PHILOSOPHICAL EGGS

Introduction

In part one of this three-post series I presented Agnes Heller’s account of the modern and postmodern worldviews and how she thinks postmodernism leaves us with “life on the railway station” or the state of being radically contingent beings confronted with the task of choosing ourselves. I then explored her closely related ideas of world and home in order to show how postmodernists are threatened with existential homelessness. But while postmodernists have to contend with the difficulties of losing a world and a home as given, they may regain them as something made. In fact, homemaking appears to be built into the act of choosing ourselves: “Moreover, finding a home, achieving the feeling of ‘being at home’, may result from having transformed one’s contingency into one’s destiny” (PM, 8). So it appears the way is open for postmodernists to reduce both cosmic and social homelessness and “settle down in the railway station of the present” by transforming contingency (PHF, 226). Accordingly, I want to pull together some of Heller’s insights about home and world making to explore such transformative possibilities. Two possibilities, those having to do with the beauty of high culture and democracy, are explicitly addressed in her essay “Where are We at Home?” Others are less explicit and come from various books and essays. Although diverse, they are connected by their emphasis on reciprocity, inherent value, and respect for autonomy. These commonalities, as we will see, allow them to relate in ways that can prove quite illuminating. In what follows I use a variety of her texts which will be cited according to the abbreviation key at the end of the post.

Ways of Home and World Making 

Moral Relations

Heller suggests certain types of moral relations can foster a sense of home when she claims that “modern moral philosophy appeals to all contingent persons, to those who ‘feel at home’, as well as those who ‘settle in the world’” (PM, 8). Over the course of many books she offers us ways to think about modern moral philosophy or the kind that is consistent with an awareness of radical contingency. The key behind these various insights is that modern moral philosophy can only be an ethics of personality or “an ethics without norms, rules, ideals, without anything that is external to the person” (EP, 3). There are as many ethics of personality as there are people who choose themselves. Now, an ethics of personality endorses the existential leap we saw in the last post but “provides no crutches” with which to leap (EP, 6). So those who wish to leap can turn to normative moral theories to obtain principles, distinctions, arguments, terminology, concepts, and so on as guides in their efforts to construct a moral world for themselves and others. Naturally, Heller herself exemplifies an ethics of personality and offers us a vision of how she, as a person who has made the leap in morality, sees things: it is her “confession of faith” (GE, 175). Her vision is grounded in her acceptance of what she refers to as the “universal orientative principle of morals” (UOP):

UOP: “Care for other human beings – do not harm another human being on purpose.” 

This is another way to express what Heller refers to as Plato’s definition of goodness, namely, “A good person is a person who prefers suffering wrong to committing wrong” (GE, 175). She claims this is a “meta-principle” which is “valid for all morals; it is not historical insofar as it is valid for all human histories where there are morals.” She then offers the following convenient set of “interpretations and concretizations” of the UOP which “can mediate between the master principle (the arche) and all the always new and changing concrete situations in which individuals decide”:

(1) “Have proper regard for other persons’ vulnerability.”

(2) “Have proper regard for other persons’ autonomy.”

(3) “Have proper regard for other persons’ morality.”

(4) “One should have proper regard for other persons’ suffering.”

Again, Heller emphasizes that the UOP and its sub-principles are things which must be freely adopted. They are not articulations of things like natural laws, natural virtues, categorical imperatives of reason, divine commandments, and so on which would offer an objective moral foundation. They are crutches that can be embraced by one who has embraced an ethics of personality and chooses to leap and live in “the category of the universal” rather than “the category of difference,” that is, in accordance with a framework of universal morality rather that in accordance with one’s own interests alone (PM, 14-15). 

This leap into the moral life can contribute to making life on the railway station livable: “Our contemporaries who choose themselves under the category of the universal, make the railway station of the present livable by virtue of their choice alone” (PHF, 226). And it can do this by offering us a way to establish both a world and a home. Recall that to have a world one must be able to act in ways that can affect others and oneself in significant ways. If this is the case then we see how the adoption of the UOP can offer a foundation for worldmaking since one will act towards others in ways that overcome a great deal of the expendability and alienation which we saw can arise in the wake of homelessness. Moreover, since the OUP’s sub-principles are “simple and quite traditional” we can hope to include that dimension of tradition that is so important to having a world. And there is hope that a very large world can be established through ideas easily understood and embraced from a variety of diverse backgrounds. Now, once we have the moral tools for worldmaking we can be homemakers as well since, as we have seen, to have a world is to have a home.

