DOI: 10.1111/1467-8675.

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OBITUARY

Farewell to a philosopher
Jürgen Habermas

It was with much delay regrettably that I sent my ninetieth birthday wishes to Agnes Heller this year. She replied with-
out the least trace of offence: “Congratulations never come too late.” But the news of someone’s death always come
too early. Agnes Heller was a sparkling vivid person until the last moment. The sources of her intellect simply never ran
dry. In retrospective, one ought to have known it: only a sudden death would suit this person. Now we learn that last
Friday, during her vacation, she swam out onto Lake Balaton never to return. Agnes Heller herself would not have been
susceptible to romanticize this; but I imagine, if I am allowed this consoling thought, that she would have preferred such
a sudden strike of death.
Agnes Heller was an old school philosopher. I first met her in the mid-sixties at Iring Fetscher’s house in Frankfurt,
and later in the annual meetings of the Praxis-philosophy group on Korčula island. Despite our affinity with the criti-
cal orientation of her thought, she appeared to us as the young, captivating incarnation of a philosophical profile that
we knew from the generation of our teachers. From our perspective, a legacy of German idealism had been conserved
amongst the more interesting colleagues from the “Eastern Bloc”, as it was called back then – a self-assurance unim-
paired by academic fallibilism, which was no longer present in contemporary Western philosophy.
In the young Agnes Heller, this unbroken philosophical self-confidence came with the freshness of an open and unin-
hibited mind; this characterized the mentality of the pupils assembled around Georg Lukacs in the Budapest of the
1950s. But this did not cloud the group’s intellectual and political autonomy, productivity and its humanistic impulse.
This intellectual sovereignty may well have shielded Agnes Heller and her friends when, after the suppression of the
rebellion of 1956, they faced persecution as political dissidents and finally found themselves forced to emigrate.
In the course of years, beside this idealistic self-understanding and the feeling of being called to philosophy, I have
been acquainted with the admirably strong character of a proud and at the same time courageous and prudent woman.
Faced with the presence of this strong character, I ask myself whether her readers, acquainted with her books only,
necessarily miss a good part of the energy and passion of their author. This, however, does not apply to her first book,
“Renaissance Man”, which appeared in 1967 in Hungary and in which she sincerely celebrated that epoch’s humanistic
spirit and its virtues. What distinguishes her as a philosopher - and what she in fact shares with Hannah Arendt - is
the capacity to combine an emphatic sense for uplifting ideas with insights from astoundingly simple experiences and
everyday wisdom.
Agnes Heller is a true philosopher in the old European sense. Her thought reflects an unusual life, a painful life
story. The age of extremes left deep scars in this biography. She had not turned fifteen yet when she had lived through
dreadful experiences, although she never made a lot of fuss about them. It is only by chance and skill that the young girl
and her mother escaped deportation and shooting, while the father was murdered by the Nazis. Having grown up in
communist Hungary, in 1956 she lost her position as Lukács’s assistant and, with it, the prospect of an academic career;
for a while she worked as a teacher, continued her philosophical work under very difficult circumstances, and finally
emigrated to Australia.

The obituary appeared first in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 22, 2019.

Constellations. 2019;26:353–354. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/cons 

c 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 353
354 OBITUARY

The following years as professor at the New School for Social Research in New York, founded during the Nazi era
for the reception of Jewish emigrants from Germany and Europe, finally promised the Jewish philosopher an end to
political persecution. But after her return to her home country, under Viktor Orban’s illiberal democracy she was once
more exposed to harassment, public animosity, and antisemitic insults. It just wouldn’t end. Of course, this dispiriting
experience did not keep her from publicly opposing the regime and giving the younger generation courage. Life did not
allow her to calm down.
Agnes Heller did not see herself as an intellectual; in her own way, she led the life of a philosopher. It is from this life
that she summoned the strength to endure the darker forces of our age.
(Translated by Rieke and Eno Trimҫev, Greifswald University)