Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores an exaggeration to claim that the idea of force fields equally pervades the essays are collected. It appears in an essay published in 1981 on 'Positive and Negative Totalities: Implicit tensions in Critical Theory's Vision of Interdisciplinary Research', and then served as the master trope of my 1984 monograph on Adorno. Heller's progressive disenchantment with the Marxist Humanism of her mentor, Georg Lukacs, had been facilitated by her acceptance of many of the arguments that had informed Arendt's idiosyncratic defence of classical politics. Although Heller has maintained greater respect for the accomplishments of modernity than did Arendt, she came to similar conclusions about the threat of totalitarianism in the modern world. Heller was not alone in finding inspiration in these texts, which also informed another essay had initially conceived as a 'Force Fields' column in 1989 entitled.