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Abstract
Agnes Heller is one of the leading thinkers to come out of the tradition of critical theory. Her awesome intellectual range and output includes ethics, philosophical anthropology, political philosophy and a theory of modernity and its culture.
Hungarian by birth, she was one of the best known dissident Marxists in central Europe in the 1960's and 1970's. Since her forced immigration she has held visiting lectureships all over the world and has been the Hannah Arendt Professor of Philosophy at the New School in New York for the last twenty years.
This introduction to her thought is ideal for all students of philosophy, political theory and sociology. Grumley explores Heller's early work, elaborating her relation to Lukacs and the evolution of her own version of Marxism. He examines the subsequent break with Marxism and the initial development of an alternative radical philosophy. Finally, he explains and assesses her mature reflective post-modernism, a perspective that is both sceptical and utopian, that upholds a critical humanist perspective just as it critiques contemporary democratic culture.
Table of Contents
| Section Title | Page | Action | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contents | v | ||
| Introduction: Dark Times, the Existential Choice and the Moral Mission | 1 | ||
| Part I: The ‘Renaissance of Marxism’ | 17 | ||
| 1. Lukács, Ethics and Everyday Life | 19 | ||
| Lukács Philosophical Anthropology | 20 | ||
| To View the World Rationally | 23 | ||
| Is There a Place for Ethics in Marxism? | 27 | ||
| Everyday Life and Revolution | 29 | ||
| 2. Towards a Philosophical Anthropology | 39 | ||
| Values and History | 39 | ||
| The Plasticity of the Human | 43 | ||
| Feelings and Bourgeois Impoverishment | 49 | ||
| Needs and Capitalist Dynamics | 54 | ||
| 3. Critique of 'Really Existing Socialism' | 61 | ||
| The Classical Options | 63 | ||
| Politics and Culture in a Legitimisation Vacuum | 68 | ||
| The Negative Potential of Modernity | 73 | ||
| Part II: Towards a Post-Marxist Radicalism | 81 | ||
| 4. The Quest for Philosophical Radicalism | 83 | ||
| To Give the World a Norm | 84 | ||
| The Constitutive Tension of Philosophy | 85 | ||
| Professionalisation and the Crisis of Philosophy | 88 | ||
| Philosophy as Rational Utopia | 91 | ||
| Ambitious Tasks and Residual Tensions | 93 | ||
| 5. Beyond Philosophy of History and the Ascription of Needs | 96 | ||
| Consciousness of Reflected Generality | 97 | ||
| Critique of the Concept of Progress | 101 | ||
| A Theory of History | 103 | ||
| The False Ontology of Needs | 104 | ||
| Needs and Pluralism | 106 | ||
| 6. Rationality through the Prism of Everyday Life | 111 | ||
| The Problemisation of Everyday Life | 111 | ||
| The Sphere of Objectivation in Itself | 113 | ||
| Cultural Surplus and the Attitudes of Reason | 114 | ||
| Specialisation and the Sphere of Institutions | 117 | ||
| Towards a Theory of Modernity | 120 | ||
| Cultural Objectivation and the Rationality of Intellect | 122 | ||
| Rationality and the Whole Person | 125 | ||
| 7. The Limits of Modern Justice | 129 | ||
| The Historicity of Justice and its Conceptual Fragmentation | 130 | ||
| Dynamic Justice and the Incomplete Ethico-Political Project | 132 | ||
| The Scientificisation of Justice | 136 | ||
| Resuscitating the Ethico-Political Concept of Justice | 140 | ||
| Rawls and Habermas | 142 | ||
| Beyond Justice | 147 | ||
| 8. A New Theory of Modernity | 153 | ||
| From Historical Materialism to Rethinking Modernity | 153 | ||
| The Logics of Modernity | 156 | ||
| Dissatisfied Society | 163 | ||
| Reassessing Consumerism | 166 | ||
| The Future of Democracy | 169 | ||
| 9. The Ethical Imperative | 177 | ||
| The Historicity of Morals and the New Contingency | 178 | ||
| The Instrumentarium of Ethics | 180 | ||
| Meaning, Norms and Rules | 182 | ||
| Differentiation, Morality and Responsibility | 185 | ||
| The Crisis of Moral Authority | 186 | ||
| The Normative Question and the Existential Choice | 191 | ||
| The New Sittlichkeit | 194 | ||
| Authenticity, Institutional Existence and Civil Courage | 196 | ||
| Phronesis and the Everyday | 199 | ||
| Part III: ‘Reflective Postmodernism’ | 203 | ||
| 10. The Spirit of Our Congregation | 205 | ||
| The Subjectivisation of Philosophy | 206 | ||
| On the Railway Station | 210 | ||
| Continuity and Reflection | 213 | ||
| Philosophy in the Age of Contingency\r | 217 | ||
| 11. The Pendulum of Modernity | 220 | ||
| The Constituents of Modernity | 222 | ||
| Multiple Logics | 224 | ||
| The Logic of Technology | 226 | ||
| The Logic of Allocation | 228 | ||
| The Logic of Political Power and Domination | 231 | ||
| The Quality of 'Radical Needs' | 235 | ||
| Real Needs and Utopian Radicalism | 238 | ||
| Surviving Modernity | 239 | ||
| 12. Paradoxical Cultural Modernity | 244 | ||
| Three Concepts of Culture | 245 | ||
| Cultural Discourse and Normative Culture | 249 | ||
| The Threat of Omnivorous Culture | 251 | ||
| Culture and Technics | 252 | ||
| Diagnostic Difficulties and Theoretical Tensions | 257 | ||
| 13. Autonomy, Irony and Ethics | 260 | ||
| Personal Ethics as Destiny | 261 | ||
| The Truth of an Ethics of Personality | 264 | ||
| The Wisdom of Moral Aesthetics | 269 | ||
| Is an Existentialist Ethics of Personality Viable? | 273 | ||
| 14. Conclusion | 276 | ||
| Ethical Burdens and Lost Illusions | 277 | ||
| Critical Humanism | 279 | ||
| Utopian Ambitions and Orientative Philosophy | 282 | ||
| Notes | 291 | ||
| Bibliography | 321 | ||
| Index | 325 |