This is perhaps Heller's most "radical" workexcepting her book on the concept of needs in Marx. Her analysis ofphilosophical and non/anti-philosophical dialogue clarifies the way that leftists "ought to think" in order to work for true human emancipation. However, while the book as a whole is critical of Habermas' discursive ethics for its one-sided "rationalist" view of the person, the concept of "philosophical dialogue" which Heller advances is just as much an unrealizable "ought" in class society as Habermas' "ideal speech situation". One comes away with the feeling that this is a really beautiful idea even as one cannot avoid asking in the end "How can it exist in the world?" Heller seems to sacrifice a structural/societal perspective for a kind of interpersonal ethics.

In a 1998 interview, Agnes Heller said "As far as I am concerned I got recognition in the U.S. That is something that you can get in the United States that you cannot get elsewhere. They recognize performance." Certainly, Heller's price for "recognition" in America was certainly not without any cost. Now she only writes a "Philosophy" that can no longer call itself radical. Can she still speak of Lukacs after being feted and "recognized" by....... America?