Beautiful Relations

We can also explore how the experience of beauty can facilitate world and home making. Beauty, according to Heller, has itself been homeless ever since the end of metaphysics removed it from its exalted position as one aspect, along with the true and the good, of the highest principle of reality. It did find a temporary yet precarious home in works of art due to the influence of Hegel and Kant. Yet the “autonomy of art” movement ended up isolating beauty from truth, goodness, and the various social and political phenomena to which beauty had previously been related. Heller finds this marginalization unacceptable and offers the following novel proposal for giving beauty a home by reintegrating it into our lives: beauty is a name for those reciprocal relationships in which something is enjoyed for its own sake and cared for. This view sees beauty as something we can make by being open to certain experiences rather than being something that pre-exists in a metaphysical or physical entity: “All in all, one makes things beautiful now…by enjoying them for their own sake, and by wishing, desiring that those very things should not be worn out, for they must remain as they are as the enduring sources of delight” (PHF, 237).

Establishing beautiful relations allows us to establish a world. After all, when we “pass a judgment of taste (‘this is beautiful’) on a thing, we know that this thing belongs to our world, because it fills this world in a more enduring way than its mere use” (PHF, 236). Indeed, “one has a world if there are useless things there, one inhabits a world if one does things beyond that which is useful” (PHF, 238). And world expansion through beauty is possible since “things for use can be transmuted into things of beauty, things of a world, if one just lets them be for their own sake too, and not only for the sake of their technological purpose” (PHF, 239). Heller suggests that John Cage did just this: “In John Cage’s composition, Living Room Music, commonplace things, newspapers, empty boxes and glassware are made to sing and sound. The music says: music is hidden everywhere; just let things find their voices and they become sources of beauty” (PHF, 239).

Naturally, beautiful works of art can be the outcome of such active transmutations. But in calling works beautiful we do not mean they possess some beautiful properties in themselves. Rather, we denote the kinds of reciprocal relationships we can enter into with them, namely, those in which they “cannot be used as a mere means” and which trigger emotions that are a function of “the mutual love between the recipient and the work” (AM, 51; 69). Works that consistently allow for “infinite interpretability” are inexhaustible and have a “secret” which can be sensed but not known. This gives them an “aura” which has potentially universal appeal (TM, 125). Such works collectively form a world of “absolute spirit” or “high culture” that people can share. For example, 

“Shakespeare’s work unites all men and women who have ever dwelled in the world of Shakespeare’s work. Every Shakespeare enthusiast has a different experience, but all those who dwell in Shakespeare’s world understand each other allusions, without footnotes; they can elicit chains of associations in the other’s mind just by reading a sentence; they can confess love with a Shakespeare quotation which does not contain any direct reference to love” (AM, 213).

Procession of Characters from Shakespeare’s Plays by an unknown 19th-century artist

The kind of unity people experience through beautiful art offers world-establishing traditions as well. But it is important to note that beautiful relations are by no means limited to art: they can take place in our friendships, love affairs, experiences of nature, and encounters with the sacred (AM, 43). Again, once worlds are formed homes become possible. So we see that Heller’s relationship building account of beauty offers plenty of opportunities for reducing the alienation of homelessness. 

Conversational Relations

Closely related to this exploration of culture is conversation which is “the kind of discourse that is informal, aims at nothing other than the exchange of ideas and interpretations, and is, in this sense, an end in itself” (TM, 128). In a conversation no one is trying to reach a consensus, no conclusions need to be drawn, and no practical results need to follow. But one thing will occur in a genuine conversation: those who engage in conversation are “created” or even “self-created” as cultivated people through the very act of conversing itself (TM, 128). To be a cultivated person is not to simply appreciate high culture. Rather, it is to be someone who can suspend her judgments, grudges, personal interests, and be open to the ideas of others. Cultivated people “can belong to any profession, to any walk of life” and so conversational relations are not exclusive (TM, 128).

The Conversation by Arnold Lakhovsky (ca. 1935)

But entering into conversational relations doesn’t just create cultivated people. A very unique kind of world is also formed in which the virtual and the actual coalesce: “In this sense the world of cultural discourse is also “another world” – a fiction, a virtual reality. Yet this is a fiction shared among friends, and in a sense it is real. It is a reality in which virtuality and actuality coalesce. Here, utopia is realized – yet only under the condition of the partial suspension of the pragmatic, the theoretical, and the practical pursuits in life” (TM, 133). A good conversation is thus a “simulacrum of the best possible world” (PHF, 154). True, there are plenty of occasions for conversations to devolve into small talk, self-righteousness, gossip, snobbery, and the negation of other people’s views which “can be practiced like a sport” (TM, 133). But those prepared to enter conversations with good will and mutual respect will find they both help create a rich and playful world of inherent value which, in turn, helps create them as cultivated people. This world can certainly provide a dinner table sense of home which, like all genuine homes, can “remain untouched by commercialization” (TM, 132). And like the above options which include a dimension of tradition, conversations can offer something similar since after conversations are over we “remember together; we remember the judgments and the jokes, the last news of the papers we discussed, our passions, our follies, our opinions, and the taste of the food; all of these together we remember as we are remembering together” (PHF, 156).

