Leszek Kołakowski in Memoriam 3631618247, 9783631618240

Table of contents :
Contents
Foreword
Andrzej Walicki • On writing intellectual history: Leszek Kołakowski and the Warsaw school of the history of ideas
Andrew Targowski • Leszek Kołakowski in the West and in Poland
Marcin Król • Intro to What Does Leszek Kołakowski Teach Us?
Zofia Rosińska • Illuminating Life. Leszek Kołakowski’s Philosophy of Culture
Janusz Dobieszewski • On the Consolation Offered by Leszek Kołakowski’s Metaphysical Horror
Witold Mackiewicz • Nietzschean Traits in the Works of Leszek Kołakowski
Janusz Kuczyński • The Universalism of John Paul II—The Universalism of Leszek Kołakowski. Afterword
Marek Siemek • Laudatio on the Renewal of Leszek Kołakowski’s Ph.D. at the University ofWarsaw
Karol Toeplitz • A Farewell to Professor Leszek Kołakowski (1927–2009)
Jerzy Szacki • Leszek Kołakowski (1927–2009): Remembrances and Some Comments
Bibliography of Leszek Kołakowski’s Writings, edited by Stanisław Gromadzki

Citation preview

Jacek Migasiński, professor of the University of Warsaw, is an expert in the history o f modern and contemporary philosophy, especially French phenomenology. He is the author of several books and has edited a few volumes of conference proceedings, published numerous articles and translations of French philosophy.

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ISBN 978-3-631-61824-0

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Towards a Universal Civilization

1

Jacek Migasiński (ed.) · Leszek Kołakowski in Memoriam

This volume is devoted to the person and work of Leszek Kołakowski, who died in July 2009. At the turn of the 1940s and 1950s, Leszek Kołakowski belonged to a group of young intellectuals actively supporting on the “ideological front” and in the University of Warsaw the new political agendas of Marxist provenance introduced in Poland. But already in 1955-56, he came to the fore of a movement of philosophical revisionists radically questioning the validity of these Marxist prescriptions. This resulted in his expulsion from the Communist Party in the early 1960s, then from the University and finally from Poland after the “March events” in 1968. Presented in this volume are, on the one hand, texts drawing up a historical balance sheet of theoretical achievements of Leszek Kołakowski (articles by Andrzej Walicki and Andrew Targowski), and, on the other, essays devoted to certain aspects of his philosophical position (articles by Marcin Król, Zofia Rosińska, Janusz Dobieszewski, Witold Mackiewicz and Janusz Kuczyński). Also presented in this volume are some occasional essays sketching a portrait of Leszek Kołakowski (by Marek J. Siemek, Karol Toeplitz and Jerzy Szacki). The book is closed with an extensive bibliography.

Jacek Migasiński (ed.)

Leszek Kołakowski in Memoriam

PETER LANG Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften

TAUC 01-Migasin�ski 261824-A5HCk-VH.indd 1

24.04.12 12:35:37 Uhr

Towards a Universal Civilization Edited by Jozef ´ L. Krakowiak

Vol.1

PETER LANG

Frankfurt am Main · Berlin · Bern · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford · Warszawa · Wien

Jacek Migasiński (ed.)

Leszek Kołakowski in Memoriam

PETER LANG

Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

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This Publication was financially supported by the University of Warsaw, Faculty of Philosophy and Sociology.

ISSN 2191-4052 ISBN 978-3-631-61824-0 (Print) ISBN 978-3-653-01601-7 (E-Book) DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-01601-7 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Frankfurt am Main 2012 All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. www.peterlang.de

Contents

Foreword .................................................................................................................. 7 Andrzej Walicki On writing intellectual history: Leszek Kołakowski and the Warsaw school of the history of ideas .................................................................................................. 9 Andrew Targowski Leszek Kołakowski in the West and in Poland .................................................... 27 Marcin Król Intro to What Does Leszek Kołakowski Teach Us? ............................................... 31 Zofia Rosińska Illuminating Life. Leszek Kołakowski’s Philosophy of Culture .......................... 39 Janusz Dobieszewski On the Consolation Offered by Leszek Kołakowski’s Metaphysical Horror ..... 49 Witold Mackiewicz Nietzschean Traits in the Works of Leszek Kołakowski ..................................... 67 Janusz Kuczyński The Universalism of John Paul II—The Universalism of Leszek Kołakowski. Afterword ............................................................................................................... 85 Marek Siemek Laudatio on the Renewal of Leszek Kołakowski’s Ph.D. at the University of Warsaw .................................................................................................................. 99 Karol Toeplitz A Farewell to Professor Leszek Kołakowski (1927–2009) ................................... 105 Jerzy Szacki Leszek Kołakowski (1927–2009): Remembrances and Some Comments .......... 117 Bibliography of Leszek Kołakowski’s Writings, edited by Stanisław Gromadzki ........................................................................... 131

Foreword We hereby hand to the reader a volume devoted to the person and work of Leszek Kolakowski, who died in July 2009. Leszek Kolakowski is in the world a well-known figure, so there is no need to recall here in detail his biography and his creative achievements – especially that the texts published in this volume refer to that at many points. Just at the outset it suffice to remind that Leszek Kolakowski is commonly recognized as one of the most eminent contemporary Polish philosophers, and that in the evolution of his worldview and theoretical position one can see a paradigmatic pattern of attitude changes of the intellectual elites in Poland after World War II. At the turn of the 1940s and 1950s Leszek Kolakowski belonged to a group of young intellectuals actively supporting on the “ideological front” and in the University the new political agendas of Marxist provenance introduced in Poland. But already in 1955-56 he came to the fore of a movement of philosophical revisionists radically questioning the validity of these Marxist prescriptions. This resulted in his expulsion from the Communist Party in the early ’60s, then from the University, and finally from Poland after the “March events” in 1968. Until then, however, Kolakowski had already become one of the pillars of the socalled “Warsaw School of the Historians of Ideas”, among prominent representatives of which should also be counted Bronislaw Baczko, Andrzej Walicki, and Jerzy Szacki. While in exile Leszek Kolakowski could not participate directly in the intellectual life of Poland (because of repressive censorship and a ban on him from visiting the country), but his spiritual presence amongst the circle of his disciples and the intelligence opposing the ruling regime was clearly felt and vivid – partly thanks to illegal activity of the “underground” publishers and wide circulation of publications smuggled from the West. For Leszek Kolakowski published a lot and some of his works have been deemed “classical” in the fields of the history of philosophy and history of ideas (see the bibliography included in this volume). His achievements were honored in 2003 with The John W. Kluge Prize in the Human Sciences awarded by the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, recognized as an “American Nobel”. After 1989 when Poland regained its full political sovereignty Leszek Kolakowski could again be freely and overtly present in Polish intellectual life – he regularly visited the country giving occasional lectures, his works were frequently published and republished. He lived to be distinguished with several prestigious honorary doctorates conferred on him by several Polish universities as well as with the “solemn renewal of the doctorate” by his alma mater, the University of Warsaw. Presented in this volume are, on the one hand, texts drawing up a historical balance-sheet of theoretical achievements of Leszek Kolakowski (articles by A. Walicki and A. Targowski), and, on the other, essays devoted to certain aspects of his philosophical position (articles by M. Krol, J. Dobieszewski, Z. Rosinska,

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W. Mackiewicz, J. Kuczynski). To another category belong occasional essays sketching a portrait of Leszek Kolakowski (texts by M. Siemek, K. Toeplitz, and J. Szacki). The book is closed with the above mentioned extensive bibliography. The publishers of the present volume thank sincerely the editors of the periodical “Dialogue and Universalism” – in particular Messrs Janusz Kuczyński and Leszek Krakowiak – for their gracious permission to reprint most of the texts published therein.

Andrzej Walicki

On writing intellectual history: Leszek Kolakowski and the Warsaw school of the history of ideas My work in writing intellectual history forms a small part of a certain intellectual process which took place in the first two post-war decades in my country, a process which culminated in the emergence of the so-called ‘Warsaw school of the history of ideas’.1 The most outstanding representative of this school, Leszek Kołakowski, is widely known today in the West, but knowledge of his intellectual background, his evolution and his achievements in fields other than the history of Marxism, remains very limited. This is due to the fact that his main books in the history of ideas—his monograph on Spinoza (1958) and his magnum opus on seventeenth-century non-denominational Christianity (1965)2— have not been translated into English. I hope that what I have to say may help, at least partially, to fill this gap. The other leading members of the Warsaw school were: Bronisław Baczko, now a professor at the University of Geneva, the author of an excellent book on Rousseau (1964)3 and of a comprehensive, extremely sophisticated study of eighteenth-century Utopias (both available in French), Jerzy Szacki, the author of a recently-published History o f Sociological Thought (London 1979); and myself. In this lecture I shall talk about myself, but I shall concentrate on Kołakowski because it was he who formulated the methodological premises and research tasks of the school with the greatest precision and profundity. I should like to stress, however, that as an academic teacher the most important member of the group was Baczko, an older colleague of mine who greatly influenced two generations of Polish philosophers and historians of ideas: those of his own generation and those who, like myself, defended their doctoral dissertations in the second half of the 1950s and became better known in the early 1960s. I must also

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This paper was originally delivered as a lecture in the series ‘Critical Approaches to History’arranged by the History Department of the University of Sydney, Trinity Term 1984. See L. Kołakowski, Jednostka i nieskończoność. Wolność i antynomie wolności w filozofii Spinozy (Individual and Infinity. Freedom and the Antinomies of Freedom in Spinoza’s Philosophy). Warsaw 1958; L. Kołakowski, Świadomość religijna i wiez kościelna. Studia nad chrześcijaństwem bezwyznaniowym siedemnastego wieku (Religious Consciousness and the Ecclesiastical Bond. Studies on the Nondenominational Christianity of the Seventeenth Century). Warsaw 1965. See B. Baczko, Rousseau. Einsamkeit und Gemeinschaft, Europa-Verlag, Wien 1970 — Rousseau. Solitude et communaute, Mouton, Paris — La Haye 1974; Lumières de l’utopie, Payot, Paris 1978—Utopia. Immagionazione sociale e rappresentazioni utopiche nell’età dell’illuminismo, Einaudi, Torino 1979.

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emphasize that my failure to refer to Szacki’s works does not stem from an under-estimation of his contribution but solely from his separate position within the school. As a sociologist he has always stood somewhat apart from his philosophically-trained colleagues and these differences cannot be discussed here simply through lack of time. The common experience of us all was the Stalinism of the early 1950s and the vigorous reaction to it during the Polish ‘thaw’ of 1955-56. Except for myself, all the members of the group belonged to the party and in the early fifties Kołakowski and Baczko were, in fact ardent Stalinists, deeply engaged in the fight against ‘bourgeois philosophy’ and religious beliefs. The difference between them and myself may be described as the difference between those who had become tools of ideological repression and those who had been its victims. But the importance of this difference should not be exaggerated. Kołakowski and Baczko moved towards revisionism very early, probably just after Stalin’s death; as for me, though never a convinced Marxist — rather the reverse — I was still heavily influenced by Marxism and my first works might be seen as a sort of broadly conceived Marxist revisionism (if revisionism is defined as a certain thought-content, and not as a critical attitude towards orthodox Marxism within the party). In 1955-56 Kołakowski emerged as the leading radical revisionist philosopher in Poland. Baczko, though much less outspoken, was almost equally quick to revise, or rather dissolve, the dogmas of orthodox Marxism by making Marxism historically oriented, con-scius of its historicity and, thereby, of its inevitable historical relativity. Both were fascinated by the problems of historicism in the two different meanings of this term, as a Hegelian belief in the rational and necessary laws governing historical processes and, second, as historical hermeneutics, the art of interpreting ideas of the past by the application of Dilthey’s method of empathetic understanding (Ver-stehen), enriched by a sophisticated ‘sense of history’, the peculiar cognitive privilege of the ‘freely floating, socially unattached intellectuals’, to quote Karl Mannheim. In other words, both represented a kind of Marxist revisionism, which was openly contemptuous of dialectical materialism and critical of historical materialism as a comprehensive theory of history, but which used certain aspects of marx-ian historicism, together with certain aspects of other forms of nineteenth-century historicism, for a deeper understanding of historical processes. By these means ahistorical modes of thought were relativized, the foundations of long-established dogmas were destroyed and a higher level of historical self-awareness was attained. Let me try to explain the reasons for this fascination with history. Historicism as belief in the Hegelian Weltgeist, in the hidden Reason of History, unfolding in accordance with its immanent, necessary laws, was, as I see it, a substitute for a naive belief in the socialist ideal. The existence of evil under socialism, the contrast between ideal and reality, were so obvious that the only justification of one’s commitment to the cause of socialism in Poland had to be sought in historicism. H istorical determinism, combined with the Hegelian concept of the inner meaning of history, made it possible to believe that cruelty

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was a necessary price for progress, that present evil was, in fact, paving the way to a better future and that further sacrifices were demanded in order to realize the great design of History. There was also an element of fear in this attitude, an element consciously exploited by Stalinist intellectuals who tried to intimidate people by claiming that the Reason of History, the Hegelian Weltgeist, was on their side. As Kołakowski has confessed, such a view was quite widespread in Poland: ‘In innumerable instances Stalinism has repeated the spiritual history of young Belinsky, who believed that Russian czardom embodied the spirit of history and that one should not resist history for foolish personal reasons but assent to its basic course despite the anxieties and resistance of the individual conscience.’4 The man who deeply influenced Kołakowski and Baczko (my own case was rather different in this respect) was the Hegelian philosopher Tadeusz Kronski.5 He also profoundly influenced Czesław Miłosz, the recent literary Nobel Prize winner, who called him ‘Tiger’and devoted the last chapter of his Native Realm to him. He learned from Kronski that common sense was reactionary, that the average man had to be ‘terrorized into a philosophical being’, i.e. into the understanding of ‘this monster, historical necessity’ that paralyzed intellectuals with fear.6 The future founders of the Warsaw school had suffered the experience of being terrorized into bowing down before historical necessity. They wanted to liberate themselves from this paralyzing hypnosis and did so by studying historicism historically, by setting its development in historical context and by showing different aspects of its historical function. Their revisionism started from an attempted ‘vindication of human subjectivity’,7 as opposed to the vast impersonal forces of history. Kołakowski discussed these problems in his long essay ‘Responsibility and History’; my own contribution was the book entitled Personality and History (1959)8 in which I dealt, among other things, with Belinsky’s ‘reconciliation with reality’. (The parallel between Belinsky’s Hegelianism and the kind of historicism which haunted the Marxist intellectuals in Poland seemed to me obvious).9 At this juncture, however, a question arises. Why did the young Polish intellectuals prefer to deal with historicism by means of an historical analysis of its genesis and function, rather than a theoretical scrutiny? Why were they neither

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See L. Kołakowski, ‘Responsibility and History’, in Kołakowski, Toward a Marxist Humanism New York 1967, p. 120. See his posthumously published Rozważania wokol Hegla (Reflections on Hegel), Warsaw 1960. The appendix to this book contains memoirs of Kronski by Kołakowski and Baczko. See Cz. Miłosz, Native Realm. A Search For Self-Definition, Garden City, New York 1968. pp. 273 and 276-7. Cf. L. Kołakowski, Main Currents of Marxism. Paperback ed., Oxford 1981, vol. 3, pp. 461-2. A Walicki, Osobowość a historia. Studia z dziejów literatury i myśli rosyjskiej (Personality and History. Studies in Russian Literature and Social Thought), Warsaw 1959. The book includes studies written in 1956-7. It was obvious also to Miłosz who was struck by this parallel while reading my first article on Belinsky (published in 1954).

