I am a Senior Lecturer (equivalent to Assistant Professor) at the Hebrew University Philosophy Department. I write about ethics, moral psychology, political philosophy, and literature. In addition to my academic work, I write long-form essays and fiction.
>>> CV <<>>><>>< oded.naamanATmail.huji.ac.il ><>
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Another piece in Boston Review, A Menacing Silence, about Israelis' destructive state of mind.
Letter from Israel, published in Boston Review, following the atrocities of October 7.
Having Done Wrong, an essay about the boundaries and ambitions of moral repair, was recently published in The Raven.
A short piece, 'Power's Entrapment,' on Simone Weil's analysis of The Iliad. Part of a project, 'Thought in the Time of Disaster,' in which writers share books they read during this time of war. (Hebrew)
Also in Hebrew, an hour-long interview about my work on ethics of emotions.
Recent and future talks
June 2024
'Grief as a Crisis of Love.'
Emotions and Values Conference. Dubrovnik, Croatia.
June 2024
'An Anti-War Israeli Perspective'
Gaza and Student Protests. Boston University.
June 2024
Comments on Scheffler’s “Aging and the Threat of Normative Poverty”
Symposium on Samuel Scheffler’s One Life to Lead. LMU Munich.
September 2024
“Simone Weil on War and Humanity”
Conference: Language and the Refiguration of the Human in the War in Gaza, UCL.
March 2025
Humanistic Ethics Workshop. UCLA
April 2025
International Hannah Arendt Workshop on the Human Condition. Stanford University
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Other Notable Things
My essay, "The Checkpoint", is among the must-read essays from the last decade at Boston Review.
"Who Shot Gil Naamati? Or: A History of Video Games," co-authored with Gil Naamati and Yanay Israeli, translated and edited by David Raphael Lockard, published in Adjacent, November 2018. (English)
A letter I wrote about my friend, Tom Fehse. It is also about caring for philosophy, suffering from it, feeling isolated in philosophy and doing philosophy together.
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Academic Writing
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Academic Publications
The Alchemists: On Justin D’Arms and Daniel Jacobson’s Rational Sentimentalism
Philosophical Studies
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-024-02228-1
On D'Arms and Jacobson's recent book, which argues that certain sentimental values are grounded in facts about human nature.
The Subtleties of Fit: Reassessing the Fit-Value Biconditionals
Co-authored with Rachel Achs.
Philosophical Studies
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-023-01972-0
This paper argues that any plausible interpretation of the fit–value biconditionals must disarm several kinds of apparent counterexample.
What Is Evaluable for Fit?
In Fittingness, edited by Chris Howard and Richard Rowlands, Oxford University Press.
Our beliefs, intentions, desires, regrets, and fears are evaluable for fit—they can succeed or fail to be fitting responses to the objects they are about. Can our headaches and heartrates be evaluable for fit? The common view says ‘no’. I argue: sometimes, yes.
What Makes Something Surprising?
Co-authored with Dan Baras.
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.12820
We distinguish between descriptive and normative notions of what is surprising; clarify the sense in which surprising facts are unexpected; and, finally, develop and defend the significance account of surprise, according to which a fact is surprising to an agent if and to the extent that it is both unexpected and significant to the agent.
The Birth of Ethics: Reconstructing the Role and Nature of Morality, by Philip Pettit, edited by Kinch Hoekstra. (Review)
Mind
https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzab013
A review of Philip Pettit's recent book.
Emotions and Process Rationality
Australasian Journal of Philosophy
https://doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2020.1802764
I employ Abelard Podgorski’s argument from rational delay to argue that many emotional norms are fundamentally concerned with emotional processes. I also claim that the main response available to the synchronist about belief is not available to the synchronist about emotions and, therefore, fundamental process norms are more plausible than epistemologists tend to believe.
The Rationality of Emotional Change: Toward a Process View
Noûs (forthcoming). https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12304
A widely held synchronic view of fitting affective attitudes denies that fittingness at a time depends on the agent’s attitudes at different times and therefore denies that the fittingness of an affective attitude can depend on its duration. Once we reject the synchronic view, we may see that affective attitudes are often fitting due to the fitting processes of which they are part.
The Fitting Resolution of Anger
Philosophical Studies 177, 2020, pp. 2417-2430. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01317-w
How can we explain the rational diminution of backward-looking emotions (e.g., grief, regret, and anger) without resorting to pragmatic or wrong kind of reason explanations? That is to say, how can the diminution of these emotions not only be rational but fitting? In this paper, I offer an answer to this question by considering the case of anger.
Can We Intend the Past?
Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 12, No. 3, December 2017, pp. 304-311.
First, I criticize Jay Wallace's account of the affirmation dynamic, which entails a willingness to bring about past occurrences that were necessary for one's present attachments. Second, I trace Wallace's notion of regret to a common but misguided model of retrospection as a choice between courses of history.
Reasons of Love: A Case Against Universalism About Practical Reason
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society CX, No. 3, October 2015, pp. 315-322.
The paper presents an argument from love against universalism about practical reason.
Social Justice
In Israeli Social Protest: Political Lexicon 2011-, ed. Ariel Hendel (Hakibutz HaMe’uhad, 2013), pp. 309-319 (Hebrew).
The article reviews the liberal notion of social and distributive justice in the context of the Israeli social protest of 2011.
The Rise and Fall of the Bleeding Hearts: A Reading in Soldiers’ Talk and Breaking the Silence [two collections of Israeli soldiers’ testimonials]
Theory and Criticism 33, 2008, pp. 225-238 (Hebrew).
The article compares two collections of testimonies by Israeli soldiers, one compounded in 1968 and the other in 2005.
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Work in Progress
In Relationship
Relationship accounts of justified partiality maintain that special relationships play a role in justifying partiality. But if being a friend is partly constituted by one's partiality, how can relationships justify the partiality that partly constitutes them? The answer has to do with what relationships are and what it means to be in a relationship.
The Temporal Gaze of Emotions
Some emotions, like fear and hope, look forward to the future; others, like regret and anger, look backward to the past. What explains the temporal gaze of these emotions? I develop a theory according to which temporal relations between emotions and their objects play a fundamental role in determining emotional fit.
Suffering Punishment
Different theories of punishment offer different justifications of 'hard treatment', but they all assume that the suffering inflicted by hard treatment is independent of the justification offered for it. I argue that this is a mistake. The reasons for which hard treatment is inflicted on a person determine the suffering such treatment merits.
Regret and Repair
To see when regret and its dissipation might be fitting, I argue that we must look to the broader process in which regretting is embedded. I propose that regret is an essential stage in the process of what I call repair – a process that is itself fitting.
A Distinction in Love
The paper examines three puzzles about the rationality of love: the puzzle of legitimate partiality, the puzzle of particularity, and the puzzle of love's necessity. I argue that, in one way or another, the three puzzles arise from a failure to distinguish and understand the relation between two kinds of love-related reasons: reasons to love and reasons of love.
Moral Presence Before the Law: The Case of the Group at the Fence
The paper considers whether the physical presence of refugees at the border bears on the obligations of the state to provide them shelter. I consider a specific case from 2012, in which a group of 21 Eritrean refugees were trapped for eight days in a no man's land between the Israeli and the Egyptian border.
Loving, Valuing, Regretting, and Being Oneself: Prologue and Introduction
The prologue and introduction to my dissertation.
Aggressor. by Philip Guston, 1978
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Other Writing
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Essays in English
Imagine the Worst
In Boston Review, November 2021.
An essay that draws on Seneca and Cicero to understand anxiety, imagination, reality, and ambivalence
Who Shot Gil Naamati? Or, A History of Video Games
Co-authored with Yanay Israeli and Gil Naamati. Translated from Hebrew by David Raphael Lockard.
In Adjacent, issue 4, November 2018.
In Philadelphia, in the year 2010, during a talk about the global anarchist movement, the lecturer mentioned Gil Naamati as a person who played a significant role in the history of the movement. This piece recounts Gil Naamati's story as he tells it. It also includes Gil's descriptions of his favorite video games. It was written in Hebrew in 2011 and was finally published, in English, thanks to David Raphael Lockard, in 2018.
The Frontiers of Vision and the Painting of Movement
In Eigengrau: Daniel Lergon, ed. Galerie Christian Lethert, Köln (Kerber 2017), pp. 142-147.
An essay about the work of Daniel Lergon, a contemporary painter. The essay considers how movement can be captured or created in a painting; it draws on Georg Simmel's book on Rembrandt.
Choosing Violence
Boston Review (July/August 2016), pp. 56-61.
An essay about conviction and moral isolation in times of war.
Political Faith
The Point (Winter 2016), pp. 137-145.
An essay about the possibility of political action in the face of wide-spread, entrenched injustice.
The Possibility of Self-Sacrifice
Boston Review (March/April 2014), pp. 45-53.
An essay about the nature of self-sacrifice, considered through the cases of Socrates, Yukio Mishima, and Emily Davison.
The essay is included in The Best American Essays list of Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction of 2014.
The Checkpoint
Boston Review (July/August 2012), pp. 38-45.
German translation in Zenith, November/December 2012, pp. 14-27; Italian translation in Internazionale, February 2013, pp. 96-101.
The essay describes the logic of military occupation, its moral depravity, and its self-destructive consequences. It was the most read article in BR in 2012.
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Essays in Hebrew (selected)
The Beginning of Love
Alaxon (April 2017)
An essay about the work of Yehoshua Kenaz, an Israeli novelist.
The Paradox of Sight and the Solution of Touch
The Beauty of the Defeated: Critical Essays on Yehoshua Kenaz, edited by Chen Strass and Keren Dotan (Am-Oved, 2017), pp. 150-168.
A reading of The Great Woman of the Dreams by Yehoshua Kenaz and his Hebrew translation of Traveler on All Saints' Day, by Georges Simenon.
It Is Not Happening Now, It Is Happening Again
Alaxon (January 2015)
An essay about magic, puzzles, repetition, and change. Discusses Marcel Duchamp and Georges Perec.
Who Started?
The Hottest Place in Hell (June 2015)
Reflecting on violent events that took place in the summer of 2015 in the West Bank, this essay recounts events from the winter of 2002, when my platoon forcefully occupied the home of a Palestinian family and used it as our own.
That Which Is Not Seen
Alaxon (August 2013)
An essay about the presence of that which cannot be seen. Discusses Eedweard Muybridge.
The Unbelievable
Alaxon (June 2013)
An essay about faith and doubt. Discusses Caravaggio's "Doubting Thomas" and the Unicorn Tapestries at the Met Cloisters.
The Status Quo
Alaxon (April 2013)
An essay about passion and the obstruction of order in New York City.
Letting Out Steam -- 1949, 1974, 2003: On Motti Ashkenazi and Ways of Silencing Protest
Ha'aretz (December 2003)
An essay I wrote shortly after completing my conscript service, about the possibility of protest in Israel.
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Breaking the Silence (selected)
I am a long-time member of Breaking the Silence, a group of Israeli veterans that collects testimonies of Israeli soldiers about the Occupied Territories. The purpose of Breaking the Silence is to expose the moral reality of Israel’s military occupation and to bring about its end. I joined the group shortly after it was founded, in 2004. Below you can find some of the articles I have written over the years as a member of the group as well as a book I co-edited, which analyzes ten years of soldiers’ testimonies. Some of my long-form essays and philosophical articles also deal with relevant issues. For more information, here is a link to the group’s website: http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/
Book:
Our Harsh Logic: Israeli Soldiers’ Testimonies from the Occupied Territories 2000-2010
Breaking the Silence, ed. Mikhael Manekin, Avichai Sharon, Yanay Israeli, Oded Na’aman, Levi Spectre (Metropolitan Press, September 2012) (also published in Hebrew, German, French, Dutch, and Swedish).
The Institution of War as a Way of Life
Quartz (September 2015)
Plugging Our Ears Does Not Serve Israel
The New York Jewish Week (April 2014)
J Street U Rejected for Standing Behind IDF Soldiers
Daily Beast (October 2013)
It's Mostly Punishment
HuffPost/TomDispatch.com (November 2012)
How Central Is Land for Peace? (co-authored with Mikhael Manekin)
Foreign Affairs (November/December 2011)
Israel Needs the Truth About Cast Lead
The Guardian (July 2009)
Untitled. Daniel Lergon, 2009
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Fiction
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Fiction in English
Journal of Absence: New York City February-June 2013
Bookieman Press 2013.
A collaboration with artist Nino Biniashvili. During a six-month stay in NYC, Nino and I set out to explore the city’s art scene. The book consists of nineteen micro-stories written on the basis of nineteen art visits, among which are: a visit to the Frick Collection exhibition of Piero della Francesca; studio visits in Bushwick and at the Brooklyn Army Terminal; a visit to Rebecca Chamberlain’s show at Dodge Gallery; a visit to Acconci Studio; and a visit to Printed Matter, Inc. (In total: 12 art shows, 4 artists’ studios, 1 art bookstore, 1 art dealer, and 1 print shop.) The nineteen micro-stories form nineteen entries in a journal of absence, where text takes the place of art.
Journal of Absence. Photo by Nino Biniashvili.
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Fiction in Hebrew (selected)
Limbo
Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir Publishing, October 2018.
