Ágnes Heller

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ágnes Heller (2015)

Ágnes Heller (born May 12, 1929 in Budapest , † July 19, 2019 in Balatonalmádi ) was a Hungarian philosopher who lived in Budapest and New York City .

Life

During the Holocaust, Ágnes Heller, who was of Jewish origin, together with her mother repeatedly managed to avoid deportation and murder , partly through presence of mind, partly through sheer luck . Her father and numerous other relatives were victims of the persecution of the Jews during the Nazi dictatorship . In an interview from 2014, she reports that her grandmother was "the first woman to study at the University of Vienna".

After graduating from high school , Ágnes Heller matriculated in 1947 at the University of Budapest for physics and chemistry. Under the impression of a lecture by Georg Lukács, she changed subjects and began to study philosophy . She received her doctorate in 1955 from Lukács and finally his assistant.

After decades of political repression in Hungary, Heller emigrated to Australia in 1977, where she held a sociology professorship at La Trobe University in Melbourne from 1978 to 1983 . In 1986 she was appointed to the Hannah Arendt Chair at the Philosophy Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York .

Since her retirement, she has been commuting between Budapest and New York every six months.

In 2001 and 2002 she was a Fellow of the Weimar College Friedrich Nietzsche on the subject of "On the theory of modernity". In 2013, as Sir Peter Ustinov Visiting Professor for the City of Vienna, she gave lectures on the subject of “The World of Prejudices” at the Institute for Contemporary History at the University of Vienna.

Politically, she positioned herself against the policies of the Fidesz - Hungarian Citizens' Union and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán . She said in an interview for ZEIT Geschichte 2013: “Orbán is a dictator, but Hungary is not a dictatorship”.

Contrary to her earlier opinion, Heller said that the collaboration with Jobbik should not be ruled out. She also said that she never thought of Jobbik as a neo-Nazi party. In her opinion, the party has made racist and anti-Semitic statements, but with its development it has proven a lot and the most important thing is what the party says today.

Ágnes Heller died in July 2019 at the age of 90 when, according to eyewitness reports, she “swam out to Lake Balaton and never returned”.

Thoughts

In her first work Der Mensch in der Renaissance (published in Hungarian in 1967, in English in 1978, in German in 1988), Heller's thinking revolved around life and freedom as the highest values. In addition, there is the question of how the human relationship to nature is to be understood as social and historical.

In the eligibility of history , she hermeneutically developed these thoughts further. In the afterword to the German edition she wrote: "I was already convinced in 'Der Mensch der Renaissance', and have been since then, that all great achievements of culture arise from the needs, conflicts and problems of everyday life". Accordingly, she emphasized everyday life .

On the basis of a detailed Marxist consideration, Heller developed a detailed “theory of needs ” with which she could, for example, criticize the “dictatorship of needs” in the Eastern Bloc. For them, philosophical anthropology has its origins in the Renaissance, which differs significantly from earlier ages through a “pluralistic moral value system”. She also spoke out in favor of taking sides for life and freedom based on empathy .

Awards

Fonts (selection)