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influenced nor impressed by Karl Popper’s critique of the theoretical content of historicism, lightly dismissing it as just one more manifestation of a notorious ‘bourgeois simplicity’? It should be remembered that logical positivism, by then very influential in Poland, was for us merely another variant of that narrow-minded dogmatic certainty from which we wanted to free ourselves. We had had enough of the ‘only scientific methods’ and the ‘only scientific answers’, we were suspicious of people who wanted to study ideas from the point of view of their truth or falsity, especially of tnose who claimed to have a monopoly of ‘truly scientific methods’ and pretended to know the truth itself. The historical approach, with its inevitable ingredient of historical relativity, seemed to us a more reliable weapon against all forms of dogmatism than the substitution of one dogmatic theory for another. In other words, historicity became for us an antidote to the ossified, reified forms of dogmatic thinking, whether Marxist, or non-Marxist. Baczko made this assumption explicit in his important study ‘Cryptoproblems and Historicism’(1958). He saw historicism, conceived of as historical herme-neutics (as distinct from historicism as the belief in the ‘objective laws of history10, as the best means of emancipating people from reified, alienated modes of thinking, as a means of acquiring self-awareness and thereby overcoming ‘ideological alienations’.11 It followed from this that Marxism, in order to overcome its dogmatic self-alienation, must acquire a historical consciousness of itself, a consciousness of its historicity which must never congeal into a closed and arrogantly selfconfident systematic theory. Such a turn of Marxist revisionism was apparently peculiar to Poland. In other countries of ‘really existing socialism’ Marxist revisionists were much less preoccupied with history, especially the history of ideas. They wanted rather to improve Marxist theory, including the theory of dialectical materialism. They intended to make Marxism compatible with the development of the sciences and with a more liberal political practice, but not to dissolve all clear-cut theoretical formulae in a stream of historical consciousness. They did not try to undermine the ontological status of Marxist theory by proving that all questions of objective being were in fact questions of historical becoming, or that Marxism could be saved only by its self-awareness of certain, historically conditioned forms of human praxis, both material and ideological. I cannot speculate here about the many different reasons for this peculiar historicist bent in Polish revisionism of the fifties. I can only suggest that the main reason for it was the fact that the crisis of Marxism was much deeper in

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See Baczko, ‘Cryptoproblems and Historicism’, in Baczko, Człowiek i światopoglądy (Man and World-Views), Warsaw 1965, pp. 411-2. A Walicki, W kręgu konserwatywnej utopii. Struktura i przemiany rosyjskiego slowianofilstwa (A Conservative Utopia. Russian Slavophilism, its Structure and Transformations), Warsaw 1964. The title of the English translation is The Slavophile Controversy. History of a Conservative Utopia in Nineteenth-Century Russian Thought (transl. by Hilda AndrewsRusiecka, Oxford 1975).

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Poland than in other socialist countries. The historical relativism and sophisticated scepticism, characteristic of my older colleagues Kolakowski and Baczko, the leading minds in Marxist revisionism at that time, reflected the lack of genuine, naive idealism in the younger intellectuals of the Polish party. Post-Stalinist Marxism in Poland could produce no self-confident, idealistic Don Quixotes; its best representatives were devoid of illusions and thus doomed, as it were, to become sceptical and reflective, divided in themselves like Hamlet. This intellectual background explains many features of the Warsaw school of the history of ideas. The seminal ideas of the school can be traced back to some books and articles published during the Polish ‘thaw’ of 1955-56. These ideas were further developed in the second half of the fifties and early sixties, in the seminar devoted to the problems of historicism — a seminar organized by Baczko at the Polish Academy of Sciences, which for several years provided a forum for lively discussion among philosophically and historically oriented young scholars from the major academic centres in Poland. In the mid-sixties four books were published, which, in spite of obvious individual differences, presented a well-defined common approach to the historical study of ideas. The first was my Habilitationsschrift on Russian Slavophilism and the Slavophile/Westernizer controversy (written in 1962-3, published in 1964). This wasfollowed byBaczko’s monograph on Rousseau (1964) and in 1965 Kolakowski’s magnum opus on nondenominational Christianity and Szacki’s concise study of French counter-revolutionary thinkers.12 All these were widely reviewed and the term ‘Warsaw school of the history of ideas’ was coined. Before moving on to a brief presentation of some general assumptions and methodological principles of this school, I must define what I consider the history of ideas, or intellectual history as such, to be, irrespective of the different schools within it. First, it is generally acknowledged, I hope, that the history of ideas breaks the traditional divisions between different disciplines, cutting across specialised interests in various, well-established and separate branches of scholarship. This is because ideas, or groups of ideas, or even world-views and styles of thought, appear as a rule in all these fields and historians of ideas must trace them everywhere. Thus, to give a classic example, Arthur Lovejoy traced the idea of the great chain of being through philosophy, theology, literature and in ‘certain phases of the history of modern science’;13 the conception of society as an organism appeared in philosophy, political thought, sociology and economics. Similarly, romanticism, both as a type of world-view and as a historically located style of thought, must be studied not only in literature but in philosophical and political thought as well; even some economic doctrines deserve to be labelled

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J. Szacki, Kontrrewolucyjne paradoksy. Wizje świata francuskich antagonistów Wielkiej Rewolucji 1789-1815 (Counterrevolutionary Paradoxes. The French Antagonists of the Great Revolution and their Visions of the World), Warsaw 1965. Cf. A.O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being. A Study in the History of an Idea, Cambridge, Mass. 1948, p. 21.

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‘economic romanticism’ and historians of ideas interested in romanticism cannot ignore them. Second, historians of ideas must use historical and comparative methods, which exclude a purely analytical, ahistorical approach. In the Introduction to my book on Russian Slavophilism, mentioned above, I suggest that ‘in order to grasp the regularities which explain the emergence of a given ideology and to determine its structure and historical individuality it is necessary to compare it with other related ideologies and to place it within a specific development continuum’.14 A very similar view was expressed later (1980) by Carl Schorske who wrote: ‘The historian seeks to locate and interpret the artifact temporally in a field where two lines intersect. One line is vertical, or diach-ronic, by which he establishes the relation of a text or a system of thought to previous expression in the same branch of cultural activity (paintings, politics, etc.). The other is horizontal, or synchronic; by it he assesses the relation of the content of the intellectual object to what is appearing in other branches or aspects of a culture at the same time’.15 Roger Chartier, a French historian connected with the AnnaJes school, called this ‘the only definition of intellectual history presently admissible’16 We may agree with this, or not, but we should at least recognize that in order to be called an historian of ideas or intellectual historian certain minimal conditions must be fulfilled. The practice of treating thinkers of the past as if they were our contemporaries and of dealing with their views by purely immanent, contextless, ahistorical analysis may be useful for certain purposes but must not claim to be the history of ideas, or intellectual history. The members of the Warsaw school took the historical and com-parative approach for granted. The specificity of their views on the methods and essential subject of the history of ideas lay elsewhere. The first formulation of the method commonly accepted by the small group which was to become the core of the Warsaw school was given by Kołakowski in his book on Spinoza. He described this as an attempt to present philosophy as a ‘science of man’, defining his intentions thus: ‘to interpret classical problems of philosophy as problems of moral nature, to translate metaphysical, anthropological and epistemological questions into the language suitable for expressing moral problems, to reveal their hidden human content; in other words, to present the problem of God as a problem of man, the problem of heaven and earth as a problem of human freedom, the problem of nature as a problem concerning the value of human life and the problem of human nature as the problem of interhuman relationships’.17 A similar view was put forward by Baczko in his arti-

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A. Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy, pp. 9-10. Carl Schorske, Fin-de-Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture. New York 1980. pp. 21-2. R. Chartier, ‘Intellectual History or Sociocultural History?’, in Modern European Intellectual History. Reappraisals and New Perspectives. Ed. by Dominick La Capra and Steven L. Kaplan, Ithaca and London 1982. p. 42. Kołakowski, Jednostka... (see fn. 2), p. 5.

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cle on cryptoproblems. Cryptoproblems, he argued, are not pseudo-problems; they are rather a mask for real problems, a mask which we must remove in order to understand the real issues involved. Such cryptoproblems are peculiarly characteristic of philosophy because philosophical thought had evolved special techniques for presenting real problems, i.e. problems of man’s historical and social existence, disguised as purely theoretical speculations about the nature of nonhuman and non-historical objective being.18 My own position on this question was determined by two factors: first, my image of the history of philosophy was shaped by Władysław Tatarkiewicz, an eminent Polish philosopher of the older generation whom the Marxist revisionists strongly disliked; second, the subject of my studies was nineteenth-century Russian thought, which, while rich in ideas, was unsystematic, poorly structured, at times, as in the 1840s, full of philosophical enthusiasm, at others indifferent to philosophical problems, or even violently anti-philosophical. As a disciple of Tatarkiewicz I was reluctant to give up the idea that the history of philosophy might legitimately be seen as concerned with purely theoretical problems. As a student of Russian thought, on the other hand, I was aware both of its relative unimportance to philosphical theory and of its great importance for and contemporary relevance to the history of though conceived of as a record of different expressions of the vicissitudes and predicaments of man’s historical fate. The method of translating theoretical problems of philosophy into the language suitable for expressing moral problems’ seemed quite natural in the Russian case; it was indeed the only method which could reveal the true calibre of nineteenth-century Russian thinkers and the value-relevance of nineteenth-century Russian problems. For example, it was obvious to me that, when Alexander Herzen wrote of the possibility and desirability of reconciling materialism (and empiricism) with idealism, he meant in fact the need to defend the human personality against both the danger of disintegration and atomization, inherent, as he saw it, in materialism, and the danger of subordinating the individual self to a hypostatized totality, as occurred, in his view, with Hegelian idealism.19 I made many such discoveries, quite independently of Kola-kowski’s and Baczko’s views on the subject of the history of thought. But I concluded from this that what I was studying was in fact something quite different from philosophy, something which could underlie philosophical systems but which could also be expressed in non-philosophical language. Like Kolakowski, I was impressed by Lucien Goldmann’s conception of’visions of the world*20 but I preferred to use a more common and more modest term: world-view, Weltanschauung. In the Introduc-

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Baczko, Człowiek i światopoglądy (see fn. 10), pp. 373-6. See my Slavophile Controversy, pp. 388-93 and my History of Russian Thought From the Enlightenment to Marxism (Stanford 1979 and Oxford 1980), pp. 13M. Cf. Lucien Goldmann, he Di’eu cache. Etude sur la vision tragique dans les Pensees de Pascal et dans le theatre de Racine, Paris 1955.1 quote from this book (and from other works by Goldmann) in the introduction to my book on Russian Slavophilism (Slavophile Controversy, pp. 2-3).

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tion to my SJavophiJe Controversy! stressed that world-views were for me the basic units of study, i.e. both the subjects and the tools of research, developing this idea as follows: ‘The use of this term (world-view) implies that it is a comprehensive vision of the world, a meaningful structure and system of cognitive, ethical, and aesthetic values that is internally coherent within its own chosen framework. Weltanschauung conceived thus differs both from the looser meaning of the word and from philosophical theory which is always [I would now say ‘as a rule*] an expression and conceptualization of a particular view of the world, but never identical with it. The same WeJtanschauung can be expressed in many philosophical theories, while a single philosophical theory can combine elements from different views of the world, since theoretical coherence does not necessarily imply a coherence of the underlying system of values. A particular Weltanschauung may, moreover, be expressed in theological, economic, or historical writings, or its principal vehicle may be works of art. Since Weltanschauungen are essentially atheoretical, they need not be expressed through concepts, but find a variety of expressions, thus enabling the investigator to use the tool of comparative analysis and to search for the “common denominator” in many formally different and apparently heterogeneous cultural products. [In this context I referred to Karl Mannheim’s study ‘On the Interpretation of Weltanschauung’.21] This history of WeJtanschauungen — today a discipline in statu nascendi in which many Marxist and non-Marxist scholars are showing growing interest — would put an end to the largely conventional and oldfashioned “division of labour” in scholarship and would encourage the reintegration of artificially isolated branches of the humanities.’22 In studying the Slavophile world-view I made use of some concepts elaborated by historical sociology and the sociology of knowledge, especially by Ferdinand Tonnies, Max Weber and Karl Mannheim. Thus, for instance, I tried to show that the Slavophile antithesis of Russia and Europe corresponds in almost every detail to the contrast between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, as elaborated by Tbnnies, and that the Slavophile critique of Western rationalism is explicable in the light of Weber’s sociology, as a reaction to the process of rationalization — a process which both the Slavophiles and Weber conceived of as peculiar to the Occident. I also used Mannheim’s concepts of conservative thought and conservative Utopia, presenting Slavophilism as a specifically Russian variant of a pan-European style of thought, that is, as a Russian variety of conservative romanticism — a collective Weltanschauung which emerged in response to the rational-individualist philosophy of the Enlightenment, the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution in England. I was impressed by the fact that Tonnies’s and Weber’s concepts proved useful in explaining not only the Slavophiles’ social ideology but also their philosophical and theological conceptions. For this I did not refer to the marxist view of the relationship between the base and the superstructure, but insisted only that ‘there is a correla21 22

In K. Mannheim, Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, New York 1952. Walicki, Slavophile Controversy, p. 2.

