Ágnes Heller
Encyclopedia
Ágnes Heller is a Hungarian philosopher. A prominent Marxist thinker at first, she moved onto a liberal
, social-democratic position later in her career. In addition to political and social thought, she also concentrates on Hegelian philosophy, ethics
, and existentialism
.
however, he used his legal training and knowledge of German
to help people get together the necessary paperwork to emigrate from Nazi Europe. In 1944, Heller’s father was deported, along with 450,000 other Hungarian Jews, to the Auschwitz concentration camp
where he died before the war ended. Heller and her mother managed to avoid deportation as a result of luck and practical wit.
With regard to the influence of the Holocaust on her work, Heller said:
In 1947, Heller began to study physics and chemistry at the University of Budapest. She changed her focus to philosophy, however, when her boyfriend at the time urged her to listen to the lecture of the Marxist philosopher György Lukács, on the intersections of philosophy and culture. At the time (and ever since), she did not understand the philosophical terminology. However, she was immediately taken by how much his lecture addressed her concerns and interests in how to live in the modern world, especially after the experience of World War II and the Holocaust. Faced with the existential choice between Marxism and Zionism, Heller chose Marxism and did not seek to emigrate to Israel.
1947 was also the year that Heller joined the Communist Party
while at a Zionist work camp and began to develop her interest in Marxism. However, she felt that the Party was stifling the ability of its adherents to think freely due to the belief in Democratic centralism
(total allegiance) to the Party. She was expelled from it for the first time in 1949, the year that Mátyás Rákosi
came into power and ushered in the years of Stalinist
rule.
as Prime Minister, Heller was able to safely undertake her doctoral studies under the supervision of Lukács
, and in 1955 she began to teach at the University of Budapest.
was the most important political event of her life, for at this time she saw the effect of the academic freedoms of Marxist critical theory
as dangerous to the entire political and social structure of Hungary. The uprising confirmed Heller’s ideas that what Marx
really means is for the people to have political autonomy and collective determination of social life.
Lukács, Heller and other Marxist critical theorists emerged from the Revolution with the belief that Marxism and socialism
needed to be applied to different nations in individual ways, effectively questioning the role of the Soviet Union
in Hungary’s future. These ideas set Heller on an ideological collision course with the new Moscow-supported government of János Kádár
: Heller was again expelled from the Communist Party and she was dismissed from the University in 1958 for refusing to indict Lukács as a collaborator in the Revolution. She was not able to resume her research until 1963, when she was invited to join the Sociological Institute at the Hungarian Academy
as a researcher (Tormey 4–18) (Grumley 5–15).
From 1963 can be seen the emergence of what would later be called the “Budapest School”, a philosophical forum that was formed by Lukács to promote the renewal of Marxist criticism in the face of practiced and theoretical socialism. Other participants in the Budapest School included together with Heller her second husband Ferenc Fehér, György Márkus
, Mihály Vajda
and some other scholars with the looser connection to the school (such as András Hegedűs
, Istvan Eörsi, Janos Kis
and Gyorgy Bence
). The School emphasized the idea of the renaissance of Marxism, described by radical philosophy scholar Simon Tormey as "a flowering of the critical, oppositional potential they believed lay within Marxism and in particular within the ‘early Marx’ ... the Marxism of the individual ‘rich in needs,' of solidarity and self-governance ... they hoped to precipitate a crisis in those systems that had the temerity to call themselves 'socialist'."
Heller’s work from this period, subsequently repudiated, concentrates on themes such as what Marx means to the character of modern societies; liberation theory as applied to the individual; the work of changing society and government from “the bottom up,” and affecting change through the level of the values, beliefs and customs of “everyday life.” Since 1990, Heller has been more interested in the issues of aesthetics in The Concept of The Beautiful(1998), Time Is Out of Joint(2002), and Immortal Comedy(2005).
, the Budapest School remained supportive of reformist attitudes towards socialism. After the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact
forces and the crushing of dissent, however, the School and Heller came to believe that the Eastern European regimes were entirely corrupted and that reformist theory was apologist. Heller explains in her interview with Polony that:
This view was completely incompatible with Kadar’s view of Hungary’s political future after the Revolution of 1956. According to her latest interview in Die Junge Welt, she thinks, that political and criminal processes after 1956 were antisemitic.
After Lukács’ death in 1971, the School’s members became victims of political persecution, were made unemployed through their dismissal from their university jobs, and were subjected to official surveillance and general harassment. Rather than remain a dissident, Heller and her husband the philosopher Ferenc Fehér, along with many other members of the core group of the School, chose exile in Australia
in 1977.
in Melbourne
, and they assisted in the transformation of Thesis Eleven
from a labourist journal to a leading Australian journal of social theory before its subsequent conversion to 'American civilization' (Tormey 4–18)(Grumley 5–15).
