Agnes Heller has just died. She was an outstanding European intellectual and prolific humanist philosopher who became a vigorous opponent of the totalitarian Viktor Orban. Aged 90 she left us, fully active, after swimming in Lake Balaton in her native Hungary. The New York Times have run a good, brief obituary.
Her vital spirit shines out in this very short YouTube interview. In it, among other things, Heller answers a question about how to live the good life, explains how the marketisation of education undermines the necessity of a democratic culture, and describes the conflict between democracy and totalitarianism as present “since the beginning of modernity”. It is quite wrong, she states, to see authoritarianism as harking back to the past. Its threat is built into the times we live in.
I met Agnes Heller in 1976, on my first trip to Budapest. Last year I discovered to my delight that we were both on the great demonstration in the city protesting the re-election of Orban. I contacted her to try and arrange a meeting. She emailed back:
