Ágnes Heller and the secret of goodness

As a person who flees in terror, and suddenly turns to face the attacker, modern men and women are now turning to face their true historical condition, after trying to set themselves free from their awareness and contingency. Contingency fills us with anxiety only when we don’t accept its challenge, and we keep on flirting, through our narratives, with our contingent existence. Once we’ve resolved to consider our world contingent, we can interpret it not only as a mere chain of necessities, but also as a bundle of possibilities. (Heller, 1990: 126)

Approaching the concepts that animate Ágnes Heller’s most recent reflections (1996) means to be enlivened by a thought that not only can enter into a theoretical debate with the great ancient and modern systems of ethics, but can also fiercely argue with them, challenging the contingency of our present and the nihilistic risk it carries with it, without giving up on a foundation of morals.

It is with a ‘thinking heart’ – as Etty Hillesum would have put it – that Heller tells us about the human condition, not in metaphorical terms but in its deep ontological meaning, starting from our birth, the genetic a priori, the ‘biological ipseity’, installed within the social a priori, which delivers us to finitude and entrenches an ‘existential tension’ in our ‘historicity’ (Heller, 2009). ¹ And we should bear in mind the distinction (often pointed out by Heller) between ‘historical conscience’ and ‘historicity’, between the perception and conscience of a socio-political age and the ‘time of life’, the individual person’s perception and the awareness of temporality.

In highlighting the plasticity of Heller’s approach, I would remind the reader how it developed along a personal and historical cultural path which at the end of the ’70s was still ascribed to the interpretative paradigm of the Marxist Grand Narrative: at that time the concept of human Wesen was constituted by the facets of ‘sociality, work, freedom, conscience and universality’. All were taken as empirical facts and values but spelled out in a theory of sentiments which, by giving room to the emotional dimension of the moral sphere, conceived the relationship of subject and world as based not only on action and thought, but also on feeling.

Feelings are in fact the precondition to pick up the kind of activity and thought that are adequate in scope to a being that is not guided by instincts (the human being). At the same time, however, thought and action are the preconditions to build the types of sentiment that are necessary for homeostasis and selection (in a given social milieu) and thus the preconditions to differentiate feelings. (Heller, 1981: 139–40)

In this context, Heller developed a concept of the individual whose mode of relation to the self and to the world was characterized by ‘distance’ and thus by the possibility of ‘autonomy’. That is because one can individually choose amongst given habits, special inclinations, and the facets of one’s own psychological character. The precondition – confirming the workability of this axiological choice – was the possibility of freedom (Chapter 5). If on the one hand the notion of the human condition constituted our ontological background and existed in the light of the substitution of instinctive regulations by social regulations, then on the level of the individual (whose birth seems to be configured as an ontological shock, the aim of which is the dovetailing of the genetic and social a priori) a convergence occurs that Heller defines as ‘historicity’. ‘We are all born human’ and ‘thrown into freedom’: our appearance on the stage of existence configures us as subjects who are able to determine the reality surrounding us and who are able to determine ourselves in a situation of historical indeterminacy, a ‘historicity’ which can be described as ‘living in tension’ (Heller, 1988). The legitimation of a theory of morals is only possible, according to Heller, when it is grounded on the ontological fact that humankind exists both empirically and as an idea conceived as a ‘fact of reason’. In the light of this reference to Kant – according to whom morality itself is the ‘fact of reason’ – it is clear how for Heller the concept of humankind carries a great ethical value: humankind is the vessel of the ‘transcultural universal’ values of ‘freedom and life’ on which modernity has built its social dynamism; this is both verifiable and emblematic in different interpretations of the concept of justice formulated by contemporary reflections and on which it still seems rather difficult to reach a definite consensus.

