Rebeccah Leiby is the Hoffberger Ethics Fellow on the University of Baltimore’s Hoffberger Heart for Moral Engagement (beforehand, the Hoffberger Center for Professional Ethics). She accomplished her Ph.D. in 2022 at Boston University, the place she defended a dissertation entitled “In direction of a Contractualist Principle of Transitional Justice.”
What are you engaged on proper now?
Along with the usual post-defense work of reconfiguring my dissertation right into a e book proposal, I’m at the moment engaged on a handful of stand-alone articles that run the gamut of ethical and political philosophy. A few of my present analysis, for instance, includes the phenomenon of ethical harm, whereas different analysis offers with issues posed by collective trauma for establishments reminiscent of fact commissions. Lately, I had the chance to attend an exquisite convention (Women and War: Feminist Approaches to War and Violence) within the “Difficult Struggle” occasion sequence at Temple College, which has acquired me pondering particularly in regards to the intersection between feminist philosophy and points surrounding transitional justice.
What do you love to do outdoors work?
Once I’m not working, I get pleasure from enjoying video video games of precisely two sorts: people who contain terrifying adventures (Tomb Raider, Murderer’s Creed) or people who contain healthful duties (Stardew Valley, Yonder, Minecraft). Exceptions can generally be made for video games that contain terrifying duties or healthful adventures. Generally, although, I’m an enormous fan of the narrative side of video video games. Over the previous a number of years, I’ve additionally actually come to get pleasure from cooking, particularly unfamiliar cuisines with unfamiliar components. Principally this has been the results of relocating from Boston to rural Pennsylvania, the place the one bao to be discovered is the bao that one makes oneself. Talking of, here’s a good recipe for bao!
Which books have modified your life? In what methods?
I hope it doesn’t come throughout as tacky to say that each e book I’ve learn has modified my life in a roundabout way—each e book provides a component (possibly a small or foolish half) to my sense of self and the way I see the world. However one e book that completely modified my philosophical life is Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain. I purchased it on a whim whereas searching on the Harvard Bookstore, and it lit a fireplace in my coronary heart a mile broad. I’m unsure that I had ever encountered that mixture of unbelievable scholarship, stunning writing, and philosophical depth in a single bundle earlier than. It’s one of many books that inspired me to make the analysis shift throughout my Ph.D. from historical past of philosophy to social and political philosophy.
What would your childhood self say if somebody instructed you that you’d develop as much as be a thinker?
My childhood self could be disenchanted, I believe. I used to be uncovered to plenty of Michael Crichton as a child. I appear to have had it in my head that paleontology, viral biology, or nanotechnology afforded the best alternatives for journey. It’s a disgrace that my STEM profession was delivered to a untimely finish by my deathly allergy to arithmetic.
What recommendation do you would like somebody had given you?
I want somebody had instructed me The Magic Spell for having philosophical conversations that don’t make you’re feeling like rubbish. Fortunately, I’ve since found The Magic Spell, and I’ll share it with you right here. If you happen to ever end up in dialog with a colleague, they usually reference an concept, a principle, a paper, a piece, a thinker, and many others., with which you might be unfamiliar, it’s 100% a viable plan of action to say one thing like, “I don’t know what that’s.” Simply very plainly: I don’t know what that’s. If you happen to’re feeling curious, you possibly can observe it up with: “are you able to inform me about it?” The sheer transformative energy of letting go of ego and nervousness in conversations reminiscent of these is tough to overstate. What is going to occur, they’ll understand you don’t know in regards to the factor? You simply instructed them that! It’s not a secret, salacious discovery. It’s a radical act of self-kindness and it opens so many extra alternatives for real studying than simply pretending to go alongside to get alongside.
What was the primary philosophical query you bear in mind getting hung up on?
My mom was Ukrainian Byzantine Catholic and I attended a Ukrainian Byzantine Catholic parish faculty once I was a baby. If you happen to’re ever in Minersville, Pennsylvania (no, I’m not joking), you received’t have the ability to miss it: the church is an extravagantly stunning gold-domed constructing that towers above the city. In any occasion, I used to be about as religious a believer as any small youngster will be. On the time, I assumed it needed to do with my relationship with God, but it surely seems it largely needed to do with how nice dwell Byzantine choral music is. In any occasion, I had some obscure consciousness at the moment that my father was an atheist. As soon as, a trainer instructed me that he will surely not go to heaven because of this, and I couldn’t assist however really feel certain that this wasn’t correct. In any case, heaven is meant to be the place the place you might be supremely joyful, and I, in fact, was going to heaven, as a religious Catholic. However I knew I wouldn’t be even remotely joyful there if my father wasn’t there as effectively. I obsessed about this paradox for months. This fear definitely wasn’t solely answerable for the lack of my religion, but it surely undoubtedly prompted me to treat my very own metaphysical commitments with some skepticism!
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