Engaging Agnes Heller A Critical Companion

by Terezakis, Katie; Beilharz, Peter; Bernstein, Richard J.; Boros, Janos; Don, Kira Brunner; Friedland, Amos; Grumley, John; Heller, Agnes; Hutter, Horst; Kaarsholm, Preben; Nikulin, Dmitri; Terezakis, Katie; Tormey, Simon; Turner, Bryan S.

• ISBN13: 9780739122563
• ISBN10: 0739122568
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-03-16
• Publisher: Lexington Books

Summary

This collection of essays examines the life and thought of Agnes Heller, who rose to international acclaim as a Marxist dissident in Eastern Europe before going on to develop one of the most comprehensive oeuvres in contemporary philosophy, which includes a distinctive ethical theory and analyses of a vast range of topics covering almost every philosophical area. In this volume, philosophers, sociologists, journalists, and political scientists contextualize, compare, and assess different elements of Heller's writings, and highlight the shifts and consistencies of her work as a whole. Essays in the collection address the relationship between philosophy, political practice, and everyday life; Heller's theory of modernity and her ethical theory; her recent scholarship on comedy and the Biblical book of Genesis; her theories of radical needs and radical politics; her aesthetic theory; and questions about her relationship to feminist theory. The book includes Heller's reflections on the collected essays, as well as an early essay on her mentor Lukcs that exposes her own steadfast engagement with certain practical and philosophical issues throughout her life's work. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Katie Terezakis is assistant professor of philosophy at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Table of Contents

Editor's Introduction	p. 1
Laudatio for Agnes Heller	p. 11
Marxism and Exile: Reflections On Intellectual Migration	p. 23
Agnes Heller's Theory of Modernity	p. 37
Why Does Agnes Heller Matter? Political Action, social Change and Radical Politics in the Twenty-First Century	p. 45
The Power of Radical Needs	p. 63
Remembrance of Things Future: From Totalitarianism to Fundamentalism	p. 79
Existential Choice: Heller's Either/Or	p. 87
Narrative Philosophy: An Essay on Agnes Heller	p. 101
To Agnes Heller: An Open Letter on Philosophy and the Real Problem of Woman	p. 123
Loving Fate Amos Friedland	p. 141
Agnes Heller as Autobiographer: History and a Myriad of Contexts	p. 159
The Comedy of Philosophy	p. 167
Nietzsche's Thumotic Politics: A Programmatic Statement with an Eye on Agnes Heller	p. 193
From Contingency to Destiny: On Heller's Existential Ethics	p. 223
Reflections on the Essays Addressed to My Work	p. 235
Appendix "Von der Armut am Geiste": A Dialogue by the Young Lukács	p. 253
Further Reading	p. 263
Index	p. 265
Contributors	p. 271
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