Agnes Heller: Philosopher, Dissident, Activist

My life is a historical life, not because I am historical, but because my times were very dense. Everything that happened to me happened to history and what happened to history, happened to me as well. History had a very great impact on my whole life.

—Agnes Heller

I. TRAUMA: CHILDHOOD, OCCUPATION, HOLOCAUST

As a young girl, Agnes Heller suffered Hungary’s antisemitic laws, and later survived Nazi occupation and the Holocaust. Her father perished in Auschwitz while she and her mother survived in very dire conditions in Budapest’s International Ghetto until Liberation.

II. REPRESSION: PHILOSOPHY, TOTALITARIANISM, DISSIDENCE

At 18 Agnes Heller attended a class by György Lukács and discovered philosophy. She also embraced Marxism, but quickly became critical of Stalinist repression in Hungary and started a long period of dissidence. She was expelled from the Communist Party, banned from university teaching and writing, and suffered continuous persecution by the authorities and by the police. Despite that, she became in the 1960s a founding member of The Budapest School.

III. DEMOCRACY: EMIGRATION, ACADEMIA, IDEAS

Harassed and unemployed, Agnes Heller and her husband fled Hungary to Australia in 1977. They first settled at La Trobe University in Melbourne and later at The New School for Social Research in New York. There she thrived as a philosopher and a public intellectual. In Melbourne she fully abandoned Marxism and the dominant views of history and progress in favor of the ideals of Western-style liberal democracy that became strengthened in New York.

IV. CITIZEN: HUNGARY, ACTIVISM, LEGACY

After the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, Agnes Heller returned to Budapest. There she became one of the fiercest critics of Orbán’s authoritarian nationalist and populist government, speaking out against the erosion of civil liberties and freedom of the press. She remained a tireless advocate for ethics and liberal democratic values until her final days. She passed away unexpectedly in 2019, leaving behind a model of public behavior and a powerful legacy.

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