Agnes Heller is peerless as a philosopher of the modern condition. Long acclaimed for her acuity and extraordinary compass, here Heller presents a vivid cross-section of her thinking, convening analyses of emotions and needs, forms of rationality and social association, and questions about the crux of value and human communion around a sustained consideration of artworks and of the beleaguered concept of the beautiful. As John Rundell expounds in his instructive introduction to the collection, Heller approaches postmodern critique as a way of sharpening the best insights of modern thought, while concurrently refusing its metaphysical biases. She resuscitates the notion of a vibrant subjectivity, takes up the ipseity of artworks, and enters into dialogue with an array of thinkers, demonstrating how the urge for sure guarantors of value may be tackled with an understanding of contingency and historical truth. And Heller writes with utter disregard for jargon or cant, confessing her concerns directly and never allowing the reader to forget that this is a discussion of our shared modernity, and of the open possibility of coming to be at home within it.
Katie Terezakis, Rochester Institute of Technology Agnes Heller is one of the sublime philosophical voices of our time. Aesthetics and Modernity is a beguiling and profound collection of essays from 1995 to 2008 reflecting Heller’s late turn to an intensive reflection on the nature of art and the arts. Here she engages with Shakespeare, the Greek gods, jokes, the dignity of artworks and much more besides, casting an astonishing eye over the fate of freedom, beauty and the imagination across the vast terrain that separates Homer from the modern historical novel. The work ripples with intelligence and insight. This exquisite selection draws together threads from one of the most compelling and rewarding inquiries into the aesthetic condition of humankind ever undertaken by a philosopher.
Peter Murphy, Monash University