Agnes Heller

John Grumley

Description

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.
Acknowledgements

Introduction

Dark Times, the Existential Choice and the Moral Mission

Section 1: The Renaissance of Marx

1: Lukacs, Ethics and Everyday Life

2: Towards a Philosophical Anthropology

3: Critique of Really Existing Socialism

Section 2: Towards Post-Marxist Radicalism

4: The Quest for Philosophical Radicalism

6: Rationality through the Prism of Everyday Life

7: The Limits of Modern Justice

8: A New Theory of Modernity

9: The Ethical Imperative

Section 3: Reflective Post-Modernism

10: The Spirit of Our Congregation

11: The Pendulum of Modernity

12: Paradoxical Cultural Modernity

13: Autonomy, Irony and Ethics

15: Conclusion:

References

Index

Sujets

• Philosophie de la psychologie
• Political
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Postmodernism
• Social
• Ethique et morale
• Philosophie politique

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 décembre 2004
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849644792
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

AGNES HELLER
A Moralist in the Vortex of History
John Grumley
Pluto P Press
LONDON ANN ARBOR, MI
Grumley 00 pre iii 4/10/04 3:34:55 pmFirst published 2005 by
Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106
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Copyright © John Grumley 2005
The right of John Grumley to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
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Grumley 00 pre iv 4/10/04 3:34:55 pmContents
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction: Dark Times, the Existential Choice and
the Moral Mission 1
Part I: The ‘Renaissance of Marxism’
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
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 Refl ected Generality 97
Critique of the Concept of Progress 101
A Theory of History 103
The False Ontology of Needs 104
Needs and Pluralism 106
Grumley 00 pre v 4/10/04 3:34:55 pmvi AGNES HELLER
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 Scientifi sation 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
Dissatisfi ed 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: ‘Refl ective Postmodernism’
10. The Spirit of Our Congregation 205
The Subjectivisation of Philosophy 206
On the Railway Station 210
Continuity and Refl ection 213
Philosophy in the Age of Contingency 217
Grumley 00 pre vi 4/10/04 3:34:55 pm CONTENTS vii
11. The Pendulum of Modernity 220
The Constituents of Modernity 222
Multiple ‘Logics’ 224
The ‘Logic’ of Technology 226
gic’ 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 Diffi culties 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
Grumley 00 pre vii 4/10/04 3:34:56 pm0-7453-1854-1-14index.qxd 28/04/2005 11:24 Page 208For Pol
Grumley 00 pre ix 4/10/04 3:34:56 pm0-7453-1854-1-14index.qxd 28/04/2005 11:24 Page 208Acknowledgements
It takes a long time to read all of Heller’s works and it took me a
great deal longer to get to the point where I felt able to offer an
interpretation.
I would like to take this occasion to express my thanks to several
members of the former Budapest School who have assisted this project
in various ways. Foremost I thank my former teacher, György Márkus.
To be the pupil of a great master is a real privilege. Since that time we
have been friends and colleagues. I’ve learnt more about philosophy from
him than I could say. It was he who arranged some of my fi rst meetings
with Agnes Heller. I would also like to thank both him and Maria
Márkus for their comments on an early version of my Introduction.
On my fi rst visit to New York in 1994, Agnes Heller and Ferenc Fehér
very kindly offered me the use of their New York apartment while they
were away. Agnes has always been very generous with her time and a
diligent e-mail correspondent for bibliographical and other queries.
Mihaly Vajda took time to show Pauline and me around Budapest in
1995 and answer some biographical and theoretical queries.
I would also like to thank the editors of Thesis Eleven, who thought
so highly of Heller that they published several of my earlier efforts to
get her into focus, and Anthony Winder at Pluto Press for his excellent
copy-editing of the fi nal draft. Harriet Johnson often kept me amused
and gave generously in the fi nal production of the manuscript and index.
Finally, I express my gratitude to Pauline Johnson, who read various
versions of all the chapters, suggested many improvements and forced
me to make most of them. Naturally, I take full responsibility for the
fi nal product.
xi
Grumley 00 pre xi 4/10/04 3:34:56 pmIntroduction:
Dark Times, the Existential
Choice and the Moral Mission
‘My work is my whole life’ – Agnes Heller
For almost 30 years Agnes Heller has been recognised as one of the
leading thinkers to emerge from the tradition of Western Marxist critical
theory. After Leszek Kolakowski, she is the best-known philosopher to
emerge from the now defunct Eastern European communist regimes.
Her books have been translated into most European languages and
she is regarded as a public intellectual in Hungary, Germany and Italy.
She has authored or co-authored more than 30 works on an amazing
variety of topics and thinkers in the history of philosophy and has
developed her own unique philosophical vision. She has written on
ancient, Renaissance and modern philosophy. The impressive historical
coverage of her work is matched by its almost unparalleled diversity.
While centred in ethics and social and political philosophy, she has
extended the orbit of all, introducing novel and neglected areas and
topics as well as writing extensively on aesthetics and culture in an ever
extending range. Despite this very considerable achievement and the
adoption of English as her main language of publication since the late
1970s, her resonance in the English-speaking world has not been as
great as that of other leading European contemporaries such as Jürgen
Habermas and Michel Foucault. Aside from two early books by John
Burnheim and Douglas Brown that focused respectively on her social
1philosophy and on the work of the Budapest School, Simon Tormey’s
recent Agnes Heller: Socialism, Autonomy and the Postmodern is the only
2monograph to give an introductory presentation of her main ideas.
He also comments on the remarkable lack of secondary material on
Heller, given ‘her prodigious output, the complexity of her work and
the profound changes in her outlook over the course of her long career’.
To explain the relative neglect of her work we need to recall the unique
circumstance of her early works.
Heller came to prominence from behind the Iron Curtain as a star
pupil of the great Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukács. In collaboration
1
Grumley 01 intro 1 4/10/04 3:34:20 pm2 AGNES HELLER
with his informal group of followers (the Budapest School) she worked
within his programme of ‘Marx Renaissance’ and initially contented
herself with the role of humble interpreter of Marx. This claim has
an ironical aspect, as she testifi es to the fact that Marx never played a
leading role in her early conception of the tasks of philosophy. Yet the
fi rst work to bring her to a wide international audience was Marx’s
Theory of Needs (1976). This was supposed to be a ‘fi nger exercise’
towards her own never completed theory of needs, which became
redundant once her own interpretative effort had said exactly what
she wanted to say. Even the theoretically path-breaking Everyday Life
(published in Hungarian in 1970), which laid the foundations of her
own independent paradigm, was couched in a forbidding Hegelian
terminology that belied its real originality. Thus, while often breaking
new theoretical ground and introducing innovative topics such as
everyday life, needs, feelings and instincts into the purview of