As described by Tormey, Heller’s mature thought during this time period is based on the tenets that can be attributed to her personal history and experience as a member of the Budapest School, focusing on the stress on the individual as agent; the hostility to the justification of the state of affairs by reference to non-moral or non-ethical criteria; the belief in ‘human substance’ as the origin of everything that is good or worthwhile; and the hostility to forms of theorizing and political practice that deny equality, rationality and self-determination in the name of ‘our’ interests and needs, however defined.
Heller and Fehér left Australia in 1986 to take up positions in The New School
in New York City
, where Heller currently holds the position of Hannah Arendt
Professor of Philosophy in the Graduate Studies Program. Her philosophy continued its neo-liberal postmodernisation which began with its repudiation of Marxism for a functionalist and market-based theory of society and ended with a conversion to a kind of neoconservatism under the influence of the events of 9-11. Her contribution to the field of philosophy has been recognized by the many awards that she has received (such as the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Philosophy, Bremen, 1995) and the Szechenyi National Prize in Hungary, 1995) and the various academic societies that she serves on, including the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 2007 she visited China for a week for the first time.
Heller currently researches and writes prolifically on ethics, Shakespeare
, aesthetics
, political theory, modernity, and the role of Central Europe
in historical events.
In 2006, she was the recipient of the Sonning Prize
, in 2010 she received the Goethe Medal
.
In 2010, Heller, with 26 other well known and successful Hungarian women, joined the campaign for a referendum for a female quota in the Hungarian legislation.
Heller continues to publish internationally renowned works, including republications of her previous works in English, all of which are internationally revered by scholars such as Lydia Goehr (on Heller's The Concept of the Beautiful), Richard Wolin (on Heller's recent republication of A Theory of Feelings), Dmitri Nikulin (on comedy and ethics), John Grumley (whose own work focuses on Heller in Agnes Heller: A Moralist in the Vortex of History), John Rundell (on Heller's aesthetics and theory of modernity), Preben Kaarsholm (on Heller's A Short History of My Philosophy), among others.
Heller is now Professor Emeritus at the New School for Social Research in New York. http://newschool.edu/NSSR/faculty_phil.aspx She continues to work actively both academically and politically around the globe. Recently she has spoken at the Imre Kertesz
College in Jena, Germany together with Polish sociologist, Zygmunt Bauman
http://www.imre-kertesz-kolleg.uni-jena.de/, at the Tuebingen Book Fair in Germany speaking together with Former German Justice Minister, Herta Daeubler-Gmelin, http://www.tagblatt.de/Home/nachrichten/kultur/regionale-kultur_artikel,-Agnes-Heller-mit-Daeubler-Gmelin-und-Wertheimer-im-Pfleghof-_arid,135796.html, and other venues worldwide.
, whom she regards as a dictatorial and antisemitic politician.
After the publication of the lie speech
of Ferenc Gyurcsány
(MSZP-Hungarian Socialist Party) in 2006, she took a position in defense of the MSZP, and especially of Gyurcsány's movement, the Demokratikus Charta -Democratic Charta, in which she sees the only cure for Hungarian antisemitism. During a European Parliament session, she denied that during the civic manifestations to force the resignation of Gyurcsány there had been atrocities against the protesters by the Hungarian police forces. Heller said "no one was shot, no one was tortured, show me a fact"
The source of the controversy over this statement was partly due to the fact that Hungarian demonstrators were shot with rubber bullets
. Some of the liberal press in Hungary claimed that this makes the original statement false. Heller herself states that she thinks that the shot verb in the question of the MP could be translated as shot down and not shot at in Hungarian, and that is why she said, what she said.
She is under intense media pressure from the right-wing media as well. Some of the Hungarian media were concerned with the use of research funds by Heller and other liberal philosophers (Gábor Borbély, Kornél Steiger, Mihaly Vajda
, Sándor Radnóti, and János Weiss) These researchers were the PI
's of peer-reviewed grants of total value 450 million HUF (USD 2.5 million) during the Gyurcsány
government of the liberal minister of SZDSZ, Bálint Magyar.
Heller responds that all the accusations are false and a worrisome symptom of a drift toward authoritarianism
and antisemitism in contemporary Hungary. The left, liberal and international media see the media-accusations as part of a systematic government harassment campaign against its critics.
The only allegations of the right wing media that have since been tested in court -- in the form of lawsuits against the press for false statements and accusations -- have been decided in the Agnes Heller's (and the other accused philosophers) favor. The ongoing accusations of the government-supported press and other media have since been declining, but the police is still investigating the case. The decision on the prosecution is due by the end of 2011.