Yet it is constantly possible to identify a few points of reference that orientate the debate on each individual norm, as is the case of discussions involving justice. These points of reference are given by the two fundamental ideas of modernity: life and freedom. It is only in the sphere of public discussion that one can find an answer in terms of real freedom or true life, by taking into account and looking for equal life opportunities for all, or vice-versa by denying the idea and the expectation of a happy, good life. (Heller, 2009: 46–7)

In numerous pages dedicated to the definition of the characters of modernity – amongst which I would only mention the two-fold awareness ² of the accidentality and contingency of modern men and women and the contingency of our world and its institutions – Heller states the impossibility for modernity (given its lack of a spirit of system) to be founded on any moral system: the constitution of a dynamic, fair and justice-oriented civil life lies rather on what she defines as the ‘two pillars’, the good man and the good citizen. Following Aristotle – who, while upholding the distinction between good man and good citizen, defends the permeability of the two spheres, claiming that good life is the only happy and worthy life – Heller implies that the presence of good norms can guarantee the values of modernity and its ideas of life and freedom, and thus the good moral judgement (phronesis) and the good constitution of a city cannot be disjointed: good moral judgement depends on the connection between value-oriented rationality and goal-oriented rationality, and is configured as the main moral authority in taking specific decisions.

According to Heller, despite their awareness that modernity lacks any moral system, moral philosophers do need a universal formula that is valid for all human beings. This strong reference to a need awakens the scholar’s attention to the importance of this concept beginning with Heller (1974), ³ where she discusses ‘radical needs’. This also seems to echo the Kantian ‘need of reason’. In the light of this need of a ‘crutch’, Heller takes back the Kantian moral proposal, despite the clear reference in her model to the ethics of virtues of Aristotelian tradition and despite her different articulation of it, by conceiving of it as a foundation of modern ethics:

Kant has, therefore, invented a maxim that is not subject to any interpretation. With it we have had the first typical formulation of formal ethics, in my opinion the best ethics in the modern era, even though this formula excludes everything that pertains to not-pure reason, to sentiment […]. Basically, it was the German philosopher who started modern ethics, which is no longer heteronomous but autonomous, after discovering that the categorical imperative is present in each and every individual. (Heller, 2009: 59)

Her approach, proceeding from the empirical level of contingency to the level of the transcendental, seems Kantian. As in Kant, the starting point is the existence of good people: ‘we know that because we see them’; the moral philosopher, by investigating not the reason but the condition according to which things are possible, poses the transcendental question of the conditions of goodness. Maintaining the Kantian distinction between knowing and thinking, between the level of knowledge and the level of morality, Heller does not renounce the effort to think the relationship between morals and truth as true knowledge about good and evil. Even if the ultimate foundation of morality cannot be proven given that its source is unknowable, in contrast to Hannah Arendt and Richard Rorty, Heller claims not only that ‘philosophy cannot exist without a concept of truth’, but also that ‘everyday life cannot exist without a concept of truth: as we cannot live without a daily attitude and way of life, so we cannot live without the concept of truth’ (p. 35). ⁴ According to this, the object of practical thought is a form of truth that deals with the possible, with the contingent realities of the present and the future requiring the human deliberation. Moreover – in a clear Aristotelian sense – this moral phronesis is not a science. Rather, it concerns the practical knowledge of the vita activa.

Heller criticizes the separation – typical of a Kantian dualistic ontology – between homo phaenomenon and homo noumenon: rather than focusing on a divided human being, she concentrates on the (I would say classic) ideal of an individual whose self-caring implies the choice of the self as moral personality, as an authentic and fair person who feels the ‘need’ – not the ‘obligation’ – to approach the ‘centre of morals’. ⁵ By accepting and realizing that there is no morality without moral conflicts, she states:

It is not necessary to hit the centre; it is enough to be aware of it, to know what we ought to be looking for and try to approach. One must try to reach one’s telos, although no individual will ever be perfectly good. (Heller, 2009b: 110)

Heller’s Ethics of Personality can be defined as an ontology of being together, which cannot have a metaphysical basis but rather claims to possess a moral content (however weak), which is based on the existential choice we make of ourselves as decent, moral people, whose choices are imbued with ethical content, emblematically synthesized in what is not only a statement, but also a testimony: Socrates’s choice that ‘it is preferable to suffer wrong rather than to do it’; this choice cannot be rationally demonstrated, which is why Plato had to rely on a moral paradox and Kant had to resort to faith.