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tion between structures of thought and imagination on the one hand, and the social structures — and types of human relationships determined by them —on the other’.23 In accordance with a general tendency of the Warsaw school I saw this correlation as resulting from the inescapable ‘humanism’ of our knowledge. We are imprisoned, as it were, in the historical world of human praxis, unable to transcend ourselves, to attain to a disinterested, supra-human pure theory. This, I argued, ‘gives rise to a certain hypothesis which results indirectly from the basic thesis of historical materialism. This hypothesis, which might be called anthropocentric, implies that at the core of every view of the world lies a specific philosophy of man and society.’24 Thus historical materialism was interpreted not as a ‘truly objective, scientific theory’ but rather, as self-awareness of the epistemological impossibility of creating such a theory. To study the history of thought as the history of world-views presupposed a totalizing approach, a search for an inner coherence and structural unity, which was very different from Lovejoy’s program of isolating a certain ‘unit-idea’ and tracing it through all the provinces of history.25 I must admit, too, that we were not familiar with, even altogether ignorant of, Lovejoy’s works. I can imagine that, had his views been discussed at Baczko’s seminar on historicism, he would have been accused of an atomistic approach, of a programmatic refusal to see ideas as parts of larger, historically shaped and culture-bound meaningful structures. We were keenly aware that structures of thought were not facts, i.e. something immediately and unreflectively recognizable as self-evident and simply given. Structures, we thought, were both discovered by the researcher and created by him, because an important part of his task lay in the effort to introduce a certain order into the chaotic mass of empirical data and thus make them intelligible. In describing this creative effort I used the term ‘structuralization’, by which I meant the construction of certain ideal models and their use to explain certain patterns of thought or clusters of ideas. A concrete example will make it more clear. In studying different forms of romantic opposition to the process of rationalization I found it helpful to apply to them Max Weber’s categories and to create two ideal models of romantic anti-rationalism: the romanticism of tradition and the romanticism of charisma. The first explained many features in Russian Slavophile ideology, while the second led to the discovery of a wellstructured pattern of thought in the messianic ideas of Adam Mickiewicz, the great Polish poet who sel his hopes on divinely inspired heroes.26 In both cases 23 24 25 26

Ibid., p. 5. Ibid. Cf. Lovejoy, op. cit., p. 15. See my study ‘Prelekcje paryskie Mickiewicza a slowianofilstwo rosyjskie’, originally published in 1964, reprinted in my Filozofia a mesjanizm. Studia z dziejów filozofii i myśli spoleczno-religijnej romantyzmu polskiego, Warsaw 1970, pp. 240-93. For a shortened* English version see Walicki, ‘The Paris Lectures of Mickiewicz and Russian Slavophilism’, Slavonic and East European Review, XLVI, No. 106, Jan. 1968. See also my Philosophy and Romantic Nationalism: The Case of Poland, Oxford 1982, pp. 269-76.

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the result brought more coherence and intelligibility to a body of texts which otherwise could have been dismissed as chaotic, lacking the rigour of disciplined, systematic thought and therefore unworthy of serious attention. Indeed, I could not claim that the Slavophiles and Mickiewicz were rigorous, disciplined thinkers; I could, however, claim to have shown that there was an inner coherence in their ideas, that their thought closely approximated the two ideal models of romantic reaction to rationalism and that their ideas therefore deserved serious treatment in a comparative study of different forms of European romanticism. Leszek Kolakowski rarely appeared at Baczko’s seminar and we knew little about the further development of his methodological views. He set these out, however, in his book on non-denominational Christianity and I was happy to find myself in almost complete agreement with him. It can truly be said that he formulated the position of the Warsaw school in the most vigorous way, combining intellectual sophistication with extreme clarity of expression and unrestrained, sometimes deliberately provocative, boldness of thought. The historiography of ideas and historiography in general, Kolakowski argues, must beware of the danger of historical over-exactitude — the danger of describing with equal care all aspects of the subject of study, all facts relevant to it, and thus eliminating all ideal types, all conceptual constructions.27 Such a striving for fidelity to facts makes history unintelligible, since historical phenomena become intelligible ‘only on the basis of various deformations whose number, within the bounds of acceptable standards of scholarship, is practically limitless’.28 Rousseau proposed to start by forgetting all about facts, Nietzsche said that all facts were stupid, and both were perfectly right. To strive for an allround view, taking account of all aspects of a given phenomenon, is a vain aim, since it is simply not realizable, but it is very effective in eliminating from the picture all contrasts of colour or shade, thus making it totally incomprehensible. Kołakowski concluded: ‘We propose therefore a method which may be called expressionist historiography, a method which organizes the empirical elements of the historical world by subordinating them to a central idea which manifests itself in a system of ideal constructions and through them confers meaning on each particular element (of the emerging picture)’.29 *

I found in these words a somewhat heightened expression of my own methodological credo. Though inclined to think that the number of legitimate ideal constructions is not unlimited, I entirely agreed with Kolakowski’s views that only ideal constructions can confer meaning on facts and that the historiography of ideas should be expressionist, making ample use of colour contrasts. The same view was implicit, I think, in Szacki’s book on the French counterrevolutionary 27 28 29

Kołakowski, Świadomość... (see fn. 2), p. 251. Ibid., p. 253. Ibid.

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thinkers whereas Baczko’s position in the question was rather different. He did not try to present Rousseau’s world-view as a coherent whole, but stressed instead its ambiguities, obscurities, dialectical contradictions and the tensions between its different constituent parts which, taken together, had given rise to a multiplicity of completely different but equally legitimate interpretations of Rousseau’s legacy.30 It seemed to us that the hidden message here was sufficiently clear: by exposing the ambiguities, contradictions and vague nuances in the legacy of the spiritual Father of the French Revolution, Baczko implied that the same was true of Marx, that there were in fact many different Marxisms, all equally legitimate derivations from the original sources, and that all talk of ‘the only correct interpretation of Marx’ should be seen as the arrogant usurpation of simpletons. Another important feature of Kolakowski’s methodology was his combination of historical hermeneutics with phenomenological insight into the essence of the irreducible ‘primary phenomena’. He stressed that in order to approach a given subject historically we must first know what it is in itself, what is its nature, its essence, as revealed by eidetic insight.31 Sometimes he even described his method as a sort of phenomenological hermeneutics. From the phenomenological point of view, he argued, each system of ideas represents, as it were, three different subjects of study: the unity of the personality of its author, the unity of his ideas as a historical phenomenon and the unity of his thought as teleological structure.32 In the first case we must concentrate on the author’s intentionality, in the second we should be concerned with the proper location of his views in the historical process, and in the third we should deal with the autonomous logic of his thinking. The aim of the historical study of ideas is to achieve an understanding of the h uman meaning of a given work, a meaning that can be found even in texts which from a scientific or logical point of view seem completely nonsensical. To achieve such an understanding the historian must fulfil two requirements: he must be able so to identify himself with the thinkers of the past as to understand them from within, to see their perspective as open, while at the same time viewing them from a historical distance, that is perceiving their perspective as historically closed.33 There is no adequate criterion of how much empathy and how much distance should be involved; the deepening of our knowledge depends rather on a constant confrontation between understanding cultural products from within and understanding them from without. We must reject the illusion that meaningful structures may be understood by reducing them to their historical determinants; we must also be aware that the meaning of a given fact is not its immanent quality, but depends on the place of this fact in a structure, and that structures of meaning, reconstructed by us, are always open, since they may always be changed by the addi-

30 31 32 33

See Baczko, Rousseau, pp. 9-10. Kołakowski, Świadomość, p. 448. Ibid., pp. 550-1. Ibid., p. 554.

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tion of new facts, produced by further historical development.34 Because of this our knowledge of the past always depends, and must depend, on the age in which we live, on our place in it and on the peculiarities of our cognitive perspective. If we ask how this methodology has been applied by Kolakowski himself in his magnum opus, we must recognize that he has applied it very consistently and with most impressive results. Kolakowski agrees with Rudolf Otto, Max Scheler and other phenomenologists that religious faith, the experience of the sacred, belongs to the category of irreducible primary phenomena, but insists that its different concrete manifestations could and should be explained historically.35 He defines the nature of his subject as nondenominational religious faith, i.e. one characterized by resistance to the organized, institutionally controlled forms of religious life.36 He singles out as a peculiarly important form of this type of religiosity, mysticism, a special kind of religious subjectivism that is subjective and anti-individualist at the same time. It is subjective in concentrating on the inner religious experience, which leads, explicitly or implicitly, to a denial of the need for organized Christianity; it is anti-individualist in its aim of direct union with the Absolute Being, the annihilation of the finite individual self.37 Of course, for Kolokowski, all these concepts (nondenominational religious faith, religious subjectivism, mysticism, etc.) are ideal types rather than logical notions, ideal constructions in the light of which he presents the historical vicissitudes of different forms of nondemoninational Christianity in seventeenth-century Europe. In his book he covers the different conflicts between religious consciousness and ecclesiastical bonds, the attempts to abolish any organized mediation between the individual soul and God, the struggle against religious subjectivism within the existing Churches and, also, the wise policy of the Catholic counter-reformation — a policy which tried, quite successully, to domesticate mysticism, to find a place for it within the Church and thus give it an outlet while, at the same time, keeping it under control. Kolakowski could not be accused of using history as cover for the discussion of contemporary problems, but it was obvious to me that he saw the conflicts between nondenominational Christians and the Churches as examples of a broader phenomenon, characteristic also of the secular forms of faith. It was easy to draw a parallel between nondenominational Christians, denying the need for ecclesiastical bonds and Marxist revisionists, trying to liberate themselves from dogmatism and the organizational discipline of the party. It was equally easy to see the contrast between the wisdom of the Catholic Church, which had managed to assimilate certain tendencies of various centrifugal movements (among them not only mysticism, but also secularism and some elements of the reformation), and the stupidity of the communist parties which

34 35 36 37

Ibid., pp. 39 and 560-1. Ibid., pp. 35-6. Ibid., pp. 16-22. Ibid., pp. 25-7 and 267.

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proved unable to assimilate, even partially, the ideas of the Marxist revisionists and so to make themselves more compatible with the demands of modernity. In 1968, as the result of the so-called March events in Poland,38 Kolakowski and Baczko (together with five other university professors) were expelled from their chairs in the University of Warsaw. They were allowed to continue their work in the Academy of Sciences but a campaign of slander was launched against them in the press, against which they were unable to defend themselves. Publication of their works was forbidden and even footnote references to their publications by other scholars were allowed in exceptional cases only. Small wonder, therefore, that they decided to leave Poland. Unlike the victims of the so-called ‘anti-Zionist campaign’, they did not apply for permanent emigration, but it was clear, none the less, that they were leaving Poland for many years, if not for good. The campaign of slander unleashed in 1968 was directed against revisionists within the party and against people of Jewish origin, who were globally accused of divided loyalties. I was not attacked since I was neither a party-member nor a Jew. Moreover, the hard-liners within the party had already passed through the process of de-ideologization and, paradoxically, often tried to compromise their opponents by reminding them of their Stalinist past, although this involved direct appeals to the anti-communist feelings of the population. They also tried to make use of nationalist phraseology and to claim that ideological control over those fields of research which were not directly political would be relaxed rather than strengthened. Their flirtation with Polish nationalism resulted, among other things, in special support for the study of Polish culture, including Polish philosophy, and it happened that the history of Polish thought was just then becoming the main focus of my research. This explains why the department of the history of modern philosophy in the Institute of Philosophy of the Polish Academy of Sciences was renamed the department of the history of modern Polish philosophy, and why I became its head. In the given situation it was morally difficult to accept this position, but I agreed to do so. I had the moral support of my colleagues (including, of course, Baczko and Kołakowski) and I hoped to defend the tradition of independent scholarship, especially that of the Warsaw school. It turned out, however, that a simple continuation of my work was not enough. I had to ask myself new questions and, also, answer questions which began to be asked both by my colleagues from the Institute and by representatives of the younger generation of Polish philosophers and historians of ideas. First, I had to answer the objection to the legitimacy of the history of Polish philosophy as a separate subject. It was argued that the history of philosophy, as well as the history of ideas broadly conceived, should not be divided along national lines. In fact I had always studied the history of ideas within a national 38

This refers to student demonstrations at the University of Warsaw on 8 March 1968, quelled by the police disguised as ‘angry workers’. This event marked the beginning of a violent power struggle within the party which resulted in a series of anti-Semitic purges.

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framework, as the history of Russian or Polish thought, while at the same time never ceasing to stress the necessity for setting Russian or Polish ideas in their pan-European context. Nevertheless I felt obliged to legitimize the subject of my studies anew and did so by distinguishing between the history of ideas and intellectual history, two terms often used interchangeably. Unlike the general history of ideas, I reasoned, intellectual history is, as a rule, a history of concrete communities; universal intellectual history is hardly imaginable, while intellectual history with qualifications, such as European intellectual history, Russian intellectual history or the intellectual history of medieval Christendom, is perfectly natural. Intellectual history deals with the intellectual life of a certain collective subject, with its spiritual biography, as it were. Therefore to study it in a national framework is just as legitimate as in the case of political history. The history of philosophy might be studied at the history of purely theoretical problems, in which case to divide it on national lines would indeed be illegitimate. But it might also be studied as part of the intellectual history of a given nation, as an expression of its culture, its aspirations, as part of its historically-shaped and history-bound collective mind. In the case of Poland and Russia such an approach seemed to me especially fruitful. Second, the disappearance of Baczko and Kołakowski from the Polish intellectual scene strengthened the opposition to the Warsaw school in Polish philosophical circles. There arose a strong tendency to vindicate the traditional view of the history of philosphy as an autonomous discipline, distinct from the general history of ideas, interested in the theoretical content of philosophical problems and not their ‘humanistic coefficient’ (to use Znaniecki’s term).39 I did not resist this tendency, which seemed to me perfectly legitimate; sometimes, however, I was forced to defend the legitimacy of my own approach. More disturbing to me was the growing strength of an anti-historicist and anti-humanist tendency within the history of ideas broadly conceived, especially the so-called ‘strategy of dehumanization’, initiated by Foucault in his Archeology o f Knowledge.40 While not denying the possible advantages of this strategy, I was, and still am, convinced that it cannot be applied to the study of the intellectual history of particular nations. If intellectual history is studied in a national framework, it must be searching for continuities rather than discontinuities; it must try to make the national heritage live, not treat it as dead archeology; it must strive for empathetic understanding ofHhe national legacy, and treat intellectual history as the history of the ideas of thinking subjects, and not’discourse treated as an objective phenomenon’.41 After all, my main aim in writing the intellectual history of Russia was to make it easier to understand the Russian mind, and my study of Polish intellectual history sprang from a growing need to understand our roots, to know both the strengths and weaknesses of our intel-

39 Cf. Lewis A. Coser, Masters of Sociological Thought. Second ed., New York 1977, p. 526. 40 Cf. M. Poster, ‘The Future According to Foucault: The Archeology of Knowledge and Intellectual History’, in Modern European Intellectual History (see fn. 16). 41 Cf. ibid., p. 146.

