Don’t Look Back in Anger: Reconsidering Appropriation of Past Philosophy

14 July 2026

Photo: Carolina Lehan/HEPMASITE

The HEPMASITE project would like to invite you to a lecture on Tuesday, 14 July 2026, at 17:15. Yael Gazit (Tel Aviv University) will talk about "Don’t Look Back in Anger: Reconsidering Appropriation of Past Philosophy."

Convenors

• Yoav Meyrav (University of Hamburg)
• Hanna Gentili (University of Hamburg)
• José Maksimczuk (University of Hamburg)

Abstract
The historiography of philosophy has long been divided over whether it ought to pursue quid juris or quid facti: justification and reasons or genesis and causal explanations. On one extreme, we ignore context and read our interests into past texts; on the other extreme, we reduce those texts to their contexts—including their materiality—and undermine their claim for Truth.
In this lecture, I argue that a third option hides in the first. By drawing on Robert Brandom’s philosophy of language, and his notion of Forgiveness, I propose a reconsideration of the appropriative approach, and argue that it, in fact, integrates rather than opposes causality and contingency. Seen in this way, appropriation becomes a distinctive form of philosophical engagement with the past, with implications for our understanding of canon formation, our philosophical-historical practice, and philosophical agency.

Yael Gazit is Assistant Professor at the Philosophy Department at Tel Aviv University. She earned her PhD at Tel Aviv University in 2020, after which she held postdoctoral fellowships at Yale University and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Her publications include articles on Brandom, McDowell, and Sellars, in philosophy of language, epistemology, philosophy of history, and the historiography of philosophy

Venue 
in person and online
Institute for Jewish Studies

Further information
For registration and further information please write an e-mail to: hepmasite.reli"AT"uni-hamburg.de 

Invitation poster: PDF download