Leszek Kołakowski Warsaw (Poland), October 23, 2007

Leszek Kołakowski, and Władysław Bartoszewski (right), Warsaw (Poland), October 23, 2007

Leszek Kołakowski (born 23 October 1927 in Radom, Poland) is the most distinguished living Polish philosopher and historian of ideas. Władysław Bartoszewski (vwaˈdɨswaf bartɔˈʃɛfskʲi born February 19, 1922 in Warsaw) – Polish Politician, social Events 4004 BC - Creation of the world begins according to the calculations of Archbishop James Ussher 42 BC - Year 1927 ( MCMXXVII) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Radom is a city in central Poland with 227309 inhabitants It is located on the Mleczna River in the Masovian Poland (Polska officially the Republic of Poland Poland (Polska officially the Republic of Poland Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence knowledge truth beauty justice validity mind and language The history of ideas is a field of Research in History that deals with the expression preservation and change of human Ideas over time He is best known for his critical analysis of Marxist thought, especially his acclaimed three-volume history, Main Currents of Marxism. Marxism is the political philosophy and practice derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Life and work

Due to the German occupation of Poland in World War II, Kołakowski did not attend school but read books and took occasional private lessons, passing his final examinations as an external student in the underground school system. Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany ( ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant is a Country in Central Europe. World War II, or the Second World War, (often abbreviated WWII) was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including After the war, he studied philosophy at Łódź University and in 1953 earned a doctorate from Warsaw University with a thesis on Spinoza. The University of Łódź was founded May 24, 1945 in Łódź, as a continuation of the achievements University of Warsaw (Uniwersytet Warszawski is the largest University in Poland, ranked by the Times Higher Education Supplement as the second best Polish Baruch or Benedict de Spinoza (ברוך שפינוזה Bento de Espinosa Benedictus de Spinoza ( November 24, 1632 – February 21, He later became a professor and chairman of Warsaw University's section on the history of philosophy (1959-1968).

In his youth Kołakowski was a precocious intellect and became a devout communist. In the years 1947-1966 he was a member of Polish United Workers' Party. Year 1947 ( MCMXLVII) was a Common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full 1947 calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Year 1966 ( MCMLXVI) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar of the 1966 Gregorian calendar. The Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza - PZPR was a Communist party in the People's Republic of Poland from 1948 to 1990 His intellectual promise earned him a trip to Moscow, where he observed the future and found it repulsive. Moscow (Москва́ romanised: Moskvá, IPA: see also other names) is the Capital and the largest city of He broke with Stalinism becoming a "revisionist Marxist" and advocating a humanist interpretation of Marx. Stalinism is the political regime named after Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union from 1929–1953 The term "revisionism" is also used to refer to other concepts This led to him losing his job at Warsaw University, and his expulsion from the Polish Communist Party.

Eventually Kołakowski came to believe that Stalinism was not an aberration but the logical end product of Marxism, whose genealogy he examined in his scholarly Main Currents of Marxism, published in 1976-1978. Stalinism is the political regime named after Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union from 1929–1953 Marxism is the political philosophy and practice derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

He has become increasingly fascinated by the contribution which Christianity makes to Western, and in particular modern, thought, and has sought to defend the role which freedom plays in our pursuit of the transcendent. Christianity ( Greek Χριστιανισμός from the word Xριστός ( Christ)is a monotheistic Religion centered on the life and teachings Western culture (sometimes equated with Western Civilization) are terms which are used to refer to Cultures of European origin The term modern period or modern era (sometimes also modern times) is the period of history that followed the Middle Ages between c He asserts that while human fallibility implies that we ought to treat claims to infallibility with scepticism, our pursuit of the higher (such as truth and goodness) is ennobling.

