Agnes Heller's Great Society

Abstract

[Extract] Agnes Heller's body of work is one of the central achievements of 20th century critical philosophy, and Simon Tormey's book is a sterling introduction to it. For a reader unfamiliar with what is a large, and sometimes difficult, corpus, Tormey provides a lucid overview. He concentrates on key ideas, insightfully charting the principal phases of Heller's work. He also along the way debates with her, drawing from the wellspring of English socialism. He injects notes of scepticism especially about some of the more postmodern elements of Heller's later philosophy. But, in doing so, he never caricatures her work, and treats all of its many threads – from Marxism to Kantianism, existentialism to postmodernism – with a judicious hand.