Following the Kantian articulation and distinction between theoretical reason and practical reason, Heller, by defining morals as ‘the subjective relationship with moral values’, submits her analysis of the ‘existential choice’ to a kind of rationality that is other than the rationality of determinant judgement, avoiding the risk of developing into a purely instrumental reason, as in the case of the ‘negative utopia of positivism’.

The Kantian distinction between theoretical and practical reason is relevant here. The existential choice is a free act. It cannot be grasped in terms of determination, not because it is irrational, but because it is rational beyond the authority of theoretical reason. (Heller, 1987: 292)

However, the existential choice of oneself as moral person does not shelter us from the risk of making mistakes, because our reliance on practical norms and values implies that, even if we take the decision to give priority to ‘practical reason’, to determine whether our actions and chosen norms are good, in specific situations we must still come up with a judgement, and the act of judging (typical of ‘theoretical reason’) involves the possibility of making a mistake.

Judgment is the act of theoretical reason, even if theoretical reason is subordinate to practical reason. Where theoretical reason is involved, we can be wrong as well as right. True enough, honest persons do not stop to ‘check’ and ‘recheck’ the norms already chosen. […] Without doubt, mistakes can be fatal. Sometimes they cannot be corrected or ‘fixed’ at all. These are the tragic situations par excellence. Not making any mistakes at all in our choices can be a matter of sheer good luck, as well as employing good theoretical reason in our judgments. (p. 293)

The well-known Greek-classical theme of having ‘good luck’ in the moral sphere ⁶ seems to inform Heller’s awareness of the risk involved in judging, the problematic nature and unpredictability of acting hints, the tragic lack of control of the outcomes of human praxis, given the fact that whoever acts is influenced by circumstances and chance. ⁷ That’s the issue that she called the ‘dilemma of morals’. It appears in every society where the philosophical discussion of true values focuses on praxis: although we can imagine a society where all true values are coherent with citizens’ ideas of value, ‘we cannot however imagine a society where the moral dilemma ceases to exist, where all actions directed by true values could claim universal validity’ (Heller, 1979: 89–90). This model leads to the conception of a limited moral relativism connected to a ‘limited cultural relativism’ that supports a ‘pluralistic moral universe’, where different sets of norms and moral rules can coexist unless they contradict the values of life and freedom.

On this topic, it is interesting to see how Heller engages Habermas on the communicative rationality of ‘discourse ethics’ and the related question of the priority of values: while sharing the concept of ‘ideal communities of communication’, she does not agree with a model that founds the truth of values on ‘true consent’ and stresses that it is necessary to decide beforehand what true values we should refer to, in order to share them: ‘if everyone accepted life and freedom as supreme values (values beyond testing and querying), the discussants could phase out all false values and select the true ones’ (Heller, 1987: 295).

The dilemma of morals is inscribed within the lucid awareness that, while the values chosen within a given moral world can be coherent, the individual’s action cannot expect to have the same universal validity. The very decision for a value implies the exclusion of others, and that is why every philosophical discussion dealing with practical action and focusing on its true values produces and reproduces the moral dilemma. In the recognition of the dilemma lies the strong point of a philosophical discussion which partners – as members of an ideal community – assume the responsibility to seek together the better mode of realization of the value in a situation.

Heller’s ideal of a ‘utopia of radical democracy’ resembles the ideal of a democratic society where the discussants incarnate, as positive rational beings, a philosophical project; perhaps an unreachable project, but one that we must always want to achieve, a project that must by all means enlighten our way. In her ‘incomplete ethico-political concept of justice’ lies a pluralistic moral universe where different systems of norms and rules cannot, however, contradict the supreme values that are its ‘bedrock’ and at the same time its ‘evidence’: freedom and life.