In 1968 Kołakowski became a visiting professor in the department of philosophy at McGill University and in 1969 he moved to the University of California, Berkeley. The University of California Berkeley (also referred to as Cal, Berkeley and UC Berkeley) is a major research university located in Berkeley In 1970 he became a senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. All Souls College (in full The Warden and College of the Souls of all Faithful People deceased in the University of Oxford) is one of the constituent colleges He has remained at Oxford ever since, although he spent part of 1974 at Yale University, and from 1981 to 1994 was a part-time professor at the Committee on Social Thought and in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. The Committee on Social Thought, one of several PhD -granting committees at the University of Chicago, was started in 1941 by historian John U The University of Chicago is a Private university located principally in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago.

The Library of Congress named Kołakowski the first winner of the John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities in 2003. The Library of Congress is the De facto National library of the United States and the research arm of the United States Congress The John W Kluge Prize in the Human Sciences is awarded for lifetime achievement in the humanistic and social sciences to celebrate the importance of the Intellectual Arts for the public In Poland, Kołakowski is not only revered as a philosopher and historian of ideas, but also as an icon for opponents of communism. Philosophy is the study of general problems concerning matters such as existence knowledge truth beauty justice validity mind and language The history of ideas is a field of Research in History that deals with the expression preservation and change of human Ideas over time

Quotes

• "A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading. " (From Metaphysical Horror)

• "In all the universe man cannot find a well so deep that, leaning over it, he does not discover at the bottom his own face. " (From Marxism and Beyond)

• "And thus Prometheus awakens from his dream of power, as ignominiously as Gregor Samsa in Kafka's Metamorphosis. In Greek mythology, Prometheus (Προμηθεύς "forethought" is a Titan known for his wily intelligence who stole Fire from Zeus Gregor Samsa is a Fictional character in The Metamorphosis, a novella by Franz Kafka, who tries to live his life after having been transformed The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung is a Novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915 " (on the emergence of Stalinist dictatorship as an expression of Marxism, from Main Currents of Marxism)

• "The self-deification of mankind, to which Marxism gave philosophical expression, has ended in the same way as all such attempts, whether individual or collective: it has revealed itself as the farcical aspect of human bondage. " (From Main Currents of Marxism)

• "Religion is man’s way of accepting life as an inevitable defeat. That it is not an inevitable defeat is a claim that cannot be defended in good faith. One can, of course, disperse one’s life over the contingencies of every day, but even then it is only a ceaseless and desperate desire to live, and finally a regret that one has not lived. One can accept life, and accept it, at the same time, as a defeat only if one accepts that there is a sense beyond that which is inherent in human history—if, in other words, one accepts the order of the sacred. A hypothetical world from which the sacred had been swept away would admit of only two possibilities: vain fantasy that recognizes itself as such, or immediate satisfaction which exhausts itself. It would leave only the choice proposed by Baudelaire, between lovers of prostitutes and lovers of clouds: those who know only the satisfactions of the moment and are therefore contemptible, and those who lose themselves in otiose imaginings, and are therefore contemptible. Everything is then contemptible, and there is no more to be said. " (From Modernity on Endless Trial)

• "The cultural role of philosophy is not to deliver truth but to build the spirit of truth and this means: never to let the inquisitive energy of mind go to sleep, never to stop questioning what appears to be obvious and definitive, always to defy the seemingly intact resources of common sense, always to suspect that there might be “another side” in what we take for granted, and never to allow us to forget that there are questions that lie beyond the legitimate horizon of science and are nonetheless crucially important to the survival of humanity as we know it. " (From Modernity on Endless Trial)