Numerous European and international scholars have come out in a significant public show of support for Heller and other academics recently under attack in Hungary, as well as expressed grave concern for the harrassment taking place there against the academics. http://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/aufruf-von-habermas-und-nida-ruemelin-schuetzt-die-philosophen-1.1050449 http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/214 http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/789-Open-Letter-to-President-of-Hungarian-Academy-of-Sciences.html Juergen Habermas
and Julian Nida-Rumelin
have published a letter of "Outcry" [Aufruf] in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung in Germany against what they see of the harrassment against Heller and similar liberal academics in Hungary. This letter has been widely circulated and translated into English online. http://www.newappsblog.com/2011/01/translation-of-habermas-and-nida-r%C3%BCmelin-on-the-hungarian-situation.html.
as a counter-revolution. The letter was deemed authentic by historian Fráter Olivér. Heller claims that her first husband, István Hermann, faked the metioned parts of the texts.
Others in Hungary criticize the republishing of her early works. In the new editions, they claim she simply cut out citations from Marx, Lenin, Makarenko and other communist ideologists as well as parts dumping on non-marxist thinkers and writers. According to one of her infamous statements, Dezső Kosztolányi
was moral nihilist, which nihilism is the main characteristic of fascism. She argues that Kosztolányi defined himself as a homo aestethicus, who is opposed to the homo moralis. In Kosztolányi's understanding a homo moralis is narrow minded, focusing only on things he/she regards valuables. A homo moralis is cruel to everyone, starts wars, hangs up people, offers always Paradise in the future, but turns the Earth into hell. According to Heller, the homo aestethicus is unacceptable and can not be tolerated. She wrote that, the socialist morality must be present in the works and in the life of an artist at a very high level. Heller's another argument for his nihilism was that Kosztolányi first had been a supporter of the Hungarian Soviet Republic
, but later he became a journalist of the right wing hungarian newspaper, the Új Nemzedék.
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
, social-democratic position later in her career. In addition to political and social thought, she also concentrates on Hegelian philosophy, ethics
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
, and existentialism
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
.
Early life and political development
Ágnes Heller was raised in a middle-class Jewish family, and her father, Pal Heller, was never able to stay with a single job for very long. During World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
however, he used his legal training and knowledge of German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
to help people get together the necessary paperwork to emigrate from Nazi Europe. In 1944, Heller’s father was deported, along with 450,000 other Hungarian Jews, to the Auschwitz concentration camp
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
where he died before the war ended. Heller and her mother managed to avoid deportation as a result of luck and practical wit.
With regard to the influence of the Holocaust on her work, Heller said:
- I was always interested in the question: How could this possibly happen? How can I understand this? And this experience of the holocaust was joined with my experience in the totalitarianTotalitarianismTotalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
regime. This brought up very similar questions in my soul-search and world investigation: how could this happen? How could people do things like this? So I had to find out what morality is all about, what is the nature of good and evil, what can I do about crime, what can I figure out about the sources of morality and evil? That was the first inquiry. The other inquiry was a social question: what kind of world can produce this? What kind of world allows such things to happen? What is modernity all about? Can we expect redemption?
In 1947, Heller began to study physics and chemistry at the University of Budapest. She changed her focus to philosophy, however, when her boyfriend at the time urged her to listen to the lecture of the Marxist philosopher György Lukács, on the intersections of philosophy and culture. At the time (and ever since), she did not understand the philosophical terminology. However, she was immediately taken by how much his lecture addressed her concerns and interests in how to live in the modern world, especially after the experience of World War II and the Holocaust. Faced with the existential choice between Marxism and Zionism, Heller chose Marxism and did not seek to emigrate to Israel.
1947 was also the year that Heller joined the Communist Party
Hungarian Communist Party
The Communist Party of Hungary , renamed Hungarian Communist Party in 1945, was founded on November 24, 1918, and was in power in Hungary briefly from March to August 1919 under Béla Kun and the Hungarian Soviet Republic. The communist government was overthrown by the Romanian Army and driven...
while at a Zionist work camp and began to develop her interest in Marxism. However, she felt that the Party was stifling the ability of its adherents to think freely due to the belief in Democratic centralism
Democratic centralism
Democratic centralism is the name given to the principles of internal organization used by Leninist political parties, and the term is sometimes used as a synonym for any Leninist policy inside a political party...
(total allegiance) to the Party. She was expelled from it for the first time in 1949, the year that Mátyás Rákosi
Mátyás Rákosi
Mátyás Rákosi was a Hungarian communist politician. He was born as Mátyás Rosenfeld, in present-day Serbia...
came into power and ushered in the years of Stalinist
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
rule.