The World of Prejudice (2014)
  • The man of the renaissance. [Original 1967; English 1978.] Translated from the Hungarian by Hans-Henning Paetzke . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1988.
  • Everyday Life and History - On Socialist Society. Luchterhand, Neuwied 1970.
  • Theory of needs in Marx. With a foreword by Pier Aldo Rovatti . Berlin 1976.
  • The soul and the life. Studies on the early Lukács. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1977.
  • Everyday life. Attempt to explain individual reproduction. Edited and introduced by Hans Joas . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1978.
  • Theory of feelings. VSA, Hamburg 1980.
  • The left in the east - the left in the west. A contribution to the morphology of a problematic relationship. Index e. V., Cologne 1986.
  • Is the modern age viable? Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1995.
  • Biopolitics. From d. Engl. By Felix Ensslin . Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1995.
  • The monkey on the bike: a life story. Edited by János Köbányai. Translated from the Hungarian by Christian Polzin and Irene Rübbert. Philo, Berlin / Vienna 1999.
  • The resurrection of the Jewish Jesus. Translated from the Hungarian by Christina Kunze. Philo, Berlin / Vienna 2002.
  • After twenty years . (PDF) In Bernd Florath (ed.): The year of the revolution 1989 - The democratic revolution in Eastern Europe as a transnational turning point. Scientific series of the Federal Commissioner , Volume 34. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-525-35045-4 , pp. 19-29.
  • Nietzsche on Dreams. In: The Curiosity of the Happy. Edited by B.-Christoph Streckhardt. Verlag der Bauhaus-Universität Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-86068-474-0 .
  • The world of prejudice. History and foundations for the human and the inhuman. Edition Konturen, Vienna / Hamburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-902968-03-6 .
  • From utopia to dystopia: what can we wish for? Edition Konturen, Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-902968-20-3 .
  • A brief history of my philosophy . Edition Konturen, Vienna 2017, ISBN 978-3-902968-25-8 .
  • What's weird? Art, literature, life and the immortal comedy . Edition Konturen, Vienna 2018, ISBN 978-3-902968-30-2 .
  • Paradox Europe . Edition Konturen, Vienna 2019, ISBN 978-3-902968-41-8 .

See also

literature

  • Theres Jöhl: Ágnes Heller: Paradoxe Freedom. A historical-philosophical consideration . Athena, Oberhausen 2001
  • János Boros, Mihály Vajda (Ed.): Ethics and Heritage. Essays on the philosophy of Agnes Heller . Brambauer, Pécs 2007
  • Georg Hauptfeld, The Value of Chance. Ágnes Heller about her life and her time. Edition Konturen, Vienna – Hamburg 2018
  • Jürgen Habermas : Farewell to a philosopher In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of July 22, 2019, p. 9
  • Ludger Hagedorn: Be patient with the truth . In: Die Zeit , No. 31/2019; Obituary.

Web links

Commons : Ágnes Heller  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Meghalt Heller Ágnes filozófus. Retrieved July 19, 2019 (Hungarian). ; see also: Hungarian philosopher: Ágnes Heller died . zeit online, July 19, 2019 (accessed July 19, 2019)
  2. ↑ The meaning of life is to live , interview with Tobias Haberl, in Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin , January 24, 2014, accessed online May 3, 2020
  3. ↑ Martin Jay: Women in dark times: Agnes Heller and Hannah Arendt . In: Leviathan . tape 22 , no. 2 . Nomos, 1994, ISSN  0340-0425 , p. 179-194 , JSTOR : 23983894 .
  4. ^ Philosophy Faculty. The New School for Social Research , accessed July 20, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Klassik-stiftung.de
  6. ↑ Europe's path to fascism . In: Die Zeit / ZEIT history number = 3/13 . November 4, 2013 ( zeit.de [accessed April 25, 2016]).
  7. ↑ Heller Ágnes és a Jobbik közeledése | Magyar Idok . In: Magyar Idők . ( magyaridok.hu [accessed February 12, 2018]).
  8. ↑ "Fogják be az orrukat!" - Heller Ágnes a Jobbikról és a 2018-as választások tétjéről. Retrieved February 12, 2018 (Hungarian).
  9. ↑ Stefan Dornuf: Every day one of the toes presses somewhere else - on the death of the Hungarian philosopher and Orban opponent Ágnes Heller . nzz.ch, published and accessed on July 20, 2019.
  10. ↑ Bayreuth Model Prize. In: bayreuther dialoge 2019. Retrieved on August 20, 2019 (American English).
  11. ↑ orf.at: Agnes Heller receives Manes-Sperber-Preis. Article dated May 24, 2018, accessed June 14, 2018.
  12. ↑ Wolfgang Müller-Funk : Ágnes Heller: The horror, the comical and the story. In: derStandard.at. June 13, 2018, accessed June 13, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Heller, Ágnes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian philosopher
DATE OF BIRTH May 12, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Budapest , Hungary
DATE OF DEATH 19th July 2019
Place of death Balatonalmádi