ABSTRACT
George Markus and Agnes Heller met in a corridor of the University of Budapest over forty years ago. As young lecturers in the Department of Philosophy they soon established a close friendship that has endured to this day. In those early years they became core members of the informal group - the so-called 'Budapest School' - that formed around Georg Lukacs in the last decade of his life. At that time they saw themselves as contributing to a common programme inspired by Lukacs for the Renaissance of Marxism and the internal reform of 'really existing socialism'. This programme founded on the harsh reality of historical events in 1968. The Budapest School subsequently fragmented largely around the issue of how to respond to the loss of their own 'illusions'. After several years of 'political' unemployment and harassment Markus and Heller along with their families finally decided on emigration. Yet this decision, which landed them in Australia in 1978, did not signify the continuity of a joint philosophy programme. Although they joined forces along with Ferenc Feher to write the influential critique of really existing socialism Dictatorship Over Needs (1983), their views have taken different directions and their writings assumed an idiosyncratic shape befitting two very different personalities. Heller has kept on the move - Melbourne, New York, Budapest - and is still meeting commitments all over the world. Her publishing record has maintained the same frenetic pace. During this time she has published almost two dozen books which have fleshed out a comprehensive philosophical vision - critique of modernity, theory of rationality, ethics, justice, post-modern philosophy of history and aesthetic - all establishing her as one of the leading figures in contemporary critical theory. Markus, on the other hand, since 1978 has continued to live and teach in Sydney. Over this time he has laboured on a single major project - a theory of cultural objectivation - which remains unfinished. At the same time, he has published three other books Dictatorship Over Needs (1983
with Feher and Heller), Language and Production (1986) and Culture and Modernity (1992) and many essays that have cemented his world-wide reputation amongst scholars. But this difference in mobility and productivity is only an external index of personality and temperament. Even more interesting is the way these internal differences are expressed in philosophy. In Markus' historicist scepticism and Heller's reflective postmodernism. This paper will explore this difference between these two acknowledged masters who have devoted their lives to the philosophical quest. In reconstructing their family quarrel about the scope and limits of philosophy we will perhaps gain some insights into the possibilities of contemporary philosophy.
