Agnes Heller was born in 1929 and died earlier this year in July. She was a Hungarian Philosopher and teacher. She was a core member of the Budapest School philosophical forum in the 1960’s. During WWII her father used his legal training and knowledge of German to help people emigrate from Nazi Europe however in 1944 he was deported to Auschwitz where he died. Thankfully, Heller and her mother managed to avoid deportation.

In 1947 Heller begun to study physics and chemistry however after listening to a lecture by philosopher Gorgy Lukacs on the intersection of philosophy and culture she was immediately taken by how much his lecture addressed some of her concerns and interest in how to live in the modern world especially after the experience of WWII and the holocaust.

Heller joined the Communist Party in 1947 and began to develop her interest in Marxism. However she felt that the party was stifling the ability of its members to think freely due its adherence to democratic centralism and was subsequently expelled from the party.

With regard to the influence of the holocaust on her work, she said; “I was always interested in the question; How could this possibly happen? how can I understand this? And this experience of the holocaust was joined by my experience in totalitarian regime. This brought up very similar questions in my soul search and world investigation: how could this happen? How could people do things like this? So I had to find out what morality is all about, what is the nature of good and evil, what can I do about this crime, what can I figure out about the sources of morality and evil? That was the first inquiry. The other inquiry was a social question; what kind of world can produce this? What kind of world allows such things to happen? What is modernity all about? Can we expect redemption?”

These are all questions we have been asking ourselves as we visited the Hospital in the Rock, the Terror Museum, the shoes on the Danube and the Donahy Street Synagogue. We must be vigilant to ensure our society does not allow such hatred to manifest in such atrocities to other humans. It is a battle we must keep fighting for the good of all humanity.