Comic Relations

Note that the last passage included a reference to jokes which allows us to segway into our fourth form of world and homemaking, namely, those that center around comic relations. One of Heller’s most impressive achievements is her philosophical account of comedy explored in her essay “Joke Culture and Transformations of the Public Sphere” and given its most comprehensive expression in her book Immortal Comedy (2005), the first book-length philosophical inquiry into the topic. Here I just want to introduce some of her basic insights in order to show how they are relevant to our topic. 

Heller’s account of comedy is built on the same concept as her account of postmodernity, namely, contingency. She points out that each human is “thrown into the world by accident” and that, despite coming into existence with a unique genetic code (the “genetic a priori”), each person also confronts a social space of culture (the “social apriori”) which “is entirely contingent, insofar as it has nothing to do with the genetic a priori” (IC, 21). Given this duality, she offers her “hypothesis” regarding comedy which can be enumerated as follows: (1) the “dovetailing between the social/cultural and the genetic a priori is never entirely completed: there is an “ever-present gap between them”; and (2) laughter is “triggered by the experience of the hiatus, that gap or abyss” in which we express “the impossibility of the task of bridging the abyss” (IC, 22). Heller points out that, according to Kant, jokes are funny because of their unreasonable nature which generates a tense expectation but “suddenly empties itself into nothing” (IC, 134). She then takes this conception of a joke and sees in it an expression of the human condition itself: 

“Human existence itself is the essential incongruence. That is, incongruence is the essence of human existence. We are born in order to die. Everything we live for or against, all our attempts to leap over the abyss or to cope with it, our cognitions and emotions, the very fact that they are always involved in something, is incongruent with nothing. And death (not dying which is something) is nothing. Kant described the joke as a play of thoughts that suddenly ends in nothingness. Human life is like a joke” (IC, 213).

When one says that “human life is a joke” one might be taken to be expressing some depressing nihilistic sentiments. However, Heller claims that “When we burst out laughing, we feel our force, we are empowered, and we conquer death, in that moment” (IC, 213). This bold proposition enables her to incorporate the three theories of comedy she finds plausible: the relief theory, the liberation theory, and the incongruence theory. To laugh is to respond to the incongruence between the biological and the social and, ultimately, between our projects and death itself. This gap can be ominous and thus laughter gives a temporary relief from the dark emotions that accompany it. And, finally, laughter momentarily liberates our “innermost soul” from various tyrannical aspects of society that suppress our biological drives and, of course, from the tyrant that is death itself (IC, 214).

Heller makes other less fundamental but nonetheless important observations about comedy. First, “laughter is, so to speak, collective. We laugh in the company of others, we laugh together” (IC, 24). Second, laughter is “contagious; when one person starts to laugh, another often laughs at the sight of him, and then others, until everyone present bursts out in laughter, and no one can stop, even if they try” (IC, 24). Third, whenever people hear jokes they often tell the jokes in turn in ways that develop across generations. This helps preserve the oral traditions of joke culture (AM, 86). And finally, laughter is rational since “by laughing we keep distance. We distance ourselves from others and may also distance ourselves from ourselves” (IC, 25). This distance helps us see things critically, differently, and more objectively. 

Children teaching a cat to dance (The dancing lesson) by Jan Steen (1660)

All these points help us see how comedy can relate to the topics of world and home. The first thing to note is that the collective nature of comedy often presupposes a home since “one cannot tell a joke with footnotes” and, as we saw above, one of the traits of having a home is that one can communicate without footnotes (AM, 85). And if one has a home then one has a world as well. So if we are laughing with others we are not worldless and homeless. This is certainly consoling. However, it also suggests comedy cannot be a means to world and home formation since it presupposes a world and home in order to occur in the first place. But we saw above that world and home expansion is possible. So perhaps the process of understanding the jokes of another world can offer the means to expand into it: there need be no permanent exclusivity. Moreover, we can’t overlook that plenty of physical comedy, which can include slapstick, clowning, mime, physical stunts, making funny faces, and so on, can bypass footnotes altogether since it plays off of our shared biological a priori. And since comedy is ultimately grounded in the incongruencies of the biological with the social a priori and indeed with death itself, there is plenty of reason to believe the world of comedy can potentially be a universal one since it is grounded in the human condition. Its existence promises a joyful home for all rational beings to experience “rational companionship” since “readiness to laugh, as laughter itself, creates a bond of quasi-comradeship” (AM, 85). Since laughter is contagious, develops cross generationally, and appeals to all rational beings, there is reason to believe we can all participate in, and help generate, the comedy needed to make this joyful home accessible to all who struggle with the permanent abyss at the heart of their lives.

