Agnes Heller’s Late Lectures: Method, Scope and Contemporaneity

ABSTRACT In this paper I take a closer look at Agnes Heller’s late public lectures and her theoretical methods, scope and their contemporaneity. My relationship to Agnes Heller was a thirty-five year long friendship. She was one of my early mentors. Into her nineties, Agnes was characterized by great vitality, all-consuming interests, from all domains of higher culture to the everyday and current politics. I also meet her periodically during that time in Sydney, Budapest and New York and have some early striking memories of Agnes as a striking personality. Finally, the paper will consider her contemporaneity as a thinker and public figure but also her many great strengths and her only too human weaknesses.