Early career in Hungary
After 1953 and the installation of Imre NagyImre Nagy
Imre Nagy was a Hungarian communist politician who was appointed Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the People's Republic of Hungary on two occasions...
as Prime Minister, Heller was able to safely undertake her doctoral studies under the supervision of Lukács
Georg Lukács
György Lukács was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher and literary critic. He is a founder of the tradition of Western Marxism. He contributed the concept of reification to Marxist philosophy and theory and expanded Karl Marx's theory of class consciousness. Lukács' was also an influential literary...
, and in 1955 she began to teach at the University of Budapest.
From the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 to the Prague Spring of 1968
The 1956 Hungarian Revolution1956 Hungarian Revolution
The Hungarian Revolution or Uprising of 1956 was a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the government of the People's Republic of Hungary and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956....
was the most important political event of her life, for at this time she saw the effect of the academic freedoms of Marxist critical theory
Critical theory
Critical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...
as dangerous to the entire political and social structure of Hungary. The uprising confirmed Heller’s ideas that what Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
really means is for the people to have political autonomy and collective determination of social life.
Lukács, Heller and other Marxist critical theorists emerged from the Revolution with the belief that Marxism and socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
needed to be applied to different nations in individual ways, effectively questioning the role of the Soviet Union
History of the Soviet Union (1953-1985)
In the USSR, the eleven-year period from the death of Joseph Stalin to the political ouster of Nikita Khrushchev , the national politics were dominated by the Cold War; the ideological U.S.–USSR struggle for the planetary domination of their respective socio–economic systems, and the defense of...
in Hungary’s future. These ideas set Heller on an ideological collision course with the new Moscow-supported government of János Kádár
János Kádár
János Kádár was a Hungarian communist leader and the General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, presiding over the country from 1956 until his forced retirement in 1988. His thirty-two year term as General Secretary makes Kádár the longest ruler of the People's Republic of Hungary...
: Heller was again expelled from the Communist Party and she was dismissed from the University in 1958 for refusing to indict Lukács as a collaborator in the Revolution. She was not able to resume her research until 1963, when she was invited to join the Sociological Institute at the Hungarian Academy
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
The Hungarian Academy of Sciences is the most important and prestigious learned society of Hungary. Its seat is at the bank of the Danube in Budapest.-History:...
as a researcher (Tormey 4–18) (Grumley 5–15).
From 1963 can be seen the emergence of what would later be called the “Budapest School”, a philosophical forum that was formed by Lukács to promote the renewal of Marxist criticism in the face of practiced and theoretical socialism. Other participants in the Budapest School included together with Heller her second husband Ferenc Fehér, György Márkus
György Márkus
György Márkus is a Hungarian philosopher, a student of Lukács and a member of the "Budapest School" of socialist philosophy. He completed his philosophical training at Lomonosov University in Moscow in 1957...
, Mihály Vajda
Mihaly Vajda
Mihaly Vajda is a Hungarian leftist intellectual who took part in the foundational debates surrounding the development of national socialism, Marxism-Leninism, and the state of capitalism in the latter half of the 20th century...
and some other scholars with the looser connection to the school (such as András Hegedűs
András Hegedus
András Hegedüs was a Hungarian Communist politician who served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1955 to 1956. Hegedüs fled to the Soviet Union on 28 October, the fifth day of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956...
, Istvan Eörsi, Janos Kis
János Kis
János Kis is a Hungarian philosopher and political scientist.Kis was born in Budapest, Hungary. He graduated from Philosophy at the Eötvös Loránd University in 1967. Kis was inspired by the ideas of György Lukács, and became marxist in the 1960's. He joined the Hungarian Communist Party too...
and Gyorgy Bence
György Bence
György Bence was a university professor, philosopher, dissident and political consultant....
). The School emphasized the idea of the renaissance of Marxism, described by radical philosophy scholar Simon Tormey as "a flowering of the critical, oppositional potential they believed lay within Marxism and in particular within the ‘early Marx’ ... the Marxism of the individual ‘rich in needs,' of solidarity and self-governance ... they hoped to precipitate a crisis in those systems that had the temerity to call themselves 'socialist'."
Heller’s work from this period, subsequently repudiated, concentrates on themes such as what Marx means to the character of modern societies; liberation theory as applied to the individual; the work of changing society and government from “the bottom up,” and affecting change through the level of the values, beliefs and customs of “everyday life.” Since 1990, Heller has been more interested in the issues of aesthetics in The Concept of The Beautiful(1998), Time Is Out of Joint(2002), and Immortal Comedy(2005).
Career in Hungary after the Prague Spring
Until the events of the 1968 Prague SpringPrague Spring
The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the era of its domination by the Soviet Union after World War II...
