Engaging Agnes Heller A Critical Companion

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.

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