Ágnes Heller Archives - Public Seminar

Politics

Social Research at 90

Announcing the Spring 2024 issue

April 26, 2024 • by Social Research

The Spring 2024 issue of Social Research marks the 90th anniversary of Social Research. The Spring 2024 anniversary issue reprints articles that have appeared in Social Research over the last 20 years. ...

Feature

On the Death of My Dear Friend, Agnes Heller

“Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas”

August 9, 2019 • by Andrew Arato

Such was Agnes’ principle: she valued her friends and of course her loved ones, but truth was always her highest value. For me, friends have always come first. Hers was the principle of the philosopher, mine that of the political. In philosophy, truth is everything. But in politics nothing is ...

Feature

Remembering Agnes Heller

A tribute to a great philosopher

July 23, 2019 • by Judith Friedlander

It is with deep sadness that I write to let The New School for Social Research community know that our cherished colleague Agnes Heller, Hannah Arendt Professor of Philosophy, died on July 19, nine weeks after celebrating her 90th birthday. She was vacationing with friends and colleagues on Lake Balaton, ...

Feature

Telescopes for our Senses

The Interstellar Imagination of Alexander Kluge

March 29, 2019 • by Max L. Feldman

In his Critique of Practical Reason, Immanuel Kant said two things fill the mind with awe: “the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.” This image, bridging the vast gap between our inner lives and outer space, is vital for Alexander Kluge, too. We need to develop “the ...

Feature

Ágnes Heller: Orbán is a Tyrant

From the time he became the prime minister of Hungary, Orban was always interested in concentrating all the power in his hands.

August 26, 2018 • by Jan Smoleński

Jan Smoleński: Is Viktor Orban a populist? Agnes Heller*: I do not like the term populist as it is used in the context of Viktor Orban, because it does not say anything. Populists rely typically on poor people. Orban uses nationalistic vocabulary and rhetoric, he mobilizes hatred against the stranger and ...

Feature

Courage Before the Break

Agnes Heller’s Theory of “Radical Needs” Revisited

March 30, 2018 • by Max L. Feldman

“Good persons exist, how are they possible?” With this question, inimitable Hungarian philosopher Agnes Heller outlines her philosophical territory. As readers of critical theory, it is hard to know how to begin expressing our admiration for the energetic grande dame of our tradition. One anecdote might suffice: Heller’s mentor, the great, but ...

Feature

A Pre-History of Post-truth

East and West

September 1, 2017 • by Marci Shore

The end of “The End of History” arrived together with the end of belief in reality. The Cold War world was a world of warring ideologies; in the twenty-first century, both American capitalism and post-Soviet oligarchy employ the same public relations specialists catering to gangsters with political ambitions. As Peter ...

Education

Agnes Heller Awarded Second Annual Courage in Public Scholarship Award

July 19, 2016 • by Judith Friedlander

TCDS is happy to announce that the eminent philosopher and activist Agnes Heller, NSSR Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, was awarded the second annual Courage in Public Scholarship Award by theNew School for Social Research Europe Collective at the 25th Anniversary Democracy & Diversity Institute in Wroclaw, Poland on July 16, 2016. Below is ...

Agnes Heller Awarded Second Annual Courage in Public Scholarship Award

Education

Agnes Heller and “Everyday Revolutions”

Portrait of a Philosopher

December 14, 2015 • by Anna-Verena Nosthoff

The forms of the southern clouds at the dawn of April 30th, 1882, are comparable to those mottled streaks on this one book he had only seen once (a Spanish edition). Following the Naturalis Historia, he recounts exactly four historically exemplary cases of prodigious memory: Cyrus ...

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