, the Budapest School remained supportive of reformist attitudes towards socialism. After the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact
Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance , or more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe...
forces and the crushing of dissent, however, the School and Heller came to believe that the Eastern European regimes were entirely corrupted and that reformist theory was apologist. Heller explains in her interview with Polony that:
- the regime just could not tolerate any other opinion; that is what a totalitarian regime is. But a totalitarian regime cannot totalize entirely, it cannot dismiss pluralism; pluralism exists in the modern world, but it can outlaw pluralism. To outlaw pluralism means that the Party decided which kind of dissenting opinion was allowed. That is, you could not write something without it being allowed by the Party. But we had started to write and think independently and that was such a tremendous challenge against the way the whole system worked. They could not possibly tolerate not playing by the rules of the game. And we did not play by the rules of the game.
This view was completely incompatible with Kadar’s view of Hungary’s political future after the Revolution of 1956. According to her latest interview in Die Junge Welt, she thinks, that political and criminal processes after 1956 were antisemitic.
After Lukács’ death in 1971, the School’s members became victims of political persecution, were made unemployed through their dismissal from their university jobs, and were subjected to official surveillance and general harassment. Rather than remain a dissident, Heller and her husband the philosopher Ferenc Fehér, along with many other members of the core group of the School, chose exile in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
in 1977.
Career abroad
Heller and Fehér encountered what they regarded as the sterility of local culture and lived in relative suburban obscurity close to La Trobe UniversityLa Trobe University
La Trobe University is a multi-campus university in Victoria, Australia. It was established in 1964 by an Act of Parliament to become the third oldest university in the state of Victoria. The main campus of La Trobe is located in the Melbourne suburb of Bundoora; two other major campuses are...
in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, and they assisted in the transformation of Thesis Eleven
Thesis Eleven
Thesis Eleven is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes papers four times a year in the field of Sociology. The journal's editors are Peter Beilharz , Trevor Hogan and Peter Murphy...
from a labourist journal to a leading Australian journal of social theory before its subsequent conversion to 'American civilization' (Tormey 4–18)(Grumley 5–15).
As described by Tormey, Heller’s mature thought during this time period is based on the tenets that can be attributed to her personal history and experience as a member of the Budapest School, focusing on the stress on the individual as agent; the hostility to the justification of the state of affairs by reference to non-moral or non-ethical criteria; the belief in ‘human substance’ as the origin of everything that is good or worthwhile; and the hostility to forms of theorizing and political practice that deny equality, rationality and self-determination in the name of ‘our’ interests and needs, however defined.
The New School
The New School is a university in New York City, located mostly in Greenwich Village. From its founding in 1919 by progressive New York academics, and for most of its history, the university was known as the New School for Social Research. Between 1997 and 2005 it was known as New School University...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, where Heller currently holds the position of Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt was a German American political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact...
Professor of Philosophy in the Graduate Studies Program. Her philosophy continued its neo-liberal postmodernisation which began with its repudiation of Marxism for a functionalist and market-based theory of society and ended with a conversion to a kind of neoconservatism under the influence of the events of 9-11. Her contribution to the field of philosophy has been recognized by the many awards that she has received (such as the Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Philosophy, Bremen, 1995) and the Szechenyi National Prize in Hungary, 1995) and the various academic societies that she serves on, including the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 2007 she visited China for a week for the first time.
Heller currently researches and writes prolifically on ethics, Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
, aesthetics
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
, political theory, modernity, and the role of Central Europe
Central Europe
Central Europe or alternatively Middle Europe is a region of the European continent lying between the variously defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe...
in historical events.
In 2006, she was the recipient of the Sonning Prize
Sonning Prize
The Sonning Prize is awarded biennially for outstanding contributions to European culture. A committee headed by the rector of the University of Copenhagen decides among candidates proposed by European universities. The prize amounts to 1 mio DKK . The prize award ceremony is held on April 19 at...
, in 2010 she received the Goethe Medal
Goethe Medal
The Goethe Medal, also known as the Goethe-Medaille, is a yearly prize given by the Goethe Institute honoring non-Germans for meritorious contributions in the spirit of the Institute. It is an official decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany....
.
In 2010, Heller, with 26 other well known and successful Hungarian women, joined the campaign for a referendum for a female quota in the Hungarian legislation.
Heller continues to publish internationally renowned works, including republications of her previous works in English, all of which are internationally revered by scholars such as Lydia Goehr (on Heller's The Concept of the Beautiful), Richard Wolin (on Heller's recent republication of A Theory of Feelings), Dmitri Nikulin (on comedy and ethics), John Grumley (whose own work focuses on Heller in Agnes Heller: A Moralist in the Vortex of History), John Rundell (on Heller's aesthetics and theory of modernity), Preben Kaarsholm (on Heller's A Short History of My Philosophy), among others.
Heller is now Professor Emeritus at the New School for Social Research in New York. http://newschool.edu/NSSR/faculty_phil.aspx She continues to work actively both academically and politically around the globe. Recently she has spoken at the Imre Kertesz
Imre Kertész
Imre Kertész is a Hungarian Jewish author, Holocaust concentration camp survivor, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002 "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history"....