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lectual traditions. I was so firmly convinced of this that any discussion with the advocates of the dehumanizing approach seemed to me completely pointless. Instead, I wrote my History o f Russian Philosophy From the Enlightenment to Marxism,42 as a concrete example of how philosophical and other ideas might be studied as part of the intellectual history of a particular country. Most disturbing, however, was the criticism of the legacy of the Warsaw school which began to be heard in the 1970s, at a time of almost complete deideologization of the party and of growing awareness of the need for new ideas to change the world, not merely to understand it. The Warsaw school was increasingly associated with historical relativism, a good tool for destroying Marxist dogmas but at the same time destroying the grounds of belief in objective truth and in absolute values. This criticism, which I heard from many quarters, was summed up in an article which appeared in 1979 in the underground journal Res publica. According to its author, the members of the Warsaw school struggled against Stalinist Marxism but failed to elaborate an alternative philosophy: ‘They came to the conclusion that every idea leads to its own negation, to the betrayal of values which gave birth to it, and this awareness made them fearful of a clear self-determination, incapable of defining their own position in an unambiguous way.’43 In other words, it was claimed that the desire to destroy the grounds of dogmatic beliefs led the members of the Warsaw school to a sort of historical scepticism. There was a grain of truth in this, and the reasons for it were readily explicable. In the middle of the fifties the future members of the Warsaw school were settling their accounts with Stalinism, trying to undermine its arrogant self-assurance, to liberate thought from what pretended to be the only correct way of thinking. Historical relativism and historical hermeneutics were liberating forces for us: relativism was a weapon against dogmatism and hermeneutics a means of vindicating the richness of our historical heritage and thereby enriching ourselves. We were indeed striving to free the humanities of all dogma, but our historical relativism was of a peculiar quality, stemming not from indifference towards values but, rather, from a commitment to certain values, such as freedom of thought, ideological pluralism, self-awareness. We were keenly sensitive to the fact that to absolutize certain truths or values leads to the destruction of all other values.44 It could truly be said that our intentions were as far from ‘relativisitic nihilism’ as possible: we concentrated on relativizing truths and values, not in order to destroy them, but to justify the pluralism of truths and values and to protect it against the arrogant claims of narrowminded dogmatists.

42 43 44

The English edition is entitled A History of Russian Thought From the Enlightenment to Marxism (see fn. 19). It was written in 1967-8 but not published till 1973 (in Polish). Res publica, No. 1, 1979, p. 68. Two years later this article was published in the Catholic monthly Wiez (Bond), May 1981, and its author, Jan Spiewak, revealed his name. The danger of’absolutization’ was analysed in Kronski’s excellent study of Nazism. See Kronski, op. cit., pp. 301-13.

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The younger people, whose generational experiences were the events of 1968 and 1970, were in a completely different situation. They faced an oppressive system whose representatives were cynical rather than dogmatic; a system which to some extent tolerated intellectual freedom while at the same time very effectively blocking all attempts at political or economic reform. In such conditions relativism became suspect as a possible ally of cynical opportunism, while the need for absolute truths and absolute values was becoming more and more apparent. What was at stake was not so much freedom from ideological oppression (although some forms of such oppression were still with us) but rather freedom to express social aspirations in action. But, in order to act one needs to have faith, since only faith can move mountains. This need for a new inspiring faith found expression in widespread dissatisfaction with Kolakowski’s book The Presence o f Myth,45 written in 1966 but published in Paris in 1972. Unlike myself, Kołakowski could not be accused of a lack of direct political commitment, neither could he be reproached with an inability to understand the need for faith. On the contrary, he defended the view that faith is necessary to human life, that even a belief in objective truth presupposes an act of faith. But he refused to concede that belief in objective truth can be rationally grounded. Such a belief was for him a sort of myth;46 he stressed the necessity of myths, warning that their disappearance would lead to universal nihilism, but he did not renounce his view that nobody can ‘know the Truth’, that such claims are equally illegitimate in religion and in science. He proposed that our commitment to change the world should be based upon an arbitrary, irrational act of faith, an act made in full consciousness of its arbitrariness and irrationality. Such a solution, presupposing a constant tension between the search for the absolute and the consciousness of relativity, was not easy to accept. The younger people were dissatisfied with the thesis that their convictions, the foundation of their opposition to the existing regime, were based upon just another myth and could not invoke the authority of objective truth. Hence they accused Kolakowski of an inability to overcome relativism, and of abandoning the search for truth, thereby betraying the true calling of philsophy.47 Some pointed to the connection between Kolakowski’s philosophy and the methodological orientation of the Warsaw school. There is no doubt that such a connection really exists. The methodology of the Warsaw school explains much in the philosophy of its most outstanding representative, and vice versa. This does not, however, mean that Kolakowski’s 45

L. Kołakowski, Obecność mitu, Paris, 1972. The title of this book was meant to indicate the omnipresence of myths in human life. 46 In his Tanner lecture, delivered in Canberra in July .1982, Kołakowski used the term ‘epistemological utopia’, defining it as ‘a hope for a perfect certainty or for unshakeable criteria of validity in cognitive processes’. (See ANU Reporter, Vol. 13, No. 10, 9 July 1982, p. 3). 47 A good summary of this argument is to be found in M. Kroi, ‘Leszek Kołakowski i zmierzch filozofii racjoialistycznej’ (Leszek Kołakowski and the Twilight of Rationalist Philosophy) in Zeszyty Literackie (Literary Notebooks), No. 3, Paris, Summer 1983.

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philosophy can simply be treated as a further elaboration of the philosophical assumptions inherent in the methodological views which he shared with other members of the school. Despite all criticisms, his philosophy is still at the centre of Polish intellectual life while the Warsaw school in the historiography of ideas no longer exists. To conclude. I have tried to explain the emergence and disappearance of the Warsaw school by applying to it its own methods of historical analysis and empathetic understanding. The school emerged in response to Stalinist dogmatism in philosophy and disintegrated as a result of the de-ideologization of the ruling party on the one hand, and the growing need for alternative ideologies on the other. Its contributions to the history of ideas have successfully withstood the test of time, but the extremes of its methodological views were too closely linked to a specific ideological situation to be defended in changed conditions. Here I refer primarily to our stubborn refusal to make unambiguous valuejudgements, deriving from our determination to avoid all ahistorical dogmas. The spirit of the Warsaw school is still alive in some Polish works in the history of ideas, but, as a rule, in combination with the polemical method ( to use John Passmore’s term),48 i.e. with purely philosophical criticism of the ideas under scrutiny. This important change seems quite natural; I was, possibly, the most reluctant to accept it, but in my recent works I, too, am moving in this direction.

48

See J. Passmore, ‘The Idea of a History of Philosophy’, in History and Theory. Beiheft 5: The Historiography of the History of Philosophy, 1965, pp. 6-13.

Andrew Targowski

LESZEK KOŁAKOWSKI IN THE WEST AND IN POLAND (1927–2009) The eminent Polish philosopher Leszek Kołakowski died on July 17, 2009. A lecturer in Canada and the US for 41 years and at Oxford University since 1970 following his 1968 expulsion from the University of Warsaw, Leszek Kołakowski was living proof that ideas lead to revolution. His ideas (and his students) inspired the 1980 Solidarity Revolution in Poland in result of which Poland regained independence and another Pole, Professor Jerzy Buzek, became President of the European Parliament in 2009. This is truly a monumental achievement for one philosopher. Let us recount the facts. In 1957, a year after the Polish October of 1956, the professor of the University of Warsaw, Leszek Kołakowski, published four articles in the Paris-based Polish periodical “Kultura”, in which he analyzed the dogmatism and historical determinism of Soviet Marxism. The fact alone that an intellectual from communist Poland managed to publish his work in “Kultura” was quite a heroic feat in itself. Kołakowski subsequently concluded, that the heinous Stalinist system was no aberration but a logical consequence of Marxism, which he outlined in his monumental work Main Currents of Marxism (1976–1978). In 1965, together with Maria Ossowska and Tadeusz Kotarbiński, Kołakowski authored an expert opinion on the meaning of the notion “information”, which was used in the court defense of Jacek Kuroń and Karol Modzelewski, accused of “disseminating false information” in their Open Letter to the Party. In the following year, Kołakowski lost his university job and was ousted from the Polish communist party for excessive criticism of its authorities and deviating from Marxism in his teaching work. After resettling abroad, Kołakowski began to move away from Marxism towards Christian and universal thought. After a brief period in Paris, he settled in England, where he lived until his death. His well-known essay Theses on Hope and Hopelessness, which he published in “Kultura” in 1971, laid the intellectual ground for the anti-communist opposition in Poland, inspiring the foundation of Workers’ Defense Committee (KOR) and the Flying University. Also attributed to Kołakowski is the idea to found free trade unions in communist Poland. Kołakowski collaborated with the Polish Independence Agreement, in 1977–1980 he was the official KOR representative outside Poland and was responsible for contacts between the organization and Polish émigré circles. Kołakowski’s mother died when he was three years old, his father was killed by the Nazis when he was sixteen. At the age of fifteen he wanted to join the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) but was advised to instead try and survive the Ger-

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man occupation as Poland would need intellectuals like him after the war was over. In 1945, he joined the student organization AZWM “Życie” and PPR. For 21 years (until 1966), Kołakowski was a member of the Polish Workers’ Party and then Polish United Workers’ Party (Polish communist party) and worked in its Institute of Scientific Staff Training (IKKN). He was one of the founders of the Warsaw school of historians of idea and until 1966 a professor and head of the history of modern philosophy unit at the University of Warsaw. In 1966, he lost his chair and communist party membership for criticizing party leaders and distancing himself from the official Marxist canon in his teaching. In 1968, Leszek Kołakowski was banned from teaching and publishing for his part in the events of March of that year, which forced him to leave the country. A reminiscence about this outstanding Polish philosopher can not bypass his notable involvement in developing communist ideology in Poland in the post-war years. In this connection he reaped some unflattering reviews in the émigré press. For instance, Jan Czerkawski wrote: “Did professor Kołakowski leave the party because ‘real socialism’ in the 1960s had lost much of its revolutionary charm? I leave it up to the reader to decide whether he deserves tribute…”

I would like to express a “reader’s opinion” on the matter. To me professor Kołakowski’s case is typical for the so-called Columbus Generation. The West’s abandonment of Poland during the Warsaw Uprising and later at Yalta disenchanted the Polish intelligentsia. In effect, not only Kołakowski but many other Polish luminaries turned to communism. Unfortunately, Kołakowski took avid part in this, however I do believe he saw the light as more and more facts revealed the negative aspects of Stalinism. Today, Leszek Kołakowski is an acknowledged theoretical authority on Marxism. In his opinion, Stalinism’s “aberrations” were not just deviations from a norm but resulted from Marxist theory. Shortly before his death, professor Kołakowski and Professor Władysław Bartoszewski took part in a TV debate in Oxford, during which Kołakowski did not deny his leftist views and admitted that he still considered himself a communist and was not ashamed of it, as he believed in the ideology where others only “believed” in the power it brought. Hence his avoid interest in Spinoza, whom he saw as the “first communist”. On the other hand, some believe that the first communist was Jesus Christ, which only shows how resounding and attractive the idea of “communism” can be. We who grew up in communism know that this idea is unenforceable. Equally unenforceable, however, is today’s 21st-century turbocapitalism. We are standing before a revolution. What we don’t know is what kind of revolution it will be. It should be remembered that the Soviet empire fell not in result of the strivings of the eminent professor Andrei Sakharov, but because three members of the Soviet politburo—Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Yakovlev—saw the writing on the wall. The first of these three was at the time the head of the Soviet communist party and ruled the country. Today the West is grateful to Gorbachev and

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respects him for his wise stance in those days—although one may hold much against him, for instance the bloody quenching of social unrest in the Baltic republics. The case is similar with Poland’s general Jaruzelski, who peacefully renounced power to the opposition after holding it for almost 50 years in various high posts. While in power, he soiled his hands with many bad and shameful deeds, but history will forget and forgive precisely for the way in which he stepped down—even though many contemporaries hold it against him. In Poland, professor Kołakowski fell from grace in 1965 when he stood up for two students, Adam Michnik and Jacek Kuroń, authors of a rebellious “letter to the (communist) party”. This time Kołakowski was standing up “for” someone and not “against” something. It is worth noting that in 1968 hardly anyone stood up in support of the students of the University of Warsaw . The university’s rector Stanisław Turski escaped to Vienna in order to avoid protecting his students against brutal police attacks on the campus. Rulers are rarely saints—more often than not they are controversial people, frequently with warped characters (Stalin, Hitler). However, if their painful experiences sometimes inspire them to wise decisions, much can be forgiven. Such is the case with Leszek Kołakowski, whose activity in later years helped found the Third Polish Republic. I had the pleasure of meeting professor Kołakowski at Loyola University in Chicago in 1982, where we spoke in support of the Solidarity Union. The professor was very involved in the Solidarity cause and said more about it than anyone of us. Already then he was wise and good.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR — professor, Director of the Center for Sustainable Business Practices, Western Michigan University; President of the Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations. [email protected]

Marcin Król

INTRO TO WHAT DOES LESZEK KOŁAKOWSKI TEACH US?

The history of Leszek Kołakowski’s ideas is, in fact a philosophical issue—one that makes one ask the question about the point of philosophy; Leszek Kołakowski does answer it. His response is astonishingly bold, not only for our times, and it is unique in that it is both entangled and straightforward. When asked, Kołakowski did not like to give short answers or he would dismiss the question with a good joke. In his texts, though, we do find the answer, albeit phrased differently and expressed with varying degrees of determination. Also, what astounds you is that despite his changeable convictions and views on politics, Leszek Kołakowski does not change his main ideas and interest; neither does he give fundamentally different answers with the passage of time. Conversely, he remains constant in his thinking, even if—as he puts it—the standpoint slightly differs initially, while later— fundamentally. In the fall of 1961, I started studying at the Philosophy and Sociology Department of the University of Warsaw. I studied philosophy and, later, sociololgy, too. In October, I saw an extremely slim, faint silhouette of a young man on the big, high stairs of an ex-monastery building in Warsaw’s Krakowskie Przedmieście Street. He was wearing a hat (which was by then quite rare) and was propped up on a walking stick. He was descending and talking with someone. I knew it was Prof. Kołakowski because in my last years of secondary school we attended a few of his public lectures. He was then 34, and already a professor ordinarius. He was a celebrity; I then did not realize the acquaintanceship with him, later to become friendship, would determine the way I was to think for the rest of my life, or at least mark my standards, which I rarely would live up to. In 1956–1962, Kołakowski published a number of significant texts, which can be divided into two groups: those important on account of political and spiritual circumstances of those days and the texts of universal value that have retained their weight until today—texts on philosophy and civilization, the issues he would deal with for the rest of his creative life. Those can also be classified chronologically, which is not unrelated to the then political situation. There is a considerable freedom of expression in 1956–1957, and the period ends with the closure of the weekly “Po Prostu”. After that, while the restrictions of the freedom of speech are not immediate, and Poland enjoys liberty unknown elsewhere in the Soviet Bloc, the need to protest the felonies and nonsenses of the past Stalinist times abates, and there appears a new strand of the dispute about the Marxist heritage: a debate between the followers of the “young” and the “old” Marx.

