Eli Benjamin is a PhD student at Temple University. He is interested in practical reasoning, agency, personal autonomy, sexual consent, and Kant’s practical philosophy. Engaged in service work, he works with the North American Kant Society and the Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love, and has recently been appointed as a member of the APA’s Graduate Student Council.
What excites you about philosophy?
I’ve always hated uncertainty. It has a way of making me anxious. While philosophy tends to make things worse, making you feel like “the ground is moving out from under you” (like Jennifer Frey says in a tweet that I like to bring up at the beginning of every semester when I introduce my students to philosophy). It actually gives me a sense of “I got this.” It’s like having the right tools to hack my way through the confusion and find some clarity. That’s also why I do ethics—there were instances in my life where I found myself hurting people and not understanding why, and I wanted to figure out my way into having morality clearer.
What are you working on right now?
I’m working on a few different things at the moment, but my main project is a paper titled “Caring for (Valid) Sexual Consent.” In this paper, I argue that consent has a Trust Condition that needs to be met for it to be valid. In other words, for consent to be valid you must justifiably trust the person you are consenting to. I then argue that in the sexual arena, due to the non-contractual nature of sex, we can only justifiably trust our partners by having an assurance of their care for us. This care encompasses being attentive and sensitive to our will, in ways that include, but go beyond verbal expressions of consent.
I’m particularly excited about this project, as I believe it offers a safer liberal perspective on sexual relationships, casual and committed alike, and it lays the moral grounds for future policies that would require all parties participation in making consent valid. I find this to be crucial in preventing countless sexual wrongs that often occur, sometimes without any malicious intentions.
What’s your poison?
I’ve always been a whiskey guy, with a crush on peaty Scotches. However, I must confess that being in the US under a grad student stipend has led me to try rye whiskeys lately, and they’re not bad at all.
What is your favorite book of all time? (Or top 3). Why? To whom would you recommend them?
I am not sure if these are my favorite books, but there are three novels that I often find myself going back to. They share a common theme of exploring the shifting terrain between reason and irrationality, values and passions. Those are: José Saramago’s Cain, Arthur Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle, and Joseph Roth’s The Legend of the Holy Drinker. While these short novels may not seem related at first glance, they each present a main character grappling with the duality of human nature in reason and sensibility, in distinct and intriguing ways.
Saramago’s Cain portrays what I consider to be a Nietzschean prophet, who champions reason over religion and challenges God himself. Schnitzler’s Fridolin represents the deliberate surrender to passion and irrationality; and Roth’s Andreas occupies a middle ground, striving to rationally determining his actions according to moral principles and constantly failing himself over and over again. I believe all three perspectives are extremely insightful to anyone concerned with morals and human behavior more broadly, as they allow us to grasp the complexities of these human positions and the challenges each of them present.
If you could have a one-hour conversation with any philosopher or historical figure from any time, who would you pick and what topic would you choose?
Well, it’s quite an interesting question, considering the time constraint of just one hour. A true philosophical conversation would require more time, so I’ll choose someone I’d just enjoy talking with: Bertrand Russell. I first got to seriously read him at a quite late stage when I had to teach his paper “On Denoting.” However, my interest in him was further piqued when I stumbled upon his biography, and I was immediately captivated by his turbulent life story and eccentric character. Philosophically speaking, I identify with his early fascination with German Iiealism, to which he later rebelled against (something I don’t find impossible to happen to me one of these days). Above all, I really admire his spirit to expand the domain of his intellectual activity into the political and even the intimate, as seen in Marriage and Morals and in his life story.
What advice do you wish someone had given you?
It would be to make personal relationships a priority. This advice can go in a couple of ways. First, philosophy shouldn’t overshadow the importance of spending time with the people we care about. I truly believe that our relationships and the experiences we have in the real world are not only important for our well-being and sanity, but they give us the real drive to do philosophy and raise the most interesting questions worth exploring in our research. Some of the most valuable and enjoyable philosophical questions I’ve pondered were sparked by injustices faced by close friends, inner conflicts of desires a romantic partner intimated to me, and even by merely observing the way we respond to everyday moral dilemmas we encounter. It’s by paying attention to real things, real people, and the questions that affect everyday folks that we uncover what’s really valuable about philosophy.
The second part of this advice is about surrounding yourself professionally with people you like as people (and that hopefully like you back), and not just as philosophers. This is surely important during the early stages of one’s academic journey, like now, for me, in grad school: Your advisor, committee members, and colleagues should not only be interested in your philosophical endeavors but also truly care about you and your well-being. I don’t know, this might be because I moved across the world multiple times (including now for my PhD) so I have this urge to find a community, but I think grad school, and the jobs we’ll get after (this is me being overly optimistic, I know) are not short-term flings. It’s a long road we go through with people in this profession. They see us in our ups and downs, and it’s a good thing, I believe, to be able to be vulnerable in front of them—share our difficulties and let them see us fail.
This section of the APA Blog is designed to get to know our fellow philosophers a little better. We’re including profiles of APA members that spotlight what captures their interest not only inside the office, but also outside of it. We’d love for you to be a part of it, so please contact us via the interview nomination form here to nominate yourself or a friend.
Alexis LaBar has a Master’s degree in Philosophy from West Chester University of Pennsylvania. Before attending West Chester, she graduated from Moravian University with a Bachelor’s in Philosophy, a minor in Global Religions, and an Ethics certificate. She is the recipient of the 2022 Claghorn Award in Philosophy, awarded by West Chester University, and the 2021 Douglas Anderson Prize in Philosophy, awarded by Moravian University. She is the Editor of the Teaching Beat and Work/Life Balance Beat.