College in Jena, Germany together with Polish sociologist, Zygmunt Bauman
Zygmunt Bauman
Zygmunt Bauman is a Polish sociologist who, since 1971, has resided in England after being driven out of Poland by an anti-Semitic campaign, engineered by the Communist government which he had previously supported...
http://www.imre-kertesz-kolleg.uni-jena.de/, at the Tuebingen Book Fair in Germany speaking together with Former German Justice Minister, Herta Daeubler-Gmelin, http://www.tagblatt.de/Home/nachrichten/kultur/regionale-kultur_artikel,-Agnes-Heller-mit-Daeubler-Gmelin-und-Wertheimer-im-Pfleghof-_arid,135796.html, and other venues worldwide.
Political sympathies and antipathies
She has been criticized because of her aversion towards right wing politicians, especially towards Viktor OrbánViktor Orbán
Viktor Orbán is a Hungarian populist and conservative politician and current Prime Minister of Hungary...
, whom she regards as a dictatorial and antisemitic politician.
After the publication of the lie speech
Ferenc Gyurcsány's speech in Balatonoszöd in May 2006
Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány gave a speech in Balatonőszöd in May 2006 to MSZP members of the National Assembly of Hungary. This meeting was supposed to be confidential but the Prime Minister's speech was taped and Magyar Rádió began broadcasting it late afternoon on Sunday September...
of Ferenc Gyurcsány
Ferenc Gyurcsány
Ferenc Gyurcsány is a Hungarian politician. He was the sixth Prime Minister of Hungary from 2004 to 2009.He was nominated to take that position on 25 August 2004 by the Hungarian Socialist Party , after Péter Medgyessy resigned due to a conflict with the Socialist Party's coalition partner...
(MSZP-Hungarian Socialist Party) in 2006, she took a position in defense of the MSZP, and especially of Gyurcsány's movement, the Demokratikus Charta -Democratic Charta, in which she sees the only cure for Hungarian antisemitism. During a European Parliament session, she denied that during the civic manifestations to force the resignation of Gyurcsány there had been atrocities against the protesters by the Hungarian police forces. Heller said "no one was shot, no one was tortured, show me a fact"
The source of the controversy over this statement was partly due to the fact that Hungarian demonstrators were shot with rubber bullets
Rubber Bullets
"Rubber Bullets" is a song by 10cc from their debut self-titled album.Written and sung by Kevin Godley, Lol Creme and Graham Gouldman and produced by 10cc, "Rubber Bullets" was the band's first number one single in the United Kingdom, spending a single week at the top in June 1973. It fared worse...
. Some of the liberal press in Hungary claimed that this makes the original statement false. Heller herself states that she thinks that the shot verb in the question of the MP could be translated as shot down and not shot at in Hungarian, and that is why she said, what she said.
Public funds
Ágnes Heller is now under police investigation in connection with alleged financial fraud in the Philosophy Department of the Academy of Hungarian Sciences.Government accountability commissioner Gyula Budai has claimed, that she is responsible for misusing public funds.She is under intense media pressure from the right-wing media as well. Some of the Hungarian media were concerned with the use of research funds by Heller and other liberal philosophers (Gábor Borbély, Kornél Steiger, Mihaly Vajda
Mihaly Vajda
Mihaly Vajda is a Hungarian leftist intellectual who took part in the foundational debates surrounding the development of national socialism, Marxism-Leninism, and the state of capitalism in the latter half of the 20th century...
, Sándor Radnóti, and János Weiss) These researchers were the PI
Principal investigator
A principal investigator is the lead scientist or engineer for a particular well-defined science project, such as a laboratory study or clinical trial....
's of peer-reviewed grants of total value 450 million HUF (USD 2.5 million) during the Gyurcsány
Ferenc Gyurcsány
Ferenc Gyurcsány is a Hungarian politician. He was the sixth Prime Minister of Hungary from 2004 to 2009.He was nominated to take that position on 25 August 2004 by the Hungarian Socialist Party , after Péter Medgyessy resigned due to a conflict with the Socialist Party's coalition partner...
government of the liberal minister of SZDSZ, Bálint Magyar.
Heller responds that all the accusations are false and a worrisome symptom of a drift toward authoritarianism
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and democracy...
and antisemitism in contemporary Hungary. The left, liberal and international media see the media-accusations as part of a systematic government harassment campaign against its critics.
The only allegations of the right wing media that have since been tested in court -- in the form of lawsuits against the press for false statements and accusations -- have been decided in the Agnes Heller's (and the other accused philosophers) favor. The ongoing accusations of the government-supported press and other media have since been declining, but the police is still investigating the case. The decision on the prosecution is due by the end of 2011.
