Ágnes Heller

Ágnes Heller
Ágnes Heller (2015)
Born	12 May 1929 Budapest
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Continental philosophy
Main interests	Political theory
Influences Hegel, Sigmund Freud, György Lukács, György Márkus, Karl Marx, William Shakespeare
Influenced Andrew Arato

Ágnes Heller (born 12 May 1929) is a Hungarian philosopher.

Ágnes Heller was raised in a middle-classJewish family. During World War II her father used his legal training and knowledge of German to help people get together the necessary paperwork to emigrate from Nazi Europe. In 1944, Heller’s father was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp where he died before the war ended. Heller and her mother managed to avoid deportation.

With regard to the influence of the Holocaust on her work, Heller has said:

In 1947, Heller began to study physics and chemistry at the University of Budapest. She changed her focus to philosophy, however, when her boyfriend at the time urged her to listen to the lecture of the philosopher György Lukács, on the intersections of philosophy and culture. She was immediately taken by how much his lecture addressed her concerns and interests in how to live in the modern world, especially after the experience of World War II and the Holocaust.

1947 was also the year that Heller joined the Communist Party while at a Zionist work camp and began to develop her interest in Marxism. However, she felt that the Party was stifling the ability of its adherents to think freely due to the belief in Democratic centralism (total allegiance) to the Party. She was expelled from it for the first time in 1949, the year that Mátyás Rákosi came into power and ushered in the years of Stalinist rule.

After 1953 and the installation of Imre Nagy as Prime Minister, Heller was able to safely undertake her doctoral studies under the supervision of Lukács, and in 1955 she began to teach at the University of Budapest.