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Finally, in mid-1960s, the dominant tendency in non-governmental (there is no space for anti-governmental) journalism and philosophy shifts to an ever clearer undermining of the very bases of Marxism and Real Socialism. Kołakowski is active in all those phases, albeit more as a philosopher than columnist. Over the several decades of creative activity, Kołakowski wrote a number of articles which, however, significantly differ from his more numerous philosophical texts. They reflect the position of a reasonable man of a profound sense of decency, essentially liberal (but not always and increasingly less so with the passage of time), who openly speaks of things that, to a large extent, many know of but which, on account of the prominence of the author, are all the more captivating to read about. But before I talk about those years (1955–1969), the reader deserves to find out about Kołakowski’s commitment in Stalinism and be presented an attempt at its interpretation. Since I always trusted Leszek Kołakowski without hesitation, and because trusting the author you write about is fundamental for the work undertaken by any historian of ideas (or any reasonable man), we shall start from the explanation which Leszek Kołakowski made in an interview with Jerzy Turowicz published in “Tygodnik Powszechny” in 1988. Asked how he came to be a devout Marxist, Kołakowski answers: “As you know, aligning yourself with Marxism was always a double act: an intellectual rationale was indistinguishable from the political reasons, and you could only very artificially separate those. True, Marxism appealed to me, like to many others, in that it appeared to offer a rational, unsentimental view of history, in which everything had been explained, things became intelligible—sure enough, only seemingly—with not only the past apparently explicable but also the future looking rather transparent. Marxism attracted you with its purely humanist man-centered philosophy. Sartre once said that Marxists are lazy in that Marxism—in its long-time oversimplified, flattened form of, above all, a political philosophy—gave you a comfortable feeling of controlling all historical knowledge, while it did not make it necessary to learn history to this end; it also provided a clear vision for the future, a sense of moral advantage in social conflicts where you sided with the downtrodden, and so on. All that was obviously lined with cruel falsity, but for many years it did function with some efficacy. There were other reasons, too. Like a number of my friends who had walked a like path, I was repulsed by a certain Polish tradition that I disliked: the clerical-bigotednationalist, antisemitic kind—the cluster was apparently absolutely negative in cultural terms, and I personally felt it repugnant. I imagined Communism to be a continuation of the tradition that was much closer to me: a rationalist, cosmopolitan heritage of free thought, etc. When we talk about this today, it seems ridiculous given the circumstances in which Communism operated. It is not my intention to justify the illusions; all I want to say is that if we consider joining Communism, which was in fact what a section of the Polish intelligentsia undertook in wartime and in the immediately postwar period, I would suggest that we do not bring it down to stupidity of morally abhorrent motivation, but to consider how Communism presented itself in opposition to a current of Polish culture that was extremely irritating and inimical to left-wing educated people, especially in the last few years before the war. We largely reacted to that side of the Polish culture, which I still dislike, albeit from a different standpoint. I still dislike the nationalist legacy, I still do not like Polish chauvinism, I still do not like

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clericalism, although the sense of that tradition has recently changed and a number of stereotypes have been transformed or come to mean different things. Yet, this tradition is still foreign to me, even if Marxism has long ceased to be the place where to flee from that tradition.”

Koniec legendy [The End of the Legend] by Jan Józef Szczepański presents a great description of those doubts, problems and disputes about what was coming; it is a recollection story featuring a new-year party of 1944 in Goszyce, the home estate owned by the mother-in-law of Jerzy Turowicz. This is where some people including Czesław Miłosz were staying and where they debated the shape of their future commitments. Miłosz spoke about the Poland of the final years of the interbellum in quite similar a fashion to Leszek Kołakowski; he would, fiercely and with deep resentment, attack nationalism, clericalism and the superficial character of the Polish intellectual life. I think we underestimate how strong the emotions and attitudes related to the negative reactions to that period were and how strongly they affected attitudes to the new reality after 1945. This is all the more significant given that various kinds of “historical policies” have meant attempts to construct different right- or left-wing interpretations of the intellectual life of 1930s in Poland. Miłosz followed a different path, but he did confess to a temptation, while others, with the subsequent generations in particular, accepted the new reality with enthusiasm; the motivation for that has been explained by Kołakowski. It is so easy to deride the naivety of those behaviors and ideas; it is all the easier to condemn them. However, those were closely tied to the absolute spiritual catastrophe that the world suffered in the aftermath of the World War II. Thanks to several wise men, the reconstruction of the political and economic reality went rather well if not excellently (outside of the sphere of the Soviet influence), but there was no good idea for a spiritual reconstruction after what happened during the World War II, but also after Europe’s attitude to Nazism still before 1939, and following Munich. Also, not without a good reason, a number of Poles thought we had been betrayed by the West and that—which is still another idea—Nazism was a legitimate child of Western culture rather than its bastard. The works by Tadeusz Borowski, his dramatic and finally tragic fate are a great illustration of the phenomenon. Borowski joined the communist party, and then the intelligence, too, only to commit a suicide in 1953 upon the realization of the mistakes he had made. A different example of reacting to the post-war dilemmas is the text by Stefan Kisielewski published in the second issue of “Tygodnik Powszechny” (1945) where the author speaks in favor of basing the new political order on Christianity; yet he only does so for want of other offers and aware that the Church did not come out of the war immaculate. However, only the Church constituted a prospect for retaining the fundamentals—a spiritual and cultural continuity. Leszek Kołakowski would later declare similar ideas. In the wake of as dramatic spiritual helplessness as that, a strong Marxist offer was tempting, even though many did resist it. We are dealing here with other—psychological—factors, though, which I have no intention of exploring.

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Leszek Kołakowski’s background, including his youth, needs to be born in mind, too, when speaking of the sources of influence. In lengthy interviews with Zbigniew Mentzel, including Czas ciekawy czas niespokojny [Interesting Time, Turbulent Time], Kołakowski speaks about his childhood spent with his father, who was involved in Socialist co-operative activities (Mother died when he was 3); he gives an account of declaring himself “non-confessional” in the Polish prewar school. Still, he cherishes the memories of his uncle Wiktor Pietrusiewicz, Radom mayor and ex-legionist with Piłsudski. During the war he wanders around with his aunt, who looks after him also after the death of his father killed by Germans in 1943. He receives immense, albeit informal, education which is dependent on the place where he is staying and the books available at the moment. He learns French to read Maeterlinck, who fascinated him, or Latin—to hold theological disputes with his friend, a former priest and an excellent historian of theology. He reads a lot of Polish literature, Positivist novels and Romantic poetry. He was brought up in the spirit and formation—quite commonplace in the Poland of the time—which was patriotic, leftist, anticlerical, progressive, and staunchly opposed to National Democrats. Notably, not all the people of that formation became Marxists, and a number of the pre-war Socialists hated the new regime. Nonetheless, Kołakowski became a Marxist, and later a Stalinist. In Łódź of 1945, he admits having done three things: passing his secondary school-leaving exam, launching his university studies and joining the Party. Nowhere does he give the rationale of that, otherwise unpopular, decision. However, in the text “Śmierć bogów” [Death of Gods] we come across some sentences that testify to Kołakowski’s realization of the reasons and illusions related to his previous commitment. “When we become Communists, with eighteen years behind us [this is how old Kołakowski was when he joined the communist party—MK] as well as an unshakeable trust in our wisdom and a few overestimated experiences that have not been thought of enough—they were gathered in the big hell of war—we hardly think that Communism is necessary for us to make means of production agree with the level of the productive forces. Hardly does it occur to you that there you are in Poland, where the extremely high technological advancement necessitates an immediate nationalization of the means of production or over-production crises start looming like a hail cloud. In brief—we are not good Marxists.”

Next comes a list of things that the likes of Kołakowski believed Communism was supposed to do: abolish social inequality, national hatred and racism; “lo and behold, in the allegedly Socialist politics and ideology, the ominous shadow o the ‘Stuermer’ overcoats accompanied patriotic slogans”. They believed in the kingdom of freedom, but look: “the superstructure of the state of nationalized production can degenerate into a system of police terror and the military dictatorship of fear and lawlessness”. They had believed in democracy, end of wars and an abrogation of ideological hoax. “Socialism appeared to the naïve imagination as a time of great harvest in the spiritual culture of man: free, liberated from dependencies, unrestrained. One could, however,

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easily condemn culture’s best traditions with fire and sword in the name of Socialist cultural blossom, transform culture and art for the sake of petty adulation, make philosophers and sociologists shallow doctrinaires, entirely subordinated to the current political tactics. There was no problem rewarding scribblers while destroying artists, and organizing a system in which a great destroyer Andrei Zhdanov announces his triumphs every day […] It would take long to make a sad list of lost illusions that hastily revealed the path to 1984.”

The allusion to the title of George Orwell’s book, like most of the above statements, would have been censored away two years afterward. And yet, Leszek Kołakowski still cherishes a hope that conditions would arise where the “idea of Socialism will regain its unadulterated splendor”. A farewell to the illusions of Socialism would come some ten years later. It looks as if Kołakowski accepted a popular idea at that time “Socialism—yes; distortions—no!” In theory, Socialism is not such a bad idea: one needn’t like it, but it is in fact a theoretical basis for the operation of a number of democratic political parties of contemporary Europe. Still, few criticized Stalinism and carried out such selfcriticism in their own and others’ name. In the essay Czym jest socjalizm? [What Is Socialism?], which he wrote several weeks later, Leszek Kołakowski puts forward tens of arguments that give a negative definition of Socialism of what it is not, and just one positive: “Socialism is a really good thing”. Allow me to set aside for awhile the one book he published in the times of Stalinism, Szkice o filozofii katolickiej [Sketches on Catholic Philosophy] (1955), which includes texts from 1951–1955, since I will return to it later when discussing Kołakowski’s ideas on religion. And I leave it with no comment: so many wise and foolish statements have been written about it: the issue of the false religion professed back then. Leaving that world came violently and with a lot of fuss. And with no hesitation. Naturally, an issue of human and intellectual responsibility remained. Leszek Kołakowski did no harm to anyone, except signing the letter condemning Władysław Tatarkiewicz, an act he was ashamed of and about which he wrote repeatedly later. However, all through the university studies—remarkable education provided by e.g. both Kotartbińskis, Ossowska, plenty of other eminent scholars and the Latin-speaking Prof. Oko from Vilna—he was on friendly terms with his teachers throughout the difficult first half of 1950s. The intellectual responsibility harassed him for the decades to come until he published the brilliant critique of Marxism Main Currents of Marxism in 1976–1978. The work, repeatedly reprinted, led to the grand debate in the USA in 2009, attended among others by Charles Taylor, John Gray and Tony Judt. This was not just expiation; rather it amounted to considerable compensation. I shall revisit the theme; now we must ask the obvious question: why didn’t Leszek Kołakowski and a number of like-minded thinkers leave the Party in 1956 and abandon the hope for a “better” Socialism. The answer was Revisionism, and its nature is a little obscure. Let Kołakowski himself speak again on the issue he rarely addressed. In the afterword to the three volumes of collected writings, published in 1988 as In

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Praise of Inconsistency. Uncollected Writings 1955–1968, Leszek Kołakowski wrote, “Revisionism of 1950s and 1960s in Central and Eastern Europe was an attempt as such a reform of communist systems as to inculcate in them respect for truth and logical argumentation, common sense, democratic values, civil rights, economic skills, and other noble things so that the core of the system would remain the same while under reconstruction. It was an internally contradictory position because the core is exactly about consistently ruining the very noble things. Thanks to that inconsistency, however, Revisionism enjoyed a degree of effectiveness and despite its contribution to upholding the erroneous faith that Communism could be reformed along its internal assumptions, it did in its general outcome gradually disassemble all the component parts of the systemic ideology of Marxism-Leninism […] Many of us Revisionists—former Communists—ceased to consider themselves distinct Communists as early as 1955. Most, however, (including myself) saved their party IDs believing, not quite mistakenly if expressed in abstract terms but too erroneously and ambiguously, that if the party is the only form of political life, it ought to be made use of as such with a view to some amendments in the social life; it would be counterproductive to leave the only forum in the hands of Stalinist obscurantists.”

It is not easy to understand the intentions of the Revisionists, looking at them from contemporary standpoint, despite those explanations. In some ways the fussy considerations offend our opinion about mind quality. What sort of Marx and what kind of Marxists can be deemed the founding gurus if Marxism is essentially just a label for something else, i.e. Stalinism. Yet the role of Revisionism could have been just that, and for two reasons. Firstly, there was still censorship and it was customary to use para-Marxist language and, much as Kołakowski or others strayed from orthodoxy, the Left and Socialism were good for them, while their opposites—the Right and Conservatism—were bad. They could not (it would bring on them disrepute if they did so overnight, which did happen later) jump from one extremism to another. Also, only for the few was Socialism, “good Socialism”, foolishness. Whoever doubts that should read the preface to the famous book by Emmanuel Mounier What is Personalism? (1956). Turowicz, an author far as can be from the Party and Stalinism, is close to Socialism. After all, it was not just for the people alien to the Church but for the very believers like Jerzy Turowicz that the social and (let us be honest) political teachings of the Church were hard to accept on account of the pre-Vatican-II Church having been too indulgent for the “exploiters” and too indifferent to the “exploited”. Socialism, then, was a dream of a great section of Western intellectuals, and it was only after some of its major postulations, like universal health care, mass education, minimum wage and limited labor time, had been implemented that it began to lose its political and spiritual sex-appeal, as Ralph Dahrendorf repeatedly put it. That is not to say that it lost the appeal for good, though. Traditional Socialism did, but some of its forms will constantly be reborn when an acceptable red lines of social inequality are crossed. Therefore, anyone who is sensitive to the world tends to be a Socialist. This was also a reason why the mo-

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tivations of the “naïve” Revisionism were not so naïve after all; its form may have been so, but that was only a short spell in the intellectual history of Leszek Kołakowski and the many wise people of his generation. The naivety was basically about the language. It was believed that if some form of “socialist” language were used, the propositions put forward by the Revisionists would reach the people in power. It was not so, obviously, but one needed to get some hands-on experience with that in order to grasp it. To conclude the story, I shall return to my own memories. During my philosophy studies (1961–1966) I once encountered the argumentation typical of Revisionists, i.e. the debate on the young Marx; attempts were made to teach me Marxism twice. One of the teachers was Adam Schaff, a simpleton thinker—as Kołakowski put it—even tough very elegantly dressed in Western clothes. Schaff would teach us Marxism in our first year; following the first wasted lectures we stopped attending them—they only made you laugh e.g. when Schaff tried to explain the solipsistic absurdity in arguing that if you kiss a girl (what a lack of political correctness!) that means she does exist. Another person who slaughtered us with Marxism was Zofia Morecka, who treated her subject with extreme seriousness. It was only her course that I failed; I would later prepare for the resit with my friend Teresa Tuszyńska, a famous film actress those days. I just could not grasp Socialist Economy and I marvel how anyone could. With these exceptions, I had excellent university education, except that I never learned anything about Marx, let alone Engels. For us Revisionism did not exist in practical terms, but what I call Socialist Libertinism and what Leszek Kołakowski and others furthered until approx. 1962, was for me a significant spiritual experience. The two strands in Leszek Kołakowski’s thinking, as well as the developments in his philosophical thought at the time, which exposed the main themes essential for the rest of his life, deserve more detailed attention. ABOUT THE AUTHOR — philosopher and historian of ideas. In 1978, he founded and was editor-in-chief of the liberal journal “Res Publica” (now “Res Publica Nowa”); professor ordinarius of the University of Warsaw; Dean of the University’s Applied Social Sciences and Social Rehabilitation Department. The books he has authored include Słownik demokracji (1983) [Lexicon of Democracy]; Historia myśli politycznej: od Machiavellego po czasy współczesne, 1998 [The History of Political Ideas since Machiavelli to Contemporary Times]; Patriotyzm przyszłości, 2004 [Patriotism of the Future]; Bezradność liberałów: myśl liberalna wobec konfliktu i wojny, 2005 [Helpless Liberals: Liberal Thought as Confronted by Conflict and War]; Czego nas uczy Leszek Kołakowski, 2010 [What Does Leszek Kołakowski Teach Us].