Numerous European and international scholars have come out in a significant public show of support for Heller and other academics recently under attack in Hungary, as well as expressed grave concern for the harrassment taking place there against the academics. http://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/aufruf-von-habermas-und-nida-ruemelin-schuetzt-die-philosophen-1.1050449 http://www.e-flux.com/journal/view/214 http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/789-Open-Letter-to-President-of-Hungarian-Academy-of-Sciences.html Juergen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...
and Julian Nida-Rumelin
Julian Nida-Rümelin
Julian Nida-Rümelin is a German philosopher. He was born in Munich into a family with a long artistic tradition.-Background:Nida-Rümelin studied philosophy, physics, mathematics and political sciences...
have published a letter of "Outcry" [Aufruf] in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung in Germany against what they see of the harrassment against Heller and similar liberal academics in Hungary. This letter has been widely circulated and translated into English online. http://www.newappsblog.com/2011/01/translation-of-habermas-and-nida-r%C3%BCmelin-on-the-hungarian-situation.html.
Early political activity in Hungary
The right wing daily, Magyar Hírlap published one of her letters sent to the MSZMP, in 1959, begging her reemployment at the university. It includes passages like "As a communist and member of MSZMP I feel it is my duty" and it describes the 1956 Revolution in Hungary1956 Hungarian Revolution
The Hungarian Revolution or Uprising of 1956 was a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the government of the People's Republic of Hungary and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956....
as a counter-revolution. The letter was deemed authentic by historian Fráter Olivér. Heller claims that her first husband, István Hermann, faked the metioned parts of the texts.
Others in Hungary criticize the republishing of her early works. In the new editions, they claim she simply cut out citations from Marx, Lenin, Makarenko and other communist ideologists as well as parts dumping on non-marxist thinkers and writers. According to one of her infamous statements, Dezső Kosztolányi
Dezso Kosztolányi
-Biography:Kosztolányi was born in Szabadka, Austro-Hungarian monarchy in 1885, the town belongs today to Serbia. The city serves as a model for the fictional town of Sárszeg, in which he set his novella Skylark as well as The Golden Kite....
was moral nihilist, which nihilism is the main characteristic of fascism. She argues that Kosztolányi defined himself as a homo aestethicus, who is opposed to the homo moralis. In Kosztolányi's understanding a homo moralis is narrow minded, focusing only on things he/she regards valuables. A homo moralis is cruel to everyone, starts wars, hangs up people, offers always Paradise in the future, but turns the Earth into hell. According to Heller, the homo aestethicus is unacceptable and can not be tolerated. She wrote that, the socialist morality must be present in the works and in the life of an artist at a very high level. Heller's another argument for his nihilism was that Kosztolányi first had been a supporter of the Hungarian Soviet Republic
Hungarian Soviet Republic
The Hungarian Soviet Republic or Soviet Republic of Hungary was a short-lived Communist state established in Hungary in the aftermath of World War I....
, but later he became a journalist of the right wing hungarian newspaper, the Új Nemzedék.
Awards, honors (selection)
- LessingLessingLessing - German family of writers and artists*Johann Gottfried Lessing pastor primarus in Kamenz, well respected, published theologian, translator and father of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Karl Gotthelf Lessing...
Award, Hamburg (1981) - Hannah ArendtHannah ArendtHannah Arendt was a German American political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact...
professor of Philosophy, Bremen, (1994) - Széchenyi Award (1995) – Tudományos munkássága elismeréseként.
- Doctor honoris causa, Melbourne, (1996)
- Order of Merit of the Hungarian Republic (Civilian), Grand Cross - Star (2004)
- European ParliamentEuropean ParliamentThe European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...
Italian Section Award (2004) - Pro Scientia Golden Medal (2005)
- SonningSonningSonning, occasionally called Sonning-on-Thames is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Wokingham in the English county of Berkshire, a few miles east of Reading. The village is situated on the River Thames and was described by Jerome K...
Award (2006) - Hermann CohenHermann CohenHermann Cohen was a German-Jewish philosopher, one of the founders of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism, and he is often held to be "probably the most important Jewish philosopher of the nineteenth century".-Life:...
Award (2007) - Vig Mónika Award (2007)
- Mazsike Várhegyi György Award (2007)
- Freeman of BudapestBudapestBudapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
(2008) - Goethe-MedalGoethe MedalThe Goethe Medal, also known as the Goethe-Medaille, is a yearly prize given by the Goethe Institute honoring non-Germans for meritorious contributions in the spirit of the Institute. It is an official decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany....
