Abstract

This essay concerns the period when Ágnes Heller writes her Theory of Moral, between 80s and 90s, after she emigrated to Australia and USA. Then she reconsiders her theory of modernity and refuses the interpretation of Marxism as a philosophy of history on behalf of the existential choice inspired by Kierkegaard. The choice of oneself as a good and decent person becomes the foundation of ethics, and a related individual who cares about others becomes the moral subject. She presents a peculiar definition of the good person, following the Platonic Gorgia where Socrates speaks about the good person as the one who prefers to suffer an injustice rather than to commit it. As a result, her ethics of personality becomes an ethics of responsibility. However, he does not abandon completely Kantian categories as autonomy and practical reason, which are reinterpreted according her own project.