Leszek Kołakowski | |
|---|---|
 Kołakowski in 1971 | |
| Born | (1927-10-23)23 October 1927 |
| Died | 17 July 2009(2009-07-17) (aged 81) Oxford, England |
| Awards | Peace Prize of the German Book Trade(1977) MacArthur Fellowship(1983) Erasmus Prize(1983) Kluge Prize(2003) Jerusalem Prize(2007) |
| Education | |
| Education | University of Łódź University of Warsaw (PhD, 1953) |
| Thesis | Nauka Spinozy o wyzwoleniu człowieka [Spinoza's Teaching on Human Liberation] (1953) |
| Doctoral advisor | Adam Schaff |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 20th-/21st-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | |
| Institutions | University of Warsaw |
| Doctoral students | |
| Main interests | |
| Notable works | Main Currents of Marxism (1976) |
| Notable ideas | Humanist interpretation ofMarx Criticism of Marxism |
Leszek Kołakowski (/ˌkɒləˈkɒfski/;Polish:[ˈlɛʂɛkkɔwaˈkɔfskʲi]; 23 October 1927 – 17 July 2009) was a Polish philosopher andhistorian of ideas. He is best known for his critical analysis ofMarxist thought, as in his three-volume history of Marxist philosophyMain Currents of Marxism (1976). In his later work, Kołakowski increasingly focused on religious questions. In his 1986Jefferson Lecture, he asserted that "we learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are".[1]
Owing to hiscriticism of Marxism and of theCommunist state system, Kołakowski was effectively exiled fromPoland in 1968. He spent most of the remainder of his career at theUniversity of Oxford, as a Fellow ofAll Souls College. Despite being in exile, Kołakowski was a major inspiration to theSolidarity movement which flourished in Poland in the 1980s[2] and is credited by some as having helped bring about the collapse of theSoviet Union.Bronisław Geremek dubbed him as the "awakener of human hopes".[3][full citation needed][4] Among many awards, he was a laureate of theMacArthur Fellowship andErasmus Prize in 1983, the 2003Kluge Prize, and in 2007, theJerusalem Prize.
Kołakowski was born inRadom,Poland. His secondary schooling during theGerman occupation of Poland (1939–1945) inWorld War II, would have been truncated and supplied by alternative means, known as "komplety" in Polish, in the form of occasional private lessons, and supplemented by personal reading. He passed his school-leaving examinations as an external student in theundergroundschool system. After the war, he studied philosophy at theUniversity of Łódź followed by theUniversity of Warsaw, where he completed a doctorate in 1953 under the supervision ofAdam Schaff,[5] with a treatise onSpinoza from a Marxist viewpoint.[6] He served as a professor and chair of Warsaw University's department of History of Philosophy from 1959 to 1968.[7]
In his youth, Kołakowski became acommunist. He signed a denunciation ofWładysław Tatarkiewicz.[8] In 1945, he joined the Association of Fighting Youth.[9] From 1947 to 1966, he was a member of thePolish United Workers' Party. His intellectual promise earned him a trip to Moscow in 1950.[10] He broke withStalinism, becoming arevisionist Marxist advocating ahumanist interpretation ofKarl Marx. One year after the 1956Polish October, Kołakowski published a four-part critique ofSoviet Marxist dogmas, includinghistorical determinism, in the Polish periodicalNowa Kultura. [pl][11] His public lecture at Warsaw University on the tenth anniversary of Polish October led to his expulsion from thePolish United Workers' Party. In the course of the1968 Polish political crisis, he lost his job at Warsaw University and was prevented from obtaining any other academic post.[12]
He came to the conclusion that the totalitarian cruelty ofStalinism was not an aberration but a logical outcome ofMarxism, whose genealogy he examined in his monumentalMain Currents of Marxism, his major work, published in 1976 to 1978.[13]
Kołakowski became increasingly concerned with the role whichtheological assumptions play inWestern culture and, in particular, inmodern thought. For example, he began hisMain Currents of Marxism with an analysis of the contribution that various forms of ancient and medievalPlatonism made, centuries later, to aHegelian view of history. He goes on to criticize the laws ofdialectical materialism for being fundamentally flawed and likened some of them to "truisms with no specific Marxist content", while describing others as "philosophical dogmas that cannot be proved by scientific means" or dismissed them as mere "nonsense".[14]
Kołakowski defended the role whichfreedom of will plays in the human quest for thetranscendent. HisLaw of the Infinite Cornucopia asserted a doctrine ofstatus quaestionis: such that any given doctrine can be relied on to attract supportive arguments.[15] Moreover although human frailty implies that claims of infallibility need to be treated with scepticism, he regarded people's pursuit of higher ideals, such as truth and goodness as ennobling.