(2010) - MSZP Medal for public activity (2011)
Articles
- The Marxist Theory of Revolution and the Revolution in Everyday Life (TELOS Fall 1970)
- On the New Adventures of the Dialectic (TELOS Spring 1977)
- Forms of Equality (TELOS Sumer 1977)
- Comedy and Rationality (TELOS Fall 1980)
- The Antinomies of Peace (TELOS Fall 1982)
- From Red to Green (TELOS Spring 1984)
- Lukacs and the Holy Family (TELOS Winter 1984-5)
Books
- A mai történelmi regény, (The Historical Novel Today, in Hungarian) Budapest, Múlt és Jövő Kiadó, 2011.
- The insolubility of the "jewish question", or Why was I born hebrew, and why not negro? Budapest, Múlt és Jövő Kiadó, 2004.
- Beyond Justice, Oxford, Boston, Basil Blackwell, 1988
- Can Modernity Survive?, Cambridge, Berkeley, Los Angeles: Polity Press and University of California Press, 1990
- Dictatorship Over Needs (with F. Fehér and G. Markus). Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983
- Doomsday or Deterrence (with F. Fehér). White Plains: M.E. Sharpe, 1986
- Eastern Left – Western Left (Freedom, Totalitarianism, Democracy) (with F. Fehér). Cambridge, New York: Polity Press, Humanities Press, 1987
- An Ethics of Personality, Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1996
- From Yalta to Glasnost (The Dismantling of Stalin's Empire) (with F. Fehér). Oxford, Boston: 1990
- General Ethics, Oxford, Boston: Basil Blackwell, 1989
- The Grandeur and Twilight of Radical Universalism (with F. Fehér). New Brunswick: Transaction, 1990
- The Humanisation of Socialism (with A. Hegedus et alii.), (collected papers trans. from Hungarian). London: Allison and Busby, 1976
- Hungary, 1956 Revisited: The Message of a Revolution A Quarter of a Century After (with F. Fehér). London, Boston, Sydney: George Allen and Unwin, 1983
- Immortal Comedy: The Comic Phenomenon in Art, Literature, and Life, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc, November 2005.
- Individuum and Praxis (Positionen der Budapester Schule), (collected essays trans. from Hungarian, with G. Lukács et al.). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1975
- On Instincts (English trans. of Hungarian original). Assen: Van Gorcum, 1979
- Lukács Revalued, editor. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983. (Paperback, 1984)
- A Philosophy of Morals, Oxford, Boston: Basil Blackwell, 1990.
- The Postmodern Political Condition (with F. Fehér), Cambridge, New York: Polity Press Columbia University Press, 1989
- The Power of Shame (A Rationalist Perspective), London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985
- Reconstructing Aesthetics, editor with F. Fehér. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986
- Renaissance Man (English trans. of Hungarian original). London, Boston, Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978.
- A Theory of Modernity, Blackwell Publishers, Cambridge MA, 1999
- A Theory of Need in Marx, London: Allison and Busby, 1976.
- The Time is Out of Joint: Shakespeare as Philosopher of History, Blackwell Publishers, Cambridge MA, 2000
- Towards a Marxist Theory of Value, Carbondale: University of Southern Illinois, Telos Books, 1972.
External links
- Collegium Budapest http://www.colbud.hu
- Interview with Ágnes Heller: Post Marxism and the Ethics of Modernity, A Brief History of Radical Philosophy 2005. 2 December 2005 http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/default.asp?channel_id=2190&editorial_id=10186
- Heller, Ágnes. The Three Logics of Modernity and the Double Bind of the Modern Imagination, Collegium Budapest, 2 December 2005. http://www.colbud.hu/main_old/PubArchive/PL/PL23-Heller.pdf (.pdf file)
- Robert KuhnRobert KuhnRobert Kuhn may refer to:*Robert Lawrence Kuhn , American author, investment banker, China specialist, television host*Robert T. Kuhn , American clergyman, president of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod...
, Marxism Overview, 24 August 2004, 2 December 2005. http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/marx.html - Mikko Mäntysaari, Ágnes Heller, 2 December 2005 http://www.netn.fi/395/netn_395_manty.html
- Liam McNamara, Michael E. Gardiner (2000) Critiques of Everyday Life, New York and London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-11314-8. 2 December 2005. http://culturemachine.tees.ac.uk/Reviews/rev12.htm
- Simon Tormey Interviews with Agnes Heller (1998)” 1 February 2004. 2 December 2005. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/simon.tormey/articles/hellerinterview.html
- Agnes Heller at University of Milan, Italy, 7 May 2008. http://www.secretum-online.it/default.php?idnodo=27&PHPSESSID=ad591fd197c3ef49ff811ed8c85128a5
- Interview with Agnes Heller, "On Ethics of Personality", by Andrea Vestrucci, in Secretum 16-2008 http://www.secretum-online.it/default.php?idnodo=720
- Beyond justice
- Interview with Ágnes Heller