My first book of fiction (in Hebrew) includes two novellas, "Limbo" and "Venice".
In "Limbo," a man reconstructs a forgotten love affair from memories of art exhibits. He names his lover Annette Messager and himself Gerhard Richter.
In "Venice," a man attempts to escape his life by making up a woman and traveling to Venice to meet her.
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Cover of Limbo
Not to Die of Love
Alaxon (February 2016)
The Visit
Alaxon (September 2013)
Hello, Readers, I'm On the Roof
Alaxon (July 2013)
Things on Vig Street
Ha'aretz (November 2009)
Toward Different Nights
Ha'aretz (October 2004)
Shorts
Ha'aretz (August 2003)
Russia. Altai Territory. Villagers collecting scraps from a crashed spacecraft, surrounded by thousands of white butterflies. By Jonas Bendiksen. 2000
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Teaching
What Is a Meaningful Life? (Taught in Hebrew)
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Fall 2019
Primary Instructor
On What Is Intolerable
Stanford University, Spring 2018
Primary Instructor
Philosophy, Literature, and the Arts Core Seminar
co-taught with Blakey Vermeule, Stanford University, Winter 2018
Primary Instructor
Contemporary Moral Problems
Stanford University, Spring 2017
Primary Instructor
Contemporary Moral Problems
Stanford University, Winter 2016
Primary Instructor
Postdoctoral Adviser Undergraduate Honors Program in Ethics
Stanford University, 2015/2016
Advised seniors in college on writing their Honors Theses
Responsibilities of Public Action
Harvard Kennedy School for Government, Fall 2012
Teaching Fellow (Primary Instructor: Christopher Robichaud)
Equality and Liberty
Harvard College, Spring 2012
Teaching Fellow (Primary Instructor: T. M. Scanlon)
Self, Freedom, and Existence
Harvard College, Fall 2011
Teaching Fellow (Primary Instructor: Richard Moran)
Human Rights: A Philosophical Introduction
Harvard College, Spring 2011
Teaching Fellow (Primary Instructor: Mathias Risse)
Responsibilities of Public Action
Harvard Kennedy School for Government, Fall 2010
Teaching Fellow (Primary Instructor: Christopher Robichaud)
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Teaching
The Rationality of Emotions (Taught in English)
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Spring 2023
Primary Instructor
Narrativity in Contemporary Ethical Theory (Taught in Hebrew)
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Spring 2023
Primary Instructor
Philosophical Investigations of Grief (Taught in Hebrew)
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Fall 2022
Primary Instructor
The Ethics and Rationality of Relationships (Taught in Hebrew)
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Fall 2022
Primary Instructor
Philosophical Approaches to Suffering (Taught in Hebrew)
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Fall 2020
Primary Instructor
What Is a Meaningful Life? (Taught in Hebrew)
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Fall 2019
Primary Instructor
On What Is Intolerable
Stanford University, Spring 2018
Primary Instructor
Philosophy, Literature, and the Arts Core Seminar
co-taught with Blakey Vermeule, Stanford University, Winter 2018
Primary Instructor
Contemporary Moral Problems
Stanford University, Spring 2017
Primary Instructor
Contemporary Moral Problems
Stanford University, Winter 2016
Primary Instructor
Postdoctoral Adviser Undergraduate Honors Program in Ethics
Stanford University, 2015/2016
Advised seniors in college on writing their Honors Theses
Responsibilities of Public Action
Harvard Kennedy School for Government, Fall 2012
Teaching Fellow (Primary Instructor: Christopher Robichaud)
Equality and Liberty
Harvard College, Spring 2012
Teaching Fellow (Primary Instructor: T. M. Scanlon)
Self, Freedom, and Existence
Harvard College, Fall 2011
Teaching Fellow (Primary Instructor: Richard Moran)
Human Rights: A Philosophical Introduction
Harvard College, Spring 2011
Teaching Fellow (Primary Instructor: Mathias Risse)
Responsibilities of Public Action
Harvard Kennedy School for Government, Fall 2010
Teaching Fellow (Primary Instructor: Christopher Robichaud)
Young Farmers. By August Sander, 1914.
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Bio
I received a BA in Philosophy from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a PhD in Philosophy from Harvard University. After completing my studies in 2015, I spent two years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford University and a year as a Lecturer at the Stanford Philosophy Department in support of the Philosophy and Literature Initiative. I returned to Israel to become a postdoctoral fellow at the Martin Buber Society of Fellows in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Since 2022, I am a Senior Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the Philosophy Department at the Hebrew University.
With my niece and nephew.