Hagit Benbaji (1966-2025)
Hagit Benbaji, a philosopher at Ben-Gurion University, has died.
Dr. Benbaji worked mainly in philosophy of mind and metaphysics, writing on pain, colors, the will, and various other topics. You can learn more about her work here.
Benbaji joined the Department of Philosophy at Ben-Gurion University in 2003. Prior to that, she held a visiting scholar position at Princeton University. She earned her PhD (as well as her MA and BA) from Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
She died on July 20th, following a protracted illness.
I knew Hagit from discussions we had about the philosophy of emotions, and she was always incredibly kind, incisive, and helpful with her comments and feedback on my work in progress.
But I feel like I knew Hagit much better from the strong influence she exerted over those I know more closely – my colleagues and her former PhD students, as well as through my own thinking and teaching.
I still teach her paper on recalcitrant emotions almost every year.
In fact, coincidentally, an M.A. student just returned to me today a copy of Michael Brady’s Emotional Insight that I read on the suggestion of Hagit, several years ago.
She was a wonderful person and an excellent philosopher. May her memory be a blessing.
Hagit was an outstanding philosopher and one of the kindest and most wonderful human beings I have ever met. I will certainly miss her terribly. I met Hagit the first time when I was still a graduate student. I was visiting a friend in Jerusalem when Hagit was studying there, and my friend thought we had common interests and took us both for coffee. It was immediately evident to me that Hagit was brilliant, and someone with whom I would want to continue to talk philosophy. But, alas, I went back to the US, at a time in which email was yet not so popular, and we lost touch.
I had completely forgotten about this encounter until I met Hagit again in 2011 when we were both fellows at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem. I would quickly “relearn” that Hagit was an extremely insightful philosopher, but I also had a chance to appreciate how thoughtful, generous, and witty she was. This time we did keep in touch and became close friends. I will always cherish the many philosophical conversations we had, as well as the opportunities we (and our families) had to hang out together.
Preston has already mentioned her excellent paper on recalcitrant emotions. I am also a fan of, among others, her paper on believing at will, and, appropriately for the moment I guess, her paper on grief (and evaluationism about pain more generally). A few months before she died, I talked to Hagit about a draft of a new paper of hers on recalcitrant emotion. She knew that her time was running out, but she was her usual cheerful self, and still thinking with the same clarity about philosophy. I hope this paper will still see its way to a journal, and that the philosophical community will be able to benefit at least one more time from Hagit’s sharp mind. The paper started from a new difficulty in accounting for the possibility of recalcitrant emotion and argued for a new and compelling understanding of response-dependency as the only way around this difficulty.
A friend of mine wrote me upon hearing of her death that he had seen her last just a few weeks ago in the anti-government protests in Jerusalem. The world needs more people like Hagit; it is very sad that we lost her so early.
This is so sad. She was an extraordinary philosopher. Her discussions of the emotions—insightful and rigorous—are among the best I know. I reviewed a brilliant grant proposal of hers just a few months ago and was genuinely excited to see what might come of it. I spent a little time with her at a conference in São Paulo in 2018, where she made a deep impression on me both as a wonderful person and as a serious thinker. This is a great loss for us all.
Damn!
In 2008 I visited at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem for around 6 weeks for a Metaethics Institute organized by David Enoch. Hagit was one of the longer term participants and just a really good colleague while I was there. Generous with her comments and inquiries about things I was working on while I was there. I’m just processing this, so I’m left kind of speechless. But she was a genuinely good person to get to know.