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PARTISAN REVIEW
gems, all have appeared before (most of them more than a decade
ago) and - as is often the case with such collections - the claim
to
coherence is somewhat tenuous.
A Radical Philosophy
by Agnes Heller reminds us of other time–
honored incarnations of the Western intellectual: the pursuer of
utopia and the purveyor of esoteric language and terminology inac–
cessible even to educated but unspecialized audiences (the predilec–
tion for such modes of expression itself may be viewed as another
interesting and perhaps unintended form of elitism). Certainly such
a propensity for an effortless but overpowering obscurity of expres–
sion is among the negative stereotypes of intellectuals . Perhaps part
of the problem, in this case, has to do with the fact that this book,
presumably written in Hungarian (the author's native language),
was translated and first published in 1978 in German, and subse–
quently translated into English. Consider such statements:
Or:
Or:
Radical philosophy, the philosophy of Karl Marx, can be
understandingly misunderstood in many ways. The different
understanding misunderstandings express an affinity with dif–
ferent radical needs. It is therefore the duty of every recipient of
Marx to carry out a philosophical value discussion with the other
recipients of Marx. In other words, they must recognize that the
other person's understanding misunderstanding is just as
true
as
their own understanding misunderstanding.
Radical philosophy ... places its trust solely in the free human
act. However, the precondition for this is a personality that is
capable of free human acts, that is to say, a personality which has
given life meaning.
Philosophy addresses the rational being and remains firmly
within the sphere of what can be rationally thought: its rational
utopia can always be thought rationally.
Whether or not this mode of expression has an affinity with the
utopian mentality - such as disclosed by this book - is an interesting
question to ponder.
The author, a former disciple of George Lukacs, is an adherent
of some variety of neorevisionist-humanist Marxism, widely em-
