Radicalism and Needs in Heller

Heller's general theoretical approach is characterized primarily by an explicit value commitment and by an effort to reassert the centrality of the concept of history. Defying both official orthodoxy and neo-positivistic tendencies in contemporary thought, she structures her research according to the ideal of emancipation. Against any metaphysical and relativistic historicism or a “science” of history, she vindicates a notion of history as “constructed” from the viewpoint of the needs of a new humanity. The tension between this theoretical approach and empirical facts corresponding to it give rise to an antiempiricist conception of science and a notion of praxis intrinsically bound to the conscious direction of its agents

Emancipation · Epistemology · Historicism · Humanity · Ideal (ethics · Metaphysics · Orthodoxy · Political radicalism · Political science · Positivism · Praxis · Sociology · Value (mathematics · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy · Philosophy, Science, and History