard Preis für hervorragende internationale Biographik“ in 2005.
She is the general editor of the 9th volume edition Jean Améry, Werke, Klett-Cotta: Stuttgart 2002-2008. Her biography of the Hungarian writer Imre Kertész, Imre Kertész. Leben und Werk, appeared in 2015 with Göttingen: Wallstein.