In 1965, Kołakowski, together withMaria Ossowska andTadeusz Kotarbiński drew up a report on the meaning of the concept ofthe message, which was used by the defence in the trial ofJacek Kuroń andKarol Modzelewski who were charged by the communist authorities with "propagating false information", in theirOpen Letter to the Party.[16]
In 1968, Kołakowski was forced into exile. He became a visiting professor in the Department of Philosophy atMcGill University in Montreal and in 1969 he moved to theUniversity of California, Berkeley,[17] where his experience of thestudent protests prompted him to abandon theNew Left.[18] In 1970, he was backed to head theUniversity of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research afterTheodor Adorno's death by Adorno's assistantJürgen Habermas, but the proposal met with opposition from the philosophy department.[19] He became a senior research fellow atAll Souls College, Oxford in the same year. Thereafter he remained mostly in Oxford, but spent part of 1974 atYale University, and from 1981 to 1994, was a part-time professor at theCommittee on Social Thought and in the Department of Philosophy at theUniversity of Chicago.[20]
Although the Polish Communist authorities had officially banned his works in Poland, they became part of the PolishSamizdat and influenced the Polish intellectual opposition.[21] His 1971 essay,Theses on Hope and Hopelessness (full title:In Stalin's Countries: Theses on Hope and Despair),[22][23] which suggested that self-organized social groups could gradually extend civil society in a totalitarian state, helped to inspire the dissident movements of the 1970s. These in turn led to the formation ofSolidarity and eventually to the collapse of Communist rule in Eastern Europe in 1989.[24] In 1975, he was one of the signatories of theLetter of 59, an open letter signed by Polish intellectuals to protest against the changes to theConstitution of the People's Republic of Poland which were imposed by theCommunist Party of Poland in 1975.[25] In the October 1978 issue ofEncounter, he published his political manifestoHow to be a Conservative-Liberal Socialist: A Credo, which according toTimothy Garton Ash prefigured the ideological orientation of Solidarity's programme.[26] In the 1980s, Kołakowski supported Solidarity by giving interviews, writing and fundraising.[3]
Kołakowski maintained throughout his life a view of Marxism that was distinct from that operating in the then existing political regimes. He relentlessly disputed these differences and defended his own interpretation of Marxism. In a famous article entitled, "What is Left of Socialism", he wrote:
The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia had nothing to do with Marxian prophesies. Its driving force was not a conflict between the industrial working class and capital, but rather was carried out under slogans that had no socialist, let alone Marxist, content: Peace and land for peasants. There is no need to mention that these slogans were to be subsequently turned into their opposite. What in the twentieth century perhaps comes closest to the working class revolution were the events in Poland of 1980–81: the revolutionary movement of industrial workers (very strongly supported by the intelligentsia) against the exploiters, that is to say, the state. And this solitary example of a working class revolution (if even this may be counted) was directed against a socialist state, and carried out under the sign of the cross, with the blessing of the Pope.[27]
In Poland, Kołakowski is regarded as a philosopher andhistorian of ideas but also as an icon foranti-communism and opponent of communism.Adam Michnik has called Kołakowski "one of the most prominent creators of contemporary Polish culture".[28][29]
He authored more than 30 books in a career spanning more than five decades.[30] He is also regarded as a great populariser of philosophy. His writings, lectures and TV appearances encouraged people to ask questions, even the most banal ones, and he highlighted the archetypal role of thejester in philosophy – someone who is unafraid "to challenge even our strongest assumptions and maintains a healthy distance from everything."[31]
Kołakowski died from multiple organ failure on 17 July 2009, aged 81, at theJohn Radcliffe Hospital inOxford, England.[32][33] In an obituary, philosopherRoger Scruton wrote that Kołakowski was a "thinker for our time" and that, regarding Kołakowski's debates with intellectual opponents, "even if ... nothing remained of the subversive orthodoxies, nobody felt damaged in their ego or defeated in their life's project, by arguments which from any other source would have inspired the greatest indignation".[34] Kołakowski's remains were buried in thePowązki Military Cemetery inWarsaw.[35]
In 1986, theNational Endowment for the Humanities selected Kołakowski for theJefferson Lecture. Kołakowski's lecture "The Idolatry of Politics",[36] was reprinted in his collection of essaysModernity on Endless Trial.[37]
In 2003, theLibrary of Congress named Kołakowski the first winner of the $1 millionJohn W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities.[38][39][30] When announcing the inaugural laureate of the prize,James H. Billington, theLibrarian of Congress, emphasized not only Kolakowski’s scholarship but also his "demonstrable importance to major political events in his own time," adding that “his voice was fundamental for the fate of Poland, and influential in Europe as a whole."[30]
His other awards include the following:
