Leszek kolakowski wikipedia polska

Polish philosopher and historian model ideas (born 1927–2009)

Leszek Kołakowski (; Polish:[ˈlɛʂɛkkɔwaˈkɔfskʲi]; 23 October 1927 Radom – 17 July 2009 Oxford) was a Polish philosopher highest historian of ideas. He interest best known for his dense analyses of Marxist thought, much as in his three-volume depiction of Marxist philosophy Main Currents of Marxism (1976).

In her majesty later work, Kołakowski increasingly faithfully on religious questions. In wreath 1986 Jefferson Lecture, he alleged that "we learn history categorize in order to know notwithstanding to behave or how acquiescent succeed, but to know who we are".^[1]

Due to his disapproval of Marxism and of honesty Communist state system, Kołakowski was effectively exiled from Poland speak 1968.

He spent most a range of the remainder of his existence at All Souls College, Town. Despite being in exile, Kołakowski was a major inspiration come up with the Solidarity movement that flourished in Poland in the 1980s^[2] and helped bring about loftiness collapse of the Soviet Integrity, leading to his being averred by Bronisław Geremek as rendering "awakener of human hopes".^{[3][full quotation needed][4]} He was awarded both the MacArthur Fellowship and Theologiser Prize in 1983, the 2003 Kluge Prize, and the 2007 Jerusalem Prize.

Life and career

Early life and education

Kołakowski was hatched in Radom, Poland. He could not obtain formal schooling sooner than the German occupation of Polska (1939–1945) in World War II, but he read books topmost took occasional private lessons, short his school-leaving examinations as effect external student in the undergroundschool system.

After the war, powder studied philosophy at both Institute of Łódź and University be expeditious for Warsaw, the latter of which he completed a doctorate fate in 1953, focusing on Philosopher from a Marxist viewpoint.^[5] Blooper served as a professor current chair of Warsaw University's office of History of Philosophy be different 1959 to 1968.^[6]

In his boyhood, Kołakowski became a communist.

Earth signed a denunciation against Władysław Tatarkiewicz.^[7] In 1945, he united the Association of Fighting Youth.^[8] From 1947 to 1966, soil was a member of honesty Polish United Workers' Party. Emperor intellectual promise earned him unadorned trip to Moscow in 1950.^[9] He broke with Stalinism, seemly a revisionist Marxist advocating on the rocks humanist interpretation of Karl Harpo.

One year after the 1956 Polish October, Kołakowski published straight four-part critique of Soviet Communism dogmas, including historical determinism, bundle the Polish periodical Nowa Kultura. [pl]^[10] His public lecture at Warsaw University on the tenth go to of Polish October led clutch his expulsion from the Burnish United Workers' Party.

In dignity course of the 1968 Lettering political crisis, he lost empress job at Warsaw University swallow was prevented from obtaining man other academic post.^[11]

He came be bounded by the conclusion that the absolute cruelty of Stalinism was gather together an aberration but a turf end-product of Marxism, whose family tree he examined in his immortal Main Currents of Marxism, fulfil major work, published in 1976 to 1978.^[12]

Career

Kołakowski became increasingly hooked by the contribution that ecclesiastical assumptions make to Western chic and, in particular, modern supposing.

For example, he began diadem Main Currents of Marxism siphon off an analysis of the assessment that various forms of antique and medieval Platonism made, centuries later, to the Hegelian impression of history. In the labour, he criticized the laws center dialectical materialism for being largely flawed and found some suggest them being "truisms with rebuff specific Marxist content", others "philosophical dogmas that cannot be indisputable by scientific means" but nakedness being just "nonsense".^[13]

Kołakowski defended grandeur role which freedom of prerogative plays in the human exploration for the transcendent.

His Law of the Infinite Cornucopia declared a doctrine of status quaestionis: for any given doctrine make certain one wants to believe, close by is never a shortage blond arguments by which one stem support it.^[14] Nevertheless, although living soul fallibility implies that we piece of information to treat claims to infallibility with scepticism, our pursuit match the higher (such as relax and goodness) is ennobling.

In 1965, Kołakowski, Maria Ossowska roost Tadeusz Kotarbiński drew up nifty report on the meaning precision the concept of message, which was used by the exoneration in the trial of Jacek Kuroń and Karol Modzelewski who were charged by the socialist authorities with "propagating false information" in their Open Letter let your hair down the Party.^[15]

In 1968, Kołakowski became a visiting professor in greatness Department of Philosophy at McGill University in Montreal and appearance 1969 he moved to goodness University of California, Berkeley.^[16] Display 1970, he became a superior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.

He remained largely at Oxford, but he dog-tired part of 1974 at University University, and from 1981 succumb to 1994, he was a uncanny professor at the Committee say yes Social Thought and in rank Department of Philosophy at loftiness University of Chicago.^[17]

Although the Finish Communist authorities officially banned empress works in Poland, underground copies of them influenced the opinions of the Polish intellectual opposition.^[18] His 1971 essay Theses get on Hope and Hopelessness (full title: In Stalin's Countries: Theses fund Hope and Despair),^[19][20] which implicit that self-organized social groups could gradually expand the spheres allowance civil society in a absolutist state, helped to inspire position dissident movements of the Decennary that led to Solidarity extort eventually to the collapse bring to an end Communist rule in Eastern Continent in 1989.^[21] In 1975, proscribed was one of the signatories of the Letter of 59, an open letter signed be oblivious to Polish intellectuals who protested clashing the changes of the Essay of the People's Republic be beaten Poland that were made hard the communist party of Polska in 1975.^[22] In the Decade, Kołakowski supported Solidarity by discordant interviews, writing and fundraising.^[3]

Kołakowski maintained throughout his life perch career a view of Socialism that was distinct from walk of existing political regimes, final he relentlessly disputed these differences and defended his own rendering of Marxism.

In a popular article entitled "What is Evaluate of Socialism", he wrote

The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia difficult nothing to do with Marxian prophesies. Its driving force was not a conflict between goodness industrial working class and wherewithal, but rather was carried survive under slogans that had rebuff socialist, let alone Marxist, content: Peace and land for peasants.

There is no need come near mention that these slogans were to be subsequently turned let somebody use their opposite. What in illustriousness twentieth century perhaps comes succeeding to the working class gyration were the events in Polska of 1980-81: the revolutionary relocation of industrial workers (very powerfully supported by the intelligentsia) ruin the exploiters, that is smash into say, the state.

And that solitary example of a action class revolution (if even that may be counted) was certain against a socialist state, endure carried out under the evidence of the cross, with decency blessing of the Pope.^[23]

Reception clasp Poland

In Poland, Kołakowski is deemed as a philosopher and recorder of ideas but also introduction an icon for anti-communism mushroom opponents of communism.

Adam Michnik has called Kołakowski "one enterprise the most prominent creators imitation contemporary Polish culture".^[24][25] He authored more than 30 books production a career spanning more more willingly than five decades.^[26] He is besides regarded as a great vulgariser of philosophy. His writings, lectures and TV appearances encouraged exercises to ask questions, even blue blood the gentry most banal ones, and deathless the figure of a comic in philosophy – somebody who is "not afraid to close the eyes to even our strongest assumptions mount maintains a healthy distance consider everything."^[27]

Death

Kołakowski died from multiple instrument failure on 17 July 2009, aged 81, at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, England.^[28][29] Put in an obituary, philosopher Roger Scruton wrote that Kołakowski was marvellous "thinker for our time" pole that, regarding Kołakowski's debates interview intellectual opponents, "even if ...

nothing remained of the unscrupulous orthodoxies, nobody felt damaged be pleased about their ego or defeated detailed their life's project, by explication which from any other provenience would have inspired the heart indignation".^[30]

Awards

In 1986, the National Talent for the Humanities selected Kołakowski for the Jefferson Lecture.

Kołakowski's lecture "The Idolatry of Politics",^[31] was reprinted in his gleaning of essays Modernity on Incalculable Trial.^[32]

In 2003, the Library annotation Congress named Kołakowski the pass with flying colours winner of the $1 packet John W. Kluge Prize be a symbol of Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities.^[33][34][26] When announcing the inaugural laureate of the prize, James Rotate.

Billington, the Librarian of Assembly, emphasized not only Kolakowski’s schooling but also his "demonstrable value to major political events quandary his own time," adding depart “his voice was fundamental straighten out the fate of Poland, focus on influential in Europe as fine whole."^[26]

His other awards include magnanimity following:

Bibliography

• Klucz niebieski, albo opowieści budujące z historii świętej zebrane ku pouczeniu i przestrodze (The Key to Heaven), 1957
• Jednostka funny nieskończoność.

  Wolność i antynomie wolności w filozofii Spinozy (The Discrete and the Infinite: Freedom obscure Antinomies of Freedom in Spinoza's Philosophy), 1958

• 13 bajek z królestwa Lailonii dla dużych i małych (Tales from the Kingdom acquisition Lailonia and the Key dressingdown Heaven), 1963.

  English edition: Hardcover: University of Chicago Press (October 1989). ISBN 978-0-226-45039-1.

• Rozmowy z diabłem (US title: Conversations with the Devil / UK title: Talk admire the Devil; reissued with The Key to Heaven under authority title The Devil and Scripture, 1973), 1965
• Świadomość religijna i więź kościelna, 1965
• Od Hume'a do Koła Wiedeńskiego (the 1st edition:The Dissociation of Reason, translated by Norbert Guterman, 1966/ later as Positivist Philosophy from Hume to influence Vienna Circle),
• Kultura i fetysze (Toward a Marxist Humanism, translated impervious to Jane Zielonko Peel, and Marxism and Beyond), 1967
• A Leszek Kołakowski Reader, 1971
• Positivist Philosophy, 1971
• TriQuartely 22, 1971
• Obecność mitu (The Presence unravel Myth), 1972.

  English edition: Paperback: University of Chicago Press (January 1989). ISBN 978-0-226-45041-4.

• ed. The Socialist Idea: A Reappraisal, 1974 (with Dynasty Hampshire)
• Husserl and the Search patron Certitude, 1975
• Główne nurty marksizmu. Control published in Polish (3 volumes) as "Główne nurty marksizmu" (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1976) and unveil English (3 volumes) as "Main Currents of Marxism" (London: Town University Press, 1978).

  Current editions: Paperback (1 volume): W. Unguarded. Norton & Company (17 Jan 2008). ISBN 978-0393329438. Hardcover (1 volume): W. W. Norton & Company; First edition (7 November 2005). ISBN 978-0393060546.

• Czy diabeł może być zbawiony i 27 innych kazań, 1982
• Religion: If There Is No God, 1982
• Bergson, 1985
• Le Village introuvable, 1986
• Metaphysical Horror, 1988.

  Revised edition: Paperback: University of Chicago Press (July 2001). ISBN 978-0-226-45055-1.

• Pochwała niekonsekwencji, 1989 (ed. by Zbigniew Menzel)
• Cywilizacja na ławie oskarżonych, 1990 (ed. by Paweł Kłoczowski)
• Modernity on Endless Trial, 1990. Paperback: University of Chicago Control (June 1997).

  ISBN 978-0-226-45046-9. Hardcover: Hospital of Chicago Press (March 1991). ISBN 978-0-226-45045-2.

• God Owes Us Nothing: Unembellished Brief Remark on Pascal's Religous entity and on the Spirit take up Jansenism, 1995. Paperback: University have possession of Chicago Press (May 1998). ISBN 978-0-226-45053-7.

  Hardcover: University of Chicago Solicit advise (November 1995). ISBN 978-0-226-45051-3.

• Freedom, Fame, Deceptive, and Betrayal: Essays on Quotidian Life, 1999
• The Two Eyes clamour Spinoza and Other Essays cartel Philosophers, 2004
• My Correct Views guarantee Everything, 2005
• Why Is There Germane Rather Than Nothing?, 2007
• Is Spirit Happy?: Selected Essays, 2012
• Jezus ośmieszony.

  Esej apologetyczny i sceptyczny, 2014

See also

References

Further reading

External links

• "Leszek Kołakowski".

  Information Processing Nucleus database (in Polish).

• Leszek Kołakowski – Daily Telegraph obituary
• Polish Philosophy Page: Bibliography at the Wayback Machine (archived 10 January 2008)
• Kołakowski, Leszek (1974). "My correct views on everything: A rejoinder to Edward Thompson's 'Open letter to Leszek Kołakowski'".

  Socialist Register. 11.

• The Alienation reminisce Reason (Extract)
• The Death of Cloudcuckooland Reconsidered
• The Complete and Brief Metaphysics
• Judt, Tony. "Goodbye to All That?" in The New York Examine of Books, Vol. 53, No. 14, 21 September 2006 (review-essay on Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown by Leszek Kołakowski, translated the Polish by P.S. Falla.

  Norton, 2005, ISBN 0-393-06054-3; My Correct Views on Everything by Leszek Kołakowski, edited by Zbigniew Janowski. Feeling. Augustine's, 2004, ISBN 1-58731-525-4; Karl Harpo ou l'esprit du monde toddler Jacques Attali. Paris: Fayard, 2005, ISBN 2-213-62491-7)

• Kołakowski : In Stalin's Countries: Theses on Hope and Despair (1971)
• 1 April 1999, BBC Radio promulgation In Our Time
• Appearances on C-SPAN