In the light of the irreducibility of the moral existential choice to any sociological, rational or psycho-analytical explanations, Heller is aware of the enigma of existence and the ‘frailty of goodness’ in our moral world and the mystery of each of us and – in the unfathomably of our choosing ourselves – the miracle introduced in the common world by all of us as soon as we appear, talking and acting, on the stage of life – and also the ‘obscurity’ of the human heart (Nussbaum, 1986). With the stubbornness of a dedicated investigator, she does not give in to the opacity of our existence or to the subterranean and incurable Sartrian conflict between en-soi and pour-soi; rather, she seems to trust to the light that shines in good people, enlightening their existences and ours: ‘Good people exist’ – she never tires of repeating – ‘How are they possible?’.

The goodness of the good person, which in our philosophical tradition has always been linked to the sphere of beauty, is treated by Heller not so much in the light of the classic concepts of harmony or the control of reason over the passions, but rather in the light of the idea of seeking an always problematic accord between the contrasting components of ourselves; if, following Plato, ‘beauty is what we love’, then there is a ‘beauty of morals’ (Heller, 2009b: 131). The reason why Kant perceives a strong connection between the concepts of good and beautiful, the reason why § 59 of Kant (1987) is entitled ‘Von der Schönheit als Symbol der Sittlichkeit’ is that he looks with admiration at the visible shining ‘man of good will’.

He simply points to the ‘man of good will’, to the subject worthy of supreme respect. Goodness shines as a jewel. The jewel shines, therefore the jewel is visible. Righteous people do exist, and we know this because we see them. (Heller, 1987: 280–1)

In her ‘radical utopia’ of the ’70s, Heller describes the development of the faculties related to material, psychological and spiritual conditions and the human need to feel and enjoy

a harmony of all these faculties and needs. The harmonic, multi-sided individual, endowed with faculties and developed needs, is the beautiful person. For this reason, our third ideal is the ideal of Beauty. In order for Earth to become the homeland of humanity, also beauty – as a presupposition – must ‘dwell here’. (Heller, 1979: 141–2)

Good people ‘do not solely exist in novels, but also in everyday life: who has never encountered a good person?’ They seem to possess an aura and a glow: ‘In each person there is an intentionality towards good, which, if well executed, can become the light that enlightens a whole existence’ (Heller, 2009: 58). The original thaumatzein, the wonder in front of the Being, has turned into an amazement in front of the Good – not the Good in a strong ontological/metaphysical sense, but the Good of our great and small deeds, our obscure moral choices, the moral acts carried out in secret, the empathy towards the sufferer, our daily risk in assuming responsibilities and in taking care of the world by taking care of ourselves so that our world can become ‘a better place to live in’. ⁸ Although moral philosophers provide us with special interpretations of goodness, their starting point is the recognition that ‘good people really exist’ and, in pointing out how the various interpretations of goodness are ‘surprisingly restricted’, Heller seems to recall Aristotle when she says: ‘There is only one way to be good, several and various ways of being bad’ (Aristotle, 2003: II, 1106b 35).

In addition to the common human goodness around us, we also find ‘transculturally good’ people, people who are ‘beyond phronesis’, whose moral choices are acknowledged as such by different cultures and whose ethical deeds ‘in times of extreme violence and terror become political gestures’. Heller defines them by the Kantian aesthetic concept of genius: ‘A transculturally good person is rather a genius of morals’ and in the inexplicability of their moral deeds (which often expose them to extreme hazards) lies the inscrutability of their choices. ‘Transculturally good persons normally cannot even give good reasons for why they do what they do’ (Heller, 1985: 277).

There is a ‘secret’ in goodness: the choosing of the self, which Kierkegaard regarded as a leap, is something that cannot be explained, neither rationally, nor completely, and has something to do with the mystery that is concealed even to us moral subjects, when we are no longer just ‘thrown’ into the world, but we actively ‘throw ourselves’ into it. When our choice between good and evil is a choice for the good, we choose ourselves in a way that is ‘open to everyone’ and that implies not only the responsibility for ourselves, but also our presence in front of the Other: ‘Turning round and facing our contingency is not voluntarism; rather it reverses determinations and transforms them into our practical freedom’ (Heller, 1990: 126).