Most important works

• Klucz niebieski, albo opowieści budujące z historii świętej zebrane ku pouczeniu i przestrodze (The Key to Heaven), 1957
• 13 bajek z królestwa Lailonii dla dużych i małych (Tales from the Kingdom of Lailonia and the Key to Heaven), 1963
• Rozmowy z diablem (US title: Conversations with the Devil / UK title: Talk of the Devil), 1965
• Od Hume'a do Koła Wiedeńskiego (the 1st edition:The Alienation of Reason, translated by Norbert Guterman, 1966/ later as Positivist Philosophy from Hume to the Vienna Circle),
• Kultura i fetysze (Toward a Marxist Humanism, translated by Jane Zielonko Peel, and Marxism and Beyond), 1967
• A Leszek Kołakowski Reader, 1971
• Positivist Philosophy, 1971
• TriQuartely 22, 1971
• Obecność mitu (The Presence of Myth), 1972
• ed. Norbert Guterman was a notable scholar and Translator of Scholarly and Literary works from French, Polish and Latin into The Socialist Idea, 1974 (with Stuart Hampshire)
• Husserl and the Search for Certitude, 1975
• Główne nurty marksizmu (Main Currents of Marxism), 1976 (3 vols. )
• 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, 2001)
• Pochwała niekonsekwencji, 1989 (ed. by Zbigniew Menzel)
• Cywilizacja na ławie oskarżonych, 1990 (ed. by Paweł Kłoczowski)
• Modernity on Endless Trial, 1990
• God Owes Us Nothing: A Brief Remark on Pascal's Religion and on the Spirit of Jansenism, 1995
• Freedom, Fame, Lying, and Betrayal: Essays on Everyday Life, 1999
• The Two Eyes of Spinoza and Other Essays on Philosophers, 2004
• My Correct Views on Everything, 2005
• Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?, 2007

Awards

• Jurzykowski Prize (1969)
• Erasmus Prize (1983)
• MacArthur Fellowship (1983)
• Jefferson Award (1986)
• Award of the Polish Pen Club (1988)
• Kluge Prize of the Library of Congress (2004)
• St. The Alfred Jurzykowski Prize is an annual prize awarded by the Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation in New York for the translation of Polish works in to English The Erasmus Prize is an annual prize awarded by the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation, a Dutch non-profit organization to individuals or institutions that have made The MacArthur Fellows Program or MacArthur Fellowship (sometimes Nicknamed the "genius grant") is an award given by the John D The John W Kluge Prize in the Human Sciences is awarded for lifetime achievement in the humanistic and social sciences to celebrate the importance of the Intellectual Arts for the public The Library of Congress is the De facto National library of the United States and the research arm of the United States Congress George Medal (2006)
• Jerusalem Prize (2007)

See also

• Adam Schaff
• History of philosophy in Poland
• Law of the Infinite Cornucopia

References

• Bibliography
• Leszek Kolakowski notebook, by Cosma Shalizi
• "What the Past is For" by Leszek Kolakowski—Speech given on November 5, 2003, on the occasion of the awarding of the first Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the Humanities and Social Sciences
• "Library of Congress Announces Winner of First John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities and Social Sciences"

Articles

• My Correct Views On Everything: A Rejoinder to Edward Thompson's "Open Letter to Leszek Kolakowski, Socialist Register 1974
• How to Be a Conservative-Liberal-Socialist
• The Alienation of Reason (Extract)
• The Death of Utopia Reconsidered

Reviews

• Judt, Tony. The Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society is a biennial Literary award given to Writers whose work has dealt with themes of human freedom society Adam Schaff ( March 10, 1913, Lwów &ndash November 12 2006) was a Polish Marxist philosopher. The history of philosophy in Poland parallels the evolution of Philosophy in Europe generally The Law of the Infinite Cornucopia, put forth by Polish philosopher Leszek Kołakowski suggests that for any given doctrine one wants to believe there is never Cosma Rohilla Shalizi (born February 28, 1974) is an assistant professor in the Department of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh "Goodbye to All That?" in The New York Review of Books, Vol.  63, No.  14, September 21, 2006 (review-essay on Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown by Leszek Kołakowski, translated from the Polish by P. S.  Falla. Norton, 2005, ISBN 0393060543; My Correct Views on Everything by Leszek Kolakowski, edited by Zbigniew Janowski. St. Augustine's, 2004, ISBN 1587315254; Karl Marx ou l'esprit du monde by Jacques Attali. Jacques Attali (born 1 November 1943 in Algiers, Algeria) is a French Economist and scholar Paris: Fayard, 2005, ISBN 2213624917)
• Roger Kimball, Leszek Kolakowski and the Anatomy of Totalitarianism