Agnes Heller: Philosopher, Dissident, Activist

Agnes Heller lived these events in close personal contact, both from within and without...With all this she has coped both personally and philosophically. In fact, ‘both personally and philosophically,’ is one and the same thing for Agnes, for this is the way she chose herself to be, and through this – through philosophy – she came into her own.

—Yirmiahu Yovel

The Movie

This film presents the story of prominent Jewish Hungarian philosopher Agnes Heller by focusing on her cinematic life and influential ideas to bring a reflection on some of the most dramatic historical episodes of the 20th century that have defined the world in which we live today and have served as the engine for her own theories in ethics and philosophy of history. It also delves into current political topics such as totalitarianism, populism, extremism, repression, the growing threat of authoritarianism, democracy, social progress, inequality, rule of law, and ethical behavior, resilience and optimism in the midst of unspeakable tragedy.

The film was shot in Budapest, New York, Wroclaw and Umbria, and uses interviews with Agnes Heller over the last years of her life, and with colleagues and family members, as well as archival material, to show her illuminating analyses and her relentlessly optimistic outlook of life, while offering a vigorous defense of liberal democracy.

Her Life

Agnes Heller was born in Budapest in 1929 in a middle-class Jewish family. During her childhood she experienced antisemitism in her home country, and later in her youth suffered devastating tragedies in the Holocaust. She survived in the International Ghetto, while her own father died in Auschwitz and several members of her family were also victims in labor battalions and concentration camps.

After the Second World War she discovered philosophy and found in this subject the tools that, in her own words, might help her understand the Holocaust and other catastrophes of her times. As a consequence, she studied ethics and philosophy of history. She also embraced Marxism, and became a member of the Communist Party as early as 1947.

However, her life did not become much easier afterwards as she developed critical views towards the Stalinist regime instituted in Hungary by Mátyás Rákosi in 1948 and was soon expelled from the party. A few years later, her support of the failed 1956 Revolution had her dismissed from her position at the University of Budapest and banned from publishing. Years of harassment by the authorities and surveillance by the secret police ensued. Heller, along with a group of colleagues and scholars, were indicted in the infamous Philosophers’ Trials of 1973. Unemployment, repression, prosecution, and isolation followed and only in 1977, she and her husband were allowed to leave the country.

They first settled in Australia where she taught philosophy at La Trobe University in Melbourne and in 1986, she joined The New School for Social Research in New York. Approaching 50, those were her first years devoid of political persecution. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Eastern European Bloc, she started coming back to her native Hungary and divided her time between New York and Budapest where she was reinstated as a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and could teach again in a Hungarian university since she was expelled in the 1950s.

But in Hungary she was increasingly active in the country’s political affairs and soon became critical of the authoritarian, nationalistic and again antisemite drifting of the Viktor Orbán years that are eroding liberties and the basis for a liberal democracy. She became a vocal public intellectual against the government and its abuse of power. That made her a liberal icon for the opposition but also the target of ferocious antisemite and smear campaigns orchestrated by acolytes and sympathizers of Orbán’s government. She unexpectedly died in 2019 while swimming in the Balaton Lake.

Everyday Life

A theory of History

The Theory of Need in Marx

An Ethics of Personality

Renaissance Man

Beyond Justic

Her Work and Ideas

Agnes Heller is one of the most lucid minds of our times, the most important Hungarian intellectual, an internationally revered thinker, and all along her eventful life and uncompromising political activism, she became one of the most significant philosophers since the second half of the 20th century. After Second World War she was drawn to philosophy under the influence of preeminent Marxist theorist György Lukács. She found in this subject the tools that, in her own words, might help her understand the Holocaust and other catastrophes of her times, and to try to find out what are the social conditions that allow human beings to do this to others and make the rule of the evil possible. As a consequence, she focused on ethics and philosophy of history.

She also embraced Marxism and became a member of the Communist Party as early as 1947. But she grew more and more disenchanted with Hungary’s communist government. In the 1960s, she became one of the founders and the most prominent member of The Budapest School, a circle of Hungarian intellectuals formed around György Lukács that originally advocated for the reform of Marxism to adopt more humanistic views, but that later evolved into an opposition group. She was also a theorist of the New Left, the 1960s’ movement that redefined progressive aspirations around the world such as women's rights, gay rights, environmentalism, drug policy reform, etc.

The years in Melbourne and later in New York were the most productive ones intellectually, yielding some of her more significant work in ethics and philosophy of history. In Melbourne also took place the most important transformation of her political ideas: the total abandonment of Marxism and its interpretation of history, to evolve towards a more center-left position closer to Western-style liberal democracy.

All along her eventful life, uncompromising political activism, and theoretical body of work Agnes Heller is the most important Hungarian intellectual, one of the most significant philosophers since the post-war period, and the author of more than fifty books, that have been translated into dozens of languages expanding her cultural, academic, and political influence not only in her native Hungary and the West, but also in Latin America, where she is a revered intellectual.

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