ABSTRACT
Few academic honors have been more strikingly appropriate than the selection in 1986 of Agnes Heller as the New School's Hannah Arendt Professor of Philosophy. Even beyond their intellectual affinities, Arendt and Heller are linked by similar biographical destinies. 'The politicization of social justice', is by no means tantamount to giving priority to the so-called 'social question', as Hannah Arendt once believed. The same sentiment in fact even appeared in the talk Heller gave when she was inaugurated in the Hannah Arendt chair at the New School, entitled 'The Concept of the Political Revisited'. At the same time, somewhat neglected political theories, for example Hannah Arendt's analyses of 'the republic', 'the citizen', 'and the act of foundation as constitution libertatis' have gained in significance. Heller, however, has found fault with Arendt's penchant for absolutizing her distinctions into incommensurable antitheses. Although politics cannot fully solve social or economic questions, neither can it ignore them.
