Agnes Heller

Where Are we at Home

About thirty years ago I became acquainted with the middle aged owner of a little trattoria in Rome’s Campo dei Fiori. After a lively conversation I asked him to advise me about the shortest way to Porta Pia. &dquo;I am sorry, but I cannot help you&dquo;, he answered. &dquo;The truth of the matter is I have never ever in my life left the Campo dei Fiori&dquo;. About one and a half decades later, on the board of a Jumbo jet en route to Australia, I discussed the then current affairs with my neighbour, a middle aged woman. It turned out that she was employed by an international trade firm, spoke five languages, and owned three apartments

Habermas and Marxism

In a study written in 1957 Habermas drew up a sketchy typology of the main trends in Marxism at that time.1 In the postwar period Marxism was either one scholarly subject among many, or the official ideology of various communist parties. A change, however, could be discerned and Habermas described it with sympathy at a distance: out of the womb of party Marxism, ‘humanist’ and ‘critical’ tendencies were born, as a sign of the pluralisation and individualisation of the doctrine which may help to reintroduce it into the realm of public discourse.

From Red to Green

The most important systematic analysis of social movements to date has been Touraines The Voice and the Eye. Here, one can almost paraphrase Marxs famous dictum: for the French sociologist, the history of all societies is a history of movements. In identifying movements with social classes, Touraine negotiates a radical turn from system theories to a strong version of action theory and breaks with the Procrustean framework of an Althusserian-Poulantzasian structuralism in which everything is accounted for once the economically based class equivalent has been found. For Touraine, movements emerge and diversify in the process of their challenging “historicity” — a key concept derived from Castoriadis’ central category, the imaginary institution.

The Three Logics of Modernity and the Double Bind of the Modern Imagination

This article distinguishes between two constituents of modernity which together stand for the essence of modernity. It also distinguishes between three logics or tendencies in modernity. In pursuit of these aims it concentrates on a single issue, arguing that one cannot understand modernity, particularly not its heterogeneous character, from the viewpoint of the technological imagination (the Heideggerian Gestell) alone. The article interprets modernity as a world that draws on two sources of imagination: the technological and the historical. Most of this article is devoted to discussing these two kinds of imagination, their conflicts, balances, and imbalances within each of the three logics of modernity. The article demonstrates that the balance between the two kinds of imagination is different in each of the three logics, and that the role of the historical imagination is different not only in terms of force and magnitude but also in kind.

Phases of Legitimation in Soviet-type Societies

If a social order survives for sixty years it is appropriate to raise the question of its legitimacy. We can regard it as highly unlikely that a system of authority which conceives of itself and is conceived of by others as an identity, as a continuum of the same coherent whole, would have avoided collapse for over half a century had it been sustained by nothing but various types of interest, including fear. According to one of Max Weber’s formulations, a social order is legitimated if at least one part of the population acknowledges it as exemplary and binding while the other part does not confront the existing social order with the image of an alternative one seen as equally binding.1 The relative number of those legitimating a system may be irrelevant if the non-legitimating masses are merely dissatisfied. This is most markedly the case in various kinds of non-democratic systems where dissatisfaction cannot be expressed, at least not continuously, and the absence of legitimation remains hidden except for outbursts of anger that the ruling elite can easily cope with.

hannah arendt on the "vita contemplativa"

Hannah Arendt’s lifelong preoccupation with the fundamental questions of the human condition. As is well known, of the whole work only the volumes on &dquo;thinking&dquo; and &dquo;willing&dquo; were concluded and published posthumously. The author died suddenly before she could commence work on the third volume dealing with &dquo;judging.&dquo; Although some of Arendt’s lectures on Kant’s Critique of Judgment have now been published in a volume entitled Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, and despite the fact that preliminary remarks on judging are scattered all over the first two volumes, a reconstruction of the whole project demands a greater than usual measure of interpretative sensitivity. But there is perhaps an even deeper problem to be faced by those who wish to attempt such a reconstruction. The second volume (on &dquo;willing&dquo;) was written impatiently, visibly in a hurry. There are inconsistencies in all philosophies which often cannot be eliminated by the authors themselves, but, clearly, certain inconsistencies both within and between the first and second volumes would have been eliminated, had Arendt had the time to complete the third volume. Since The Life of the Mind, therefore, remained incomplete, the interpreter can choose one of two options. She can either take the text as it now stands or she can try to eliminate those inconsistencies she believes the author too would have eliminated. The second option is riskier, though certainly more fecund.

The Discourse Ethics of Habermas: Critique and Appraisal

Habermas dedicated his book, MoralbeH’usstsein und kommunikatil’es Hûndeln (Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action) to his friend and theoretical kindred spirit, Karl-Otto Apel, on the occasion of Apel’s 60th birthday. The dedication is far from a mere f~ormality. The major study of the volume, &dquo;Discourse Ethics Notes to a Grounding Program&dquo;, pursues a line of enquiry first opened by Apel in his seminal essay &dquo;The a prric»i of the communication community and the foundations of ethics&dquo;.1 While rejecting Apel’s attempt to provide an ultimate foundation for ethics, something which had only been in gestation in the study mentioned above, Habermas’s aim in his new work is to provide a foundation for morality and moral philosophy which issues from certain presuppositions he shares with Apel, and to demonstrate how, in so doing, he can both avoid and go beyond the limitations of other, prevailing moral philosophies. To this end, Habermas argues for the (theoretical) acceptance of the so-called &dquo;fundamental principle of universalization&dquo; (Un iJ’ersalisienlllgsgrundsatz) as the sole, and simultaneously formal, moral principle. Discourse ethics is conceived by him as the procedure through which persons can live up to the imperative of the moral principle.

Modernity's Pendulum

In what follows, I will not deconstrict the concept (term) &dquo;modernity&dquo;, but rather &dquo;unload&dquo; it. I will not legitimize the use of the term in advance; rather, I will give sense to it by using it. I thus begin in the most general and elusive way of discussing modernity in juxtaposing it to pre-modernity. The juxtaposition modern/pre-modern seemingly follows the archetypal dichotomy of &dquo;Hellenic versus barbarian&dquo; or &dquo;Christian versus pagan&dquo;. The speakers take the position of their own world, and they define it against the world of the Others. Juxtapositions of this kind are minimum conditions of self-

PARADIGM OF PRODUCTION: PARADIGM OF WORK

Both in Marxist literature of the last hun? dred years and in the various attempts at refuting the Marxian theoretical legacy, the paradigm of production and the paradigm of work have mostly been understood as if they were interchangeable with one another. True enough, as we shall see, Marx himself cannot be completely acquitted of the charge of being the source of confusion. In what follows, I wish to make a clear-cut distinction between the two paradigms. I am going to argue that both imply perfectly different re? constructions of society and that the theore? tical attempts at falsifying the paradigm of production have not even affected the para? digm of work, and vice versa. Furthermore, I wish to show that both paradigms run into various difficulties and need to be supple? mented by various auxiliary principles in order to be maintained, if they can coherent? ly be maintained at all.

The Absolute Stranger: Shakespeare and the Drama of Failed Assimilation

Abstract While Shakespeares historical and political imagination mainly centres on the traditional character of the stranger or exile, The Merchant of Venice and Othello stand out as dramas about a new figure, the absolute stranger. The absolute stranger belongs to a new situation Shakespeare found in cosmopolitan Venice. Through Shylock and Othello, Shakespeare encounters the drama of the outsiders failed assimilation into cosmopolitan life. For Shakespeare, the figure of the absolute stranger is a representative illusion, and these two plays are dramas about the modern world.