Democratic Relations

Finally, we can combat homelessness by drawing upon the homemaking powers of democracy. Heller offers an illuminating example from America which is worth quoting at length:

“Democratic constitution is a home insofar as it is the tradition. Yet it is not a tradition in the same sense as a Charlemagne or the troubadours are tradition for a French cultural or historicist “home consciousness.” If the tradition begins with the acceptance of the constitution (ab urge condita), the balance between new and old will be entirely different. The constitution is amended but never abolished. If it were, Americans would lose their home. Countless French constitutions were annulled; there came another and another. But the existence of “la nation” was never called into question. France remained the home of the French emigrants. Democratic institutions are the homemakers for Americans, not just because they are democratic institutions, but because they are founded by their own constitution, the framework of their broadest identity. Broad identity is not necessarily abstract. There is such a thing as democracy-experience. Americans have this experience. Their self-understanding is presented by the court drama, in the confrontation of persecution and defense, and in the unanimous verdict of the jury. Their ideal is embodied in the man or woman of civic courage; their political truth comes from the newspapers, irrespective of ethnic background, native language, local customs, or the kind of music they prefer to listen to. These experiences are sensually dense since they provide excitement, cause suffering and joy, and will be remembered” (AM, 215).

Counsel for the Defense (The Advocate) by Honore Daumier (ca. 1862)

Heller’s phrase “the constitution is amended but never abolished” captures her vision of a spatial and temporal democratic home that tries to do justice to both tradition and reform. She clearly stresses traditions in the above passage and elsewhere argues, perhaps surprisingly given her Marxist roots, that ideologies, which she characterizes as collective beliefs that center around family, various institutions of civil society, and the state, are necessary for the historical consciousness so indispensable for having a world (TM, 102). Indeed, they are integral to what Heller refers to as “worlding” or the “presencing of past memories” (TM, 101). These traditions, in allowing democratic citizens to have a world, allow them to have a home “identified with freedom” in which “equality is the highest value” (TM, 109). Moreover, Heller thinks democracy “could become the home of all moderns, liberals and anti-liberals alike. Europe might be Americanized at this point” (AM, 217). So we have reason to believe world and home expansion on an international scale is possible.

But she also stresses reform and action when she asserts that particular democracies can only be homes “if their citizens, their present founding father and mothers, re-found it every day” (AM, 217). This constant re-founding places all democratic experiments in the “absolute present” which, as we have seen, is a key characteristic of the postmodern condition and life on a railway station. Modern democratic citizens must understand the contingency of their project, be wary of the many opportunities for regression into barbarism, and be prepared to engage in critique and revision of their constitutions, traditions, and ideologies if needed. 

Home is Where Homemakers Are

So we see that, while postmodernists are threatened with existential homelessness insofar as they do not have a world as given, there are ways of making both worlds and homes by entering into moral, beautiful, conversational, comic, and democratic relations which allow for meaningful  activities and traditions. Thus we can say that home would exist where those who can enter into homemaking relations exist. There are plenty of ways these homemaking relations can be combined. For example, we might see how the ability to enter into conversations can foster comic and moral relations that can be seen as both inherently beautiful and also instrumental to seeing others as persons with dignity in a democracy where, sadly, we all too often see each other as the enemy.  Or we might start with joke culture and see how, given the rational distance and judgment it affords, it allows us to think about moral and political issues in ways that facilitate inherently valuable conversations. And so on. Thus we have a rich network of concepts with which to experiment. But however we combine them, they will always be united in their emphasis on reciprocity, autonomy, and inherent value. And this allows them to function as powerful antidotes to the expendability of things and people which we saw accompanies the homelessness that arises when instrumental value becomes primary in what Heller refers to as the three logics of modernity: technology, allocation of functional roles, and political domination.  

House by the Railroad by Edward Hopper (1925)

In the next and final post (go here) we’ll explore Heller’s account of the threats to the above forms of world and home making.

© Dwight Goodyear 2025

 References

EP: An Ethics of Personality (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996)

GE: General Ethics (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1988)

PM: A Philosophy of Morals (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1990)

TM: A Theory of Modernity (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1999)

BJ: Beyond Justice (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1987)

PHF: A Philosophy of History in Fragments (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1993)

RP: Radical Philosophy (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1978)

IC: Immortal Comedy (Lanham: Lexington, 2005)

AM: Aesthetics and Modernity, edited by John Rundell (Lanham: Lexington, 2011)

TJ: The Time is Out of Joint (Lanham: Lexington, 2002)

CMS: Can Modernity Survive? (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990)

EAH: Engaging Agnes Heller, edited by Katie Terezakis (Lanham: Lexington, 2009)

RI: Rethinking Imagination: Culture and Creativity (New York: Routledge, 1994)

AH: Agnes Heller: A Moralist in the Vortex of History (Ann Arbor: Pluto Press, 2005)