Zofia Rosińska

ILLUMINATING LIFE. LESZEK KOŁAKOWSKI’S PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE

ABSTRACT In his life and work, Leszek Kołakowski traversed many paths, some more and some less wellknown. The main focus here is on Kołakowski’s involvement in what one may call an anthropological variant of philosophy of culture. Anthropological philosophy of culture bases on the following assumptions: 1. Human conduct is determined by culture. There is neither humanity without culture nor culture without humans. 2. Human conduct is by nature referential, in other words, the factual alone is not enough for humans who tend to reach beyond it in their search for the most elemental and ultimate truths. 3. Culture is a dynamic phenomenon and a challenge on the path to self-awareness. 4. Axiological sensitivity. 5. The culture philosopher is immersed in the culture he studies and, by revealing that which it conceals, is a source of reflection on this culture. All these assumptions lie at the core of the philosophy of Leszek Kołakowski. Keywords: culture; philosophy; illumination; comprehension; self-contestation.

My intention in the present essay is to underscore those traits in Leszek Kołakowski’s work that can be considered to belong to the sphere of philosophy of culture. In his short essay Philosophy of Culture as Primary Philosophy, Andrzej Szahaj wrote: “Reflection on culture constitutes one of the most interesting traits of the Polish tradition in humanistic study” and then “our cultural identity calls for constant reflection on culture, both in the western and global, and the local, Polish dimension.”1 Such reflection is certainly present in the philosophy of Leszek Kołakowski. Philosophy of culture as an independent philosophical field emerged from three earlier philosophical trends: philosophy of life, cultural criticism, and NeoKantianism.2 Kołakowski discusses all three, but does so in his own, unique way. He writes about humanity’s cultural experiences and entanglement in values, as well as the transcendental tropisms that characterize humans. In taking up eve1

2

A. Szahaj, Filozofia kultury jako filozofia pierwsza [Philosophy of Culture as First Philosophy], in: Co to jest filozofia kultury? [What Is Philosophy of Culture?], Z. Rosińska, J. Michalik (Ed.), University of Warsaw Publishers, Warszawa 2006, p. 158. Cf. R. Konersmann, Filozofia kultury. Wprowadzenie [Philosophy of Culture. Introduction], transl. by K. Krzemieniowa, Oficyna Naukowa, Warszawa 2009.

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ryday issues, he reflects, analyses, and in effect leads his readers to question their earlier run-of-the-mill beliefs about them. Moreover, he does not make them feel they are manipulated as his reflections also appear to embrace his own beliefs. Beliefs that he strives to illuminate by showing the ambivalent structure of cultural experience and philosophical thought. In Kołakowski’s concept, philosophical thought is not autotelic but appears correlated with existential experience. Leszek Kołakowski is neither a culture scholar nor a culturologist3 but a philosopher of culture. More precisely, we could say he is a co-creator of anthropological culture philosophy. Although boundaries are difficult to set here (over the past century culture study evolved from the paradigm of neutrally-described cultural phenomena to interpretative description while culture philosophy is still in search of its own identity—whereby it also makes use of description and interpretation), we intuitively sense that the two differ. Although opinions as to what culture philosophy is may differ, to my mind the most adequate definition of Leszek Kołakowski’s philosophy is offered by anthropological philosophy of culture.4 First, anthropological philosophy of culture assumes that the basic elements of human existence are determined by culture. Humans and culture are two sides of one coin and one cannot exist without the other. Humans cannot be pried from their culture like beans from a pod. They can be destroyed, but only together with their culture. Secondly, anthropological philosophy of culture assumes that human existence is referential—in other words, the factual is not enough for us. We always strive to reach beyond the factual to seek that which is most primeval and most final. We strive to understand ourselves and the surrounding world, we seek and attempt to uncover the essence of life. Thirdly, philosophy of culture has a dynamic approach to culture as movement and effort towards self-awareness and concern for spiritual growth. Fourthly, philosophy of culture is axiologically sensitive and, fifthly, in consequence, the culture philosopher ceases to be a mere researcher of culture and becomes its source. In our case the source is Leszek Kołakowski’s work as a philosopher of culture. Variations of the source metaphor find application in many philosophical trends. A culture philosopher is a source insofar as he is rooted in culture and everyday life and brings to light—illuminates—that what it conceals. Kołakowski’s philosophical thought was not neutral but involved. He expressed it by selecting topics of import to individuals and communities. Koła3

4

Cf. A. Mencwel, Kulturologia polska XX wieku [20th-Century Polish Culturology], http://www.kulturologia.uw.edu.pl. The author writes: “Culture studies offer a general and theoretical description of their subject-matter, which is treated objectively—i.e. in separation from the cognitive subject. Here, culture ultimately becomes an objective correlate between cognitive categories and research processes. Culturology, on the other hand, pursues the essence of culture and concentrates on its diverse embodiments, which are approached subjectively/objectively, i.e. as the objectivization of the intentions and desires of concrete individual or collective human subjects. The humanistic factor is their inalienable characteristic.” Cf. Co to jest filozofia kultury?

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kowski was a philosophy historian but his vision of the way history of philosophy should be pursued was identical with his vision of practicing philosophy. Perhaps this was why his lectures for students were so fascinating and drew such crowds despite the fact that—as he himself claimed—he did not like teaching. Kołakowski did not lock himself in an ivory tower. His philosophy was easily accessible, he used everyday language and considered communication with nonphilosophers important. In order to establish such communication and, at the same time, make room for fresh interpretations of his thought, he frequently resorted to metaphors, some of which he authored himself (an example is the term “hump”, today understood as a metaphor for destroying identity and in the 1960s considered a metaphor for alienation5). Kołakowski wrote about European and Polish culture in a different way than philosophers who usually dealt with these matters. As I said before, his chief concern was experience and his reflections focused on all that was experienced, “lived”. He uncovered, illuminated, brought to the surface, verbalized, analysed and compared that which constituted the innermost of the soul. He did not produce concepts with the aim of using them to subdue reality (culture and humans). Although his entire work is imbued by metaphysical and axiological sensitivity, Kołakowski did not purport to create a metaphysical system. His philosophy was haunted by God and devil, however he did not write like a theologist (despite the fact that he was sometimes thus described), much rather like someone who is beleaguered and experienced. This is why he was able to reveal those aspects of experience which are seldom addressed by theology, or even philosophy of religion. Kołakowski showed liability and undecidedness, inner and outer conflicts. He did not like psychoanalysis, but in his work he actually psychoanalyzed culture. Kołakowski’s style is clear, precise and approachable, he uses metaphors with restraint and only to highlight sense, neither does he construct special terminology. Nonetheless, it is not easy to write about him. And more difficult still to explain why. The reason could be that his work is not only involved but involving—which stems from its source-based character. This is well illustrated by the essay In Praise of Inconsistency. As he often did, Kołakowski began the essay with a common-sense definition of consistency as conformance between conduct and thought, or general rules and their application. He also offered examples of consistent thought—among others Joseph de Maistre: “Joseph de Maistre knows what the world’s best Divine-ordained order is, he also knows what is most precious in this order and what should be subordinated to what. Subsequently, he demonstrates astounding consistency in adapting these general assumptions to all concrete matters… and goes on to write an executioner’s eulogy. ‘All greatness, all strength and all subordinations rests with the executioner: he is the dread and bond of human community. Deprive the world of this unfathomed factor and, in that very moment, thrones will 5

L. Kołakowski, 13 bajek z królestwa Lailonii dla dużych i małych [13 Tales from the Kingdom of Lailonia], Czytelnik, Warszawa 1963.

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waver and society will perish. God, who is the creator of power, is also the creator of punishment’.”6 In the next step, Kołakowski “bowed down” before this excellent consistency example, but immediately offered a glimpse of the “other side”: “On the other hand we may note,” Kołakowski writes “that humanity has managed to survive on this Earth only thanks to inconsistency… in other words absolute consistency is identical with practical fanaticism, inconsistency is the source of tolerance.”7 Kołakowski’s frequently illuminated life by what can be defined as a “fourstep method”. The starting-point (step one) was usually a generally-accepted belief (in this case that consistency is positive). Step two was finding an adequate philosophical-historical example illustrating the belief (Joseph de Maistre). In step three, he praised the positives of the chosen example. In step four, however, the train of thought turned in the opposite direction and Kołakowski negated or depreciated the popular belief. Consequently, it appears that consistency is not always positive. This is so because Kołakowski dealt with the world of values and his philosophical quest lay in showing “that” and “how” this world was present in our everyday lives and thoughts. We cannot separate ourselves from it and any claims to the opposite are quite illusory. Such thought bases on the assumption that, contrary to the world of theoretical thought, the world of values is not a binary world. “In other words, that there exist values which exclude themselves without ceasing to be values (but there exist no truths which exclude themselves without ceasing to be truths).”8 Hence, inconsistency expresses the contradictory character of the axiological world, or “diverse values are introduced into social life by antagonizing forces.”9 In effect, inconsistency becomes the denial or “delaying” of the ultimate choice between mutually-exclusive values. This is an extraordinary vision of the everyday world which reveals the axiological entanglements of the attitudes existing in it, which is something we are not always aware of. Kołakowski appears to be building a contemporary version of Aristotle’s golden mean as a guarantee of the right moral choices. However, the author himself provides an expressis verbis answer to an unasked question: Aristotle’s genius “is alien to us as we live in a world of extremes”, which cannot be reconciled by any means. Is it, therefore, all the same what we choose and why? Is there no hierarchy and is “humanity’s survival on Earth” the only existing value? Humanity’s survival is certainly no small issue, however it fails to answer the question. Luckily Kołakowski applies his inconsistency theory… inconsistently. He concedes the occurrence of so-called elementary situations in which “all tactic ceases. These are human situations we always see in the same moral light regardless of the 6

7 8 9

L. Kołakowski, Pochwała niekonsekwencji [In Praise of Inconsistency], in: idem, Pochwała niekonsekwencji. Pisma rozproszone z lat 1955–1968 [In Praise of Inconsistency. Uncollected Writings, 1955–1968], vol. 2, Puls, London 1989, p. 154; originally in: “Twórczość” 1958, no. 9. Ibid., p. 155. Ibid. Ibid.

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circumstances in which they occur.”10 In elementary situations, the world of values becomes binary. In such situations, Kołakowski notes, one must behave consistently. Fifteen years ago, in 1994, I wrote: “For Kołakowski, philosophy is not a profession but a calling, which in the simplest terms means that he is there for philosophy and not philosophy for him” and that he did not choose philosophy but philosophy chose him to become his destiny. This is why he is haunted by questions that raise merely a mild interest in others, and why, when he speaks about philosophy, he speaks about struggle and suffering instead of creative zeal or contentment with a job well done.”11 When I read Kołakowski’s philosophy of culture writings today, I get the same impression, additionally strengthened by my conviction that they are very actual despite being published in a different historical context. In 1994, I also quoted these 1960s words about Kołakowski by Andrzej Wat: “How this Marxism-Leninism trivially narrows down Kołakowski’s subtle and deep thoughts,” so “why is he so stubbornly given to this reformed Marxism”?, “is this not an escape from conversion, which will seize him anyway sooner or later”. We do not know if the prediction was right. *** In 1962, Kołakowski published Ethics without a Moral Code.12 At the time, the essay wreaked havoc and probably still evokes strong reactions today. The text was considered destructive to values and an invitation to anarchy. Today, I think this interpretation was the result of a crass misunderstanding, possibly connected with the rather narrow understanding of the term “experience” in those days. In the 1960s, the term experience was used mainly to describe aesthetic experience by the humanistic reflection in philosophy, while in Ethics without a Moral Code, Kołakowski, although rarely using the word itself, wrote about moral experience. Kołakowski showed just how much dilemma and indecision appear when we take moral rules seriously. Misunderstood, he can be lightly accused of permissiveness, however this seems to be an absolutely inadequate interpretation of Ethics without a Moral Code. It is precisely dilemma and indecision that accompany us in experiencing freedom and subjectivity. Moral unease fails to appear only when “sovereign values can be dealt with in the case of every engaging choice”,13 and, because we always move within a context, relations and bonds, we experience a need to recognize, evaluate, and, ul10 11

12

13

Ibid., p. 160. Z. Rosińska, Mityczność filozofii [The Mythicality of Philosophy], in: Filozofia i myśl społeczna Leszka Kołakowskiego. Materiały konferencji zorganizowanej w Radomiu przez Radomskie Towarzystwo Naukowe, 27 maja 1994 roku [Philosophy and the Social Thought of Leszek Kołakowski. Materials from a conference hosted on May 27, 1994 in Radom by the Radom Scholarly Society], ed. S. Jedynak. L. Kołakowski, Etyka bez kodeksu [Ethics without a Moral Code], in: idem, Kultura i fetysze [Culture and Fetish], PWN, Warszawa 1967, English translation as either Towards a Marxist Humanism or Marxism and Beyond. Ibid., p. 161.

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timately, apply. We know ever since Aristotle, and also from our own experience, that the recognition and evaluation of a situation as well as the application of sovereign values are accompanies by insecurity and moral tension. Kołakowski shows this on the example of the sovereign value of involvement. If we have no reasons for our choice of involvement, it is really of no consequence what we involve ourselves for. All options are equally open and the moral tension felt in such cases is illusory. There is no need to recognize and evaluate, and involvement does not entail any responsibilities. “This way the concept of involvement, seemingly postulating maximum responsibility, transforms into a new means of avoiding true responsibility.”14 Likewise the responsibility concept itself: “The responsibility imperative truly bears down upon us only when we are at least aware that something or other is a value, and as such constitutes the object of responsibility.”15 Rightly understood, how can the above words mean anything close to destroying values? Responsibility is responsibility for values. However, even this clear statement breeds unease when we want to be responsible. Because we know that values conflict, hence by choosing we “in a sense right and in a sense wrong”. Choice also entails resignation and we need to be aware of this. We need to be aware of this, Kołakowski writes, because then we are tolerant towards other choices and the negative effects of choice are milder. Such awareness also provides the right perspective with regard to differing choices in the future. In this essay, Kołakowski situates his reflections between extreme conservatism and nihilism. Both are attitudes entailing escape from freedom and responsibility for one’s choices. “Each one of us”, Kołakowski writes, “is a part of this world but none of us can be completely decomposed into the conditions in which we live nor identify with any pre-existent reality. By recognizing the existing world as a correlate of our own existence and the object of responsibility, we attempt to describe this situation; we attempt the same by recognizing the irreducible character of moral decisions to which we are forced”.16 More than a decade later and in another language, Kołakowski addressed the issue in the context of collective (national) identity in his essay The Polish Cause.17 Here, he shows how important public language is for national identity and how its degradation prevents the development of identity and subjectivity. Kołakowski calls this “sovietism” and describes it as a situation where “nothing in public language is, nor can be, ‘real’ as all words have lost their primary meaning…, so a cockroach can be called a nightingale and parsley a symphony, and dread and astonishment will accompany the adventurer who calls a cockroach a cockroach and parsley parsley”. Even if colloquial language remained undegraded, the degradation of public language would spell the death of collective, and 14 15 16 17

Ibid. Ibid., p. 162. Ibid., p. 187. L. Kołakowski, Sprawa polska [The Polish Cause], (“Kultura” 1973, no. 4), in: idem, Czy diabeł może być zbawiony i 27 innych kazań [Can the Devil Be Saved and 27 Other Sermons], Aneks, London 1984.

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also national, life as public language expresses and forms collective identity. Its deformation leads to the loss of the sense of being a subject of one’s own history. Sovietism in this form cannot be “waited out”, just as national culture cannot be “preserved” as you would preserve a hidden treasure chest. “National culture does not need preservation but active defense, and whoever claims not to know what this means is acting in bad faith.”18 Another Kołakowski’s essay to create major waves (it still does) was The Priest and the Jester.19 Much has been said about this text, however some of the statements suggesting the author’s intentions were misunderstood or that the reviewer failed to read it carefully. The subtitle is Reflections on the theological heritage of contemporary thought20 and it is the first ever text in Polish to state outright that philosophy has never quite freed itself from theology. Moreover, Kołakowski does not claim theology is the source of the knowledge philosophy bases upon. On the contrary, her states that theology and philosophy encounter the same “crucial mysteries” which we are unable to free ourselves from, the only difference between them being their formulation. More still, according to Kołakowski, theology “was never anything more than an anthropological projection on extra-human reality”.21 Projected onto extra-human reality, such philosophical-anthropological questions became theological, and then again philosophical. They include: (1) The question about the possibility of eschatology, which in the secular sense investigates the possibility of eradicating the conflict between human essence and existence, and in the real-life sense seeks to answer whether our lives are exhausted by the “here and now” or whether we expect fulfilment of ultimate values. (2) The eschatology-close question about theodicy, which in the secular sense is a question about the rationality of history. As secular theodicy, traditional theodicy seeks to justify the world’s evil in the conviction that God is good; the difference is that secular theodicy refers to the “rationale” of history in an effort to find “a mental scheme for the world in which the evil we know or experience reveals its essence and value embroiled in history’s wise plans”,22 while in daily life we seek the essence of our suffering and consolation in the belief that this suffering has an aim, that “thanks to God or history nothing in human life goes to waste […].” “Theodicy”, Kołakowski sums up, “is a method of transforming facts into values. It signifies a decline in magical thinking, which is older than speculative theologies”.23 (3) The question about nature and grace, an issue which was extremely vital in times of Christianity’s major conflicts. In philosophy, it appears as determi18 19 20 21 22 23

Ibid., p. 303. L. Kołakowski, Kapłan i błazen [The Priest and the Jester], in: idem, Pochwała niekonsekwencji. Pisma rozproszone z lat 1955–1968. Cf. “Kronos” 2008, no. 4. L. Kołakowski, Kapłan i błazen, p. 163. Ibid., p. 163. Ibid., p. 164.

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nism and responsibility, we experience it as the desire for outside support for our existence and the simultaneous fear of dependence on outside forces and relinquishment of self-decision. (4) Finally, the revelation issue, in other words: the issue of mystery relating to the existence of ultimate data and the subsequent question about the possibility of their articulation and comprehension. An example of secular revelation was Descartes’ cogito, however, “a nostalgic yearning for revelation lives endlessly in the heart of philosophy”.24 Mystery addresses the issue of rationality’s limits and the discoursiveness of indivisible wholes. “All personalistic doctrines relating to the non-communicable character of the personality entail the transplantation of questions which theology asked of the Divine to the world of human queries; in its metaphysical variant, personalism means the human world’s monadology has not attacked theology but has acquired its problems.”25 Kołakowski points to many other issues expressed by theological and philosophical formulations and simultaneously expressed existentially. Those mentioned here merely illustrate his way of thinking and may be described as a “theological turn” in philosophy. This theological turn, however, is not tantamount to the French term “theological turn” in phenomenology as it does not entail movement of thought towards God but, quite to the contrary, towards man. In other words, a return of philosophical issues to their home in philosophical anthropology after a sojourn in theology. All these issues are antagonistic by nature—for or against eschatology, for or against seeking support in the absolute, etc. Of course, they appear in various philosophical variants and are diversely explicated and argued. This—to use Kołakowski’s words—inner, chronic conflict of philosophy is for him the criterion that orders the history of philosophy. For ourselves, we may add that it is what allows him to be a philosophy historian. “The antagonism between philosophy which preserves the absolute and philosophy which questions recognized absolutes appears to be an incurable antagonism, just as the existence of conservatism and radicalism in all walks of human life is incurable. This is the antagonism of priests and jesters, and in almost every historical era the philosophies of priests and jesters are the two most general forms of mental culture.”26 In mentioning these “most general forms of mental culture” Kołakowski by no means appears to be neutral. His sympathies lie on the side of the jester, as it is he who symbolizes the movement of imagination in our stable world and the effort of reflection about the possible argumentations of opposing ideas, and not out of contrariness but mistrust of that which is stabilized. Kołakowski’s stance symbolizes negative caution towards all absolutes as his aim is to rally people around “elements that are hardest to combine: goodness devoid of universal indulgence, courage devoid of fanaticism, intelligence devoid of dejection, hope devoid of bigotry. All other fruit of philosophical thought are unimportant”.27 24 25 26 27

Ibid., p. 170. Ibid., p. 171. Ibid., p. 178. Ibid., p. 180.

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Any presentation of Leszek Kołakowski as a philosopher of culture cannot fail to mention his small book The Presence of Myth,28 in which he outlined a comprehensive vision of European culture. Kołakowski distinguished two main pillars—technological and mythological—which “do not fit together”. The vitality of culture is guaranteed by the presence of both, both also are imperialistic in character in that each strives to take control of culture as a whole. Were one to become dominant, European culture would lose that, which is so characteristic for it—the delicate equilibrium between both. In effect, it would become a shariat culture. Restricting the imperialistic tendencies of both culture pillars is possible through the comprehending interpretation and caution of the philosophical mind. Kołakowski distinguished European culture from other cultures. Frankly, he was Euro-centric. This Eurocentricism, however, did not manifest itself as conceit or complacency. On the contrary, Kołakowski gave the term Eurocentricism a different meaning than that allotted to it by political correctness in its criticism of Euro-centric attitudes. Euro-centricism is “the effort of breaking through one’s own ethno-centric enclosement”29. This effort and the ability to question oneself constitutes the unique value of European culture. “In the end one can say that the uniqueness of European culture is preserved in its refusal to accept any finite identification and prevalence to exist in insecurity and anxiety.”30 “Insecurity”, “anxiety”, “infiniteness” and “never preserved uniqueness” are traits inherited from Europe’s Christian heritage. In his 1980 essay In Search of the Barbarian. The Illusions of a Cultural Universalism, Kołakowski wrote: “In fact I believe that Christian religiousness may, both with regard to its doctrinal aspect and its special sensitivity, be considered a seminary of European spirit.”31 This spirit gave birth to Enlightenment, which gradually moved away from its roots until it turned against them completely—in other words, it became anti-Christian. In its further stages, however, Kołakowski notes, Enlightenment turned upon itself by evolving into moral nihilism. Already in this essay, Kołakowski noticed the nucleus of a new movement equally visible in Christianity and Enlightenment—self-questioning. To conclude this article, I would like to point to a statement by Kołakowski published in 2000.32 Reflecting on United Europe and the problems, among others national-bound, with its constitution, he wrote: “Although not yet a super-state, United Europe lies in the interest of its parts and does not threaten their ethnical separateness insofar as this separateness is not indifferent to the 28 29 30 31 32

L. Kołakowski, Obecność mitu [The Presence of Myth], Czytelnik, Warszawa 1972. L. Kołakowski, In Search of the Barbarian. The Illusions of a Cultural Universalism, in: idem, Czy diabeł może być zbawiony i 27 innych kazań, p. 15. Ibid. Ibid., p. 21. L. Kołakowski, Czy może Europa zaistnieć? [Can Europe Happen?], in: idem, Czy pan Bóg jest szczęśliwy i inne pytania [Is God Happy and Other Questions], Znak, Kraków 2009, pp. 162–170.

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parts themselves.”33 To prove that these are not just empty words he adds: “We need to teach history in such a way as to instruct young people to understand who they are, who they are as heirs of the past, both glorious and base. If we lose hold of our historical past as our property, as a part of ourselves, and, together with it the ability to answer the question about who we are, we will lose our non-utilitarian reasons to live; and will be threatened by spiritual chaos and emptiness.”34 Translated by Maciej Bańkowski

ABOUT THE AUTHOR — Professor of philosophy, the University of Warsaw, Institute of Philosophy, Philosophy of Culture Unit, Chair.

33 34

Ibid., p. 178. Ibid.

Janusz Dobieszewski

ON THE CONSOLATION OFFERED BY LESZEK KOŁAKOWSKI’S METAPHYSICAL HORROR

ABSTRACT The paper is a critical review of Leszek Kołakowski’s book Metaphysical Horror. According to Kołakowski, the starting-point of METAPHYSICAL horror is the awareness of changeability, transience, contingency and fragility of the world and human existence in face of the overwhelming and abysmal face of Nothingness. According to Kołakowski, the inevitable urge to overcome METAPHYSICAL horror leads to the idea of the Absolute, which can appear in two forms: God and cogito. What underlies the present paper is disagreement with Kołakowski’s perspective of METAPHYSICAL horror that leads to question about reasons for praise for human mortality and human relationship towards Nothingness, reasons for an acceptance of the awaiting existential horror. Keywords: metaphysical horror; horror religious; skepticism; nothingness; the Absolute; cogito; mortality.

1. OUTLINE OF THE PROBLEM Horror is usually associated with explicitly negative sensations like “fear”, “anxiety”, “repulsion” or “tremor”, however in Latin it could also denote “religious terror” and “esteem”, which are solemn. The adjective horribilis meant “terrible”, “repulsive”, but also “respected” and “astounding”. The verb horreo possessed broad connotations with fear, but also meant “to surround with devout veneration”. The Greek orrodeo (to fear) and orrodia (fear, anxiety) lead us (through the initial Ionian arr) to arretos, which is translated as “dangerous” or “terrifying” as well as “unsaid”, “inexpressible”, “immeasurable” or “mysterious”, and even “holy”. This ambiguity of horror is not as easily seen in modern languages, it is, however, still clearly discernible in today’s mass culture—a sphere that should not be overestimated, but should on no account be neglected, if bears important phenomena. Meant here is “horror” as a literary and film genre, and its unique aesthetic, in which fear is attractive, where the horrifying rivets our eyes and captivates us by ominous promises of elevation, renewal and katharsis.1 The semantic ambiguity of the term horror will underlie my further deliberations in this paper, whose main subject is Leszek Kołakowski’s small but excellent work Metaphysical Horror. In Kołakowski’s book, the title metaphysical horror has several meanings which I will try to take a closer look at. Before I do that, however, I wish to dwell 1

Cf. N. Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart, New York – London 1990, pp. 3–8.

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on some associations which this title has invariably aroused. Indeed, it can be understood in two ways: as pertaining to metaphysical horror, a unique and very essential kind of fear which we could call “existential fear” and which is related to ultimate issues like God, soul (ego), freedom, existence, truth, sense, reason, etc. In this case such issues would be experienced as something extremely disturbing, threatening, absurd, contradictory and paradoxical, the resulting sense of horror conditioned not so much by knowledge but a certain kind of sensitivity—one which seeks solace and consolation in ultimate issues and is made to realize that the nature of such issues runs totally against such desires. In such cases everyday life, which before the metaphysical search may have appeared chaotic, contingent and disturbing, may prove a quiet, peaceful and harmonious refuge. This meaning of metaphysical horror is close to horror religiosus, a term used by Søren Kierkegaard to describe the feeling caused by efforts to spiritually penetrate Abraham’s experience on Mount Moriah. “One cannot weep over Abraham”, Kierkegaard wrote. “One approaches him with a horror religiosus”.2 This religious horror situation can be described—if somewhat formally and affectedly, but in line with Kierkegaard—as follows: “Is it not true here also that the one whom God blesses he curses in the same breath?”3 Doubtless Kierkegaard’s Abraham is an available and excellent environment for metaphysical horror. The book’s title may also be understood as “metaphysical horror”, something present in metaphysics as a sphere of human knowledge, and referring to various horrifying, since insurmountable, and unpredictable self-annihilation of metaphysical statements and solutions or of initial ideas founding a given metaphysical project. In this sense, metaphysical horror means “the horror in metaphysics”. The main reason why I made note of this difference in the meaning of metaphysical horror was to draw attention to the fact that the distinction is not too rigorous and both meanings sometimes intertwine and complement themselves. After all, metaphysics is naturally close to ultimate issues, and indeed certain human experiences give ample food for contemporary metaphysical thought. It must be remembered, however, that what inter-penetrates here are two meanings, discernible and separate both on the theoretical and psychological level. The difference is more or less like the difference between a very immediate and personal experience of, say, death (e.g. when we escape it by a hair’s breadth), and our common and evident awareness that all people are mortal. As the two meanings of metaphysical horror, these two experiences of our own “ego” may also intertwine. It appears that Kołakowski was mainly concerned with the second of the abovementioned two meanings of metaphysical horror. Although mainly interested in the worrying and often frightening contradictions, paradoxes, antino2 3

S. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, in: S. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling. Repetition, transl. by H.V. Hong and E.H. Hong, Princeton University Press, 1983, p. 61. Ibid., p. 65.

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mies and absurdities inherent in metaphysics, he by no means limited his quest to the philosophical sense of horror. As I have said, Kołakowski’s book mentions several descriptions of metaphysical horror. Its initial thesis is that transience, fragility, time’s incessant negation of existence and the disappearance of existence in the abyss of nothingness, of that what was but is no more, are typical traits of the world we experience. “We can never be sure what it is ‘to be’, because the direct experience is not of being, but of unceasingly losing our existence in the irretrievable ‘has been’.”4 The world of experience is unable to satisfy our desire for truth, stability and order. With regard to the world of experience we are deprived of all truth criteria, all rules or reasons that would justify preference of one view above another. All thoughts, concepts and theories base on facts, phenomena and observations which drift off into the abyss of nothingness, and share the same fate. Kołakowski points to at least two ways of escaping this situation. First, we can assume that the mentioned desire for truth, stability and order (in their metaphysical dimension) is a self-mystification, that the problems posed by metaphysics are badly posed, and that the value of metaphysical debate and study is about equal to the value of trying to determine whether a square circle is square or round. The other way is to adopt a relativistic stance and dissolve the desire for metaphysical truth in usually pretentious statements like, “everything is possible”, “every opinion carries some truth”, etc. In both cases, the aim is to stifle the inner metaphysical urge in humans and in a sense draw them closer to the world and its spontaneous changeability. Hence, it is no coincidence that, although differently, both attitudes herald the end of philosophy and with regard to the here-discussed offer not so much escape from metaphysical horror as a blockade against it.

2. HORROR AND SKEPTICISM The philosophy of skepticism attempts to comprehend and apprehend metaphysical horror. Here, the world’s transient character, the intangibility of existence and the inability to attain “real” reality are locked into the general conclusion that “nothing is certain”; this, however, does not lead skeptics to deny philosophy—quite to the contrary, they consistently nurture, defend and develop their theses and are at constant war with other dogmas. The skeptics’ claim that the world we have been given to experience is unable to offer up philosophical truth has an ominous ring, further strengthened (as Kołakowski aptly notes) by a self-reference paradox—namely if, as the skeptics say, nothing is certain, then neither are skepticism and the claim that “nothing is certain”; if we are to be skeptical about everything, we also have to be skeptical about skepticism. Interestingly, in objective philosophical debates about horror skeptics and philosophers in whose views skepticism plays a major role do not necessarily regard horror as terrifying—sometimes one even gets the impression that skepticism is a way of taming, or even vanquishing, horror. 4

L. Kołakowski, Metaphysical Horror, Basil Blackwell 1988, p. 28.

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Of course it would not be hard to list thinkers, whom skepticism or skeptical leanings had led to pessimism, helplessness and the brink of abyss. Such, for instance, was the skepticism of St Augustine, La Rochefoucauld or Pascal. It seems, however, that history of philosophy was rather dominated by a more cheerful skepticism (so to speak) which discouraged one not so much to the world at large as to hasty, poorly-motivated and dogmatic theories about the world, theories which threatened to entangle one in falsehood and mystification. For example, Socrates, Pyrrho, Montaigne, Descartes, Hume or Mill were all philosophers who had more trust in humanity’s lot and its chances than desire to confront it with the Absurdity, Dread and Nothingness. Alongside doubt and denial, skeptical philosophies also contain diversely-understood moments of affirmation, which in a way prevent such philosophies from slipping into the bottomless pit of metaphysical horror. One of the most frequently-voiced arguments against skeptical philosophy involves the earlier-mentioned self-reference paradox, which also plays a crucial role in Kołakowski’s Metaphysical Horror. Here, the self-evidence of this paradox is to prove that prevailing in skepticism is impossible and with the selfcontentment of a polemist, Kołakowski lists the diverse forms it may take. However, alone the readiness and ease with which he refers to it may evoke some doubts. At times one even gets the impression that Kołakowski is more drawn by the beauty, charm and brilliance of the paradox (paradoxes are indeed beautiful) than what it refers to. One of the self-reference paradox variations is the statement that something is indefinable—which according to Kołakowski is nothing but a camouflaged definition: “The self-reference trap is unavoidably included in any attempt to speak of the unspeakable. To define something as undefinable is to deny that it is undefinable.”5 Let us, nonetheless, try to somehow escape this paradox and weaken—albeit somewhat indirectly—the claim that skeptical philosophy has close ties to metaphysical horror. In fact defining something as indefinable does not negate this something’s definability, does not mean that its conceptualization is impossible. Kołakowski’s here-discussed opinions as well as most of Metaphysical Horror appear to be founded on the belief that “philosophy has been searching for an absolute language, a language which would be perfectly transparent and convey to us reality as it ‘truly’ is”, and, simultaneously, on the conviction that “this quest was hopeless from the start”.6 This belief is a very crucial—one might even say classic—element of Kołakowski’s philosophy and is present in his writings since at least the 1950s and 60s. The year 1965 saw a second, extended edition of the excellent collective work Filozofia i socjologia XX wieku [20th-Century Philosophy and Sociology], for which Kołakowski authored an essay on Husserl, which he concluded by stating what he saw as a fundamental and insurmountable contradiction in Husserl’s thought—between the definition of philosophy as an exact science (i.e. a perfect and comprehensive language) and its postulate of re5 6

Ibid., p. 47. Ibid., p. 11.

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turning to the things themselves (reality as it “really” is). Kołakowski held both postulates to be irreconcilable and his point of view is rather convincing. Subsequently, as we clearly see in Metaphysical Horror, the intellectual content that so unmistakably characterized Husserl’s phenomenology is transferred to all European philosophy, with the incapacity of phenomenology regarded as the incapacity of philosophy at large. Rightly? Not necessarily. This is not to say that any philosophy or philosopher has actually managed to combine the absolute language and “true” reality postulates—much rather that not all philosophy sees this as its main task and that Kołakowski’s thesis about a certain kind of philosophical thought does not reflect the situation in philosophy at large. In Metaphysical Horror, Kołakowski claims that consistent skeptics should be silent.7 However, skeptics do not believe that what they speak about does not exist—they do not know if it exists or not. They do not claim with certainty that reality is not what they say it is, because they do not know what reality is. And this incertitude is the main reason why they speak. It was much rather Zeno of Elea, who knew that the tortoise, Achilles, the stadium and the arrow did not exist because they moved, changed and were divisible and were therefore not beings, who entangled himself in contradiction by devoting his famous aporias to them, thus recognizing them as worthy of thinking about, and hence a being. It is not the skeptics’ uncertainty but the Eleatic certainty of knowledge that leads to silence—occasionally broken by the incessantly trivial A=A tautology. Apparently the Eleatics themselves realized the hopeless fix they had gotten themselves into, which is why they left the literal tautology aside and set about proving it indirectly and in a roundabout way by means of the aporias, or nonexistence. Much indicates—as confirmed by most of philosophical history—that a move beyond this tautology would not be tantamount to philosophical suicide and would not expose us to metaphysical horror (although, of course, it could). One important aspect of skeptical philosophy appears to be its praise of ordinary, everyday experience. We may justifiably add that this is the kind of experience skepticism culminates in as its potential is really “put to the test” in situations in which it is easy to fall into dogmatism (social lore, stereotypes). At the same time, however, skepticism sets boundaries to such experiences as social lore is weakly-rooted and susceptible to restriction and relativization. This attitude has proven successful both on the theoretical level (modern science) and in practice (where it takes on many forms, e.g. interim ethic or political democracy). On the symbolic plane it is well expressed by the fact that while Athenians sentenced Socrates to death for conceitedness and hypercriticism, Pyrrho, the founder of the ancient skeptical school, was so revered by the inhabitants of Elis that they resolved to free all the city’s philosophers from taxes.8 As Kołakowski notes in Metaphysical Horror, skepticism is such a terrifying condition and places us in such a helpless situation, that out of metaphysical and psychological necessity we attempt to flee it and seek solace in the Absolute. However, given our reflections on skeptical philosophy, we could say that 7 8

Ibid., p. 10. Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, IX 64.

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that the transition from skepticism to the horror-defying philosophy of the Absolute (which upon adoption immediately reveals itself as another form of horror) is not—as Kołakowski would have it—absolutely necessary, evident and automatic. Of course this transition cannot be denied—it is a historical and intellectual fact—nonetheless I would seek its roots not so much in the need or desire to overcome metaphysical horror, but, quite to the contrary, in a “perverse”, “suicidal” and overpowering yearning to feel, experience and coexist with metaphysical horror.

3. HORROR AND THE ABSOLUTE Let us, however, adopt Kołakowski’s perspective as this will lead us to the deeper structures of metaphysical horror. Here humans, confused by change, lost in the meanders of skepticism, terrified by transience, in which everything perishes without reason or meaning, and the fragility and contingency of the world, find consolation and the answers to their problems in the Absolute. The Absolute is complete, lasting and ultimate, keeps us from sinking into Nothingness, restores “assurance and the feeling that there is an order after all”,9 and enables us to return to the postulates of “truth” and “real reality”. On closer inspection, however, the Absolute and its references to the world and humans are a source of numerous troubles and complications, with metaphysical horror again showing its face in various situations and on various occasions. “The horror consists in this: if nothing truly exists except for the Absolute, the Absolute is nothing; if nothing truly exists but myself, I am nothing”.10 This formula breeds some doubts, and in light of the general content of Metaphysical Horror does not seem fully justified. Moreover, it would be entirely sensible to postulate its reversion. Indeed Kołakowski does not say “if there is no world there is no God”. The Absolute’s dependence on the changeability, fragility and contingency of natural reality would only be a more sophisticated form of “skeptical” metaphysical horror. True horror begins when we reverse the dependency into “if there is no God there is no world”. This can be interpreted as “solace” (God’s existence is a necessary and sufficient pre-condition for the world’s existence) or “horror” (God’s existence is a necessary but insufficient pre-condition for the world’s existence). In fact the author himself proceeds to travest his own formulation of horror by presenting it in the here-suggested perspective. Consequently, on page 29 he concludes that we must “imply logically a self-identical, timeless entity—the One—lest we were compelled to admit the depressingly nonsensical conclusion that ‘nothing is’ ”. Somewhat later he suggests to overcome the world’s absurd and annihilating contingency “by pointing at the Being which is bound to be, which is timeless and One and which generously restores to being the fragile world of experience and makes everything miraculously real

9 10

L. Kołakowski, Metaphysical Horror, op. cit., p. 28. Ibid., p. 21.

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again”.11 Therefore, there can be no doubt that the world depends on the Absolute and not the Absolute on the world, that the Absolute “is to serve the world’s salvation” and not the other way around (as suggested by the outgoing formula). And the disclosure of metaphysical horror in this context cannot mean deconstructing the Absolute but should rather consist in leading it to some kind of horrific fulfillment. According to Kołakowski, overcoming this horror entails—similarly as in the case of the horror of creation—acceptance of the irreducible, creative ad positive role of humans. Let us quote: God “enjoys the good deeds of the denizens of this universe and thus presumably becomes richer as a result”.12 At the same time by aiding God, humans gain insight into existence. By our good deeds we enlarge existence and open for ourselves a door to understanding its essential intuition. This precisely is humanity’s irreplaceable role in God’s great plan. Of course here as well the price for a solution that is positive for human subjectivity and the world’s irreducibility is the doubtful “absoluteness” of the Absolute. The concept of good which appears in Metaphysical Horror (and which I would describe as narrowly ethical) leads to other philosophically enticing conclusions. For instance, Kołakowski claims that historical tradition associates good with “harmony and peace”, which seems to indicate that ideal good consists of absolute harmony and peace and, as a perfection, also of divine One.13 While in fact the harmony and peace concepts assume the earlier existence of difference that must be harmonized or put to peace, hence in this case unity is an effect. In the case of the Absolute, however, unity is the startingpoint and has little application for concepts like harmony and peace. Thus, if we decide to identify harmony and peace with good we must also accept that good is not a typical feature of the Absolute. To my mind this rather complex situation could be resolved by setting a very clear distinction between both approaches to good. In the first sense, the one pursued by Kołakowski, good is ethical (even narrowly ethical) in character and denoted harmony, peace and justice. In the second, ontological sense good is tantamount with existence, a positive and accepting attitude to existence bereft of any desire to graduate and value forms of existence. In the first case the postulate for more good is a postulate for more harmony, in the second to want more good is to want more existence and more acceptance for existence. In the first instance, good is tied to the intention of making things happen this and not another way; in the second with the wish for existence to exist. Kołakowski also mentions the ontological perspective of good but refers it to existence understood as utmost harmony, peace, constancy and unchangeability, in other words, the indifferent and deadly loneliness of God. From our point of view, the

11 12 13

Ibid., p. 53. Ibid., p. 90. Ibid., p. 39.

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ontological aspect of good lies in the fact that it denotes existence, being and creation. It is good to be, not the opposite.14 The suggested distinction does provide a solution for several problems encountered by Kołakowski. Thus, good in the ontological sense (existence, affirmation of existence, creation) can be attributed to God without enmeshing Him in a rather troublesome relation with good in the ethical sense—which, being secondary, would relate to an already created world and its peacefulness and harmony, whose growth could and would please God—as Kołakowski wants— but which would neither add to nor take from His goodness as no being in the created world can dispose of existence; they can increase harmony, but not existence. Hence, the picture also has room for human subjectivity and activity, but not in relation to existence but harmony. Our subjectivity cannot overstep the border to the “kingdom” of the Absolute; in this case we are at the Absolute’s mercy. However, we may reject good understood as harmony to sink down into all-embracing, ultimate nothingness. Let us note further that this approach completely eliminates metaphysical horror: preserved are the independence, autonomy and unlimited power of the Absolute which, as the creator, holds full control and supervision over the world. At the same time our existence within the boundaries “set” by divine creation is subjective and creative as a “surplus” of existