Ágnes Heller was the best-known Hungarian philosopher of the 20th century, whose fame surpassed even that of the Marxist philosopher György Lukács, her mentor. Having spent over twenty years in emigration, she felt at home in the world, from New York to Buenos Aires to Budapest. Wherever she lived, as a public intellectual, she invariably contributed to the shape of public thought. Heller was a uniquely versatile personality. Not only did she earn enduring merit in philosophy and the social sciences, but also the affection of a broad audience owing to her riveting yet easy-to-understand style, both verbally and in writing. She would never shirk voicing her opinions in television and the papers, on a wide variety of subjects ranging from politics to literature and music, while she continued to produce a remarkable body of work in philosophy. As a thinker, she is not amenable to pigeonholing. Although she is most obviously affiliated with continental philosophy, especially with left-wing existentialism, she never exclusively sided with any single school of thought. Heller was a sovereign, candid human being. Her stature seems all the more impressive for having been achieved by a woman, in a discipline known to be among the most patriarchal among all sciences in terms of its institutions. To this day, female philosophers remain “miraculous exceptions” in a male-dominated field (apart from Heller, the American Martha Nussbaum comes to mind).