Agnes Heller: A Moralist in the Vortex of History

0745321933......Page 1
Contents......Page 4
Introduction: Dark Times, the Existential Choice and the Moral Mission......Page 11
Part I: The ‘Renaissance of Marxism’......Page 27
1. Lukács, Ethics and Everyday Life......Page 29
Lukács Philosophical Anthropology......Page 30
To View the World Rationally......Page 33
Is There a Place for Ethics in Marxism?......Page 37
Everyday Life and Revolution......Page 39
Values and History......Page 49
The Plasticity of the Human......Page 53
Feelings and Bourgeois Impoverishment......Page 59
Needs and Capitalist Dynamics......Page 64
3. Critique of \'Really Existing Socialism\'......Page 71
The Classical Options......Page 73
Politics and Culture in a Legitimisation Vacuum......Page 78
The Negative Potential of Modernity......Page 83
Part II: Towards a Post-Marxist Radicalism......Page 91
4. The Quest for Philosophical Radicalism......Page 93
To Give the World a Norm......Page 94
The Constitutive Tension of Philosophy......Page 95
Professionalisation and the Crisis of Philosophy......Page 98
Philosophy as Rational Utopia......Page 101
Ambitious Tasks and Residual Tensions......Page 103
5. Beyond Philosophy of History and the Ascription of Needs......Page 106
Consciousness of Reflected Generality......Page 107
Critique of the Concept of Progress......Page 111
A Theory of History......Page 113
The False Ontology of Needs......Page 114
Needs and Pluralism......Page 116
The Problemisation of Everyday Life......Page 121
The Sphere of Objectivation in Itself......Page 123
Cultural Surplus and the Attitudes of Reason......Page 124
Specialisation and the Sphere of Institutions......Page 127
Towards a Theory of Modernity......Page 130
Cultural Objectivation and the Rationality of Intellect......Page 132
Rationality and the Whole Person......Page 135
7. The Limits of Modern Justice......Page 139
The Historicity of Justice and its Conceptual Fragmentation......Page 140
Dynamic Justice and the Incomplete Ethico-Political Project......Page 142
The Scientificisation of Justice......Page 146
Resuscitating the Ethico-Political Concept of Justice......Page 150
Rawls and Habermas......Page 152
Beyond Justice......Page 157
From Historical Materialism to Rethinking Modernity......Page 163
The Logics of Modernity......Page 166
Dissatisfied Society......Page 173
Reassessing Consumerism......Page 176
The Future of Democracy......Page 179
9. The Ethical Imperative......Page 187
The Historicity of Morals and the New Contingency......Page 188
The Instrumentarium of Ethics......Page 190
Meaning, Norms and Rules......Page 192
Differentiation, Morality and Responsibility......Page 195
The Crisis of Moral Authority......Page 196
The Normative Question and the Existential Choice......Page 201
The New Sittlichkeit......Page 204
Authenticity, Institutional Existence and Civil Courage......Page 206
Phronesis and the Everyday......Page 209
Part III: ‘Reflective Postmodernism’......Page 213
10. The Spirit of Our Congregation......Page 215
The Subjectivisation of Philosophy......Page 216
On the Railway Station......Page 220
Continuity and Reflection......Page 223
Philosophy in the Age of Contingency\n......Page 227
11. The Pendulum of Modernity......Page 230
The Constituents of Modernity......Page 232
Multiple Logics......Page 234
The  Logic of Technology......Page 236
The  Logic of Allocation......Page 238
The Logic of Political Power and Domination......Page 241
The Quality of \'Radical Needs\'......Page 245
Real Needs and Utopian Radicalism......Page 248
Surviving Modernity......Page 249
12. Paradoxical Cultural Modernity......Page 254
Three Concepts of Culture......Page 255
Cultural Discourse and Normative Culture......Page 259
The Threat of Omnivorous Culture......Page 261
Culture and Technics......Page 262
Diagnostic Difficulties and Theoretical Tensions......Page 267
13. Autonomy, Irony and Ethics......Page 270
Personal Ethics as Destiny......Page 271
The Truth of an Ethics of Personality......Page 274
The Wisdom of Moral Aesthetics......Page 279
Is an Existentialist Ethics of Personality Viable?......Page 283
14. Conclusion......Page 286
Ethical Burdens and Lost Illusions......Page 287
Critical Humanism......Page 289
Utopian Ambitions and Orientative Philosophy......Page 292
Notes......Page 301
Bibliography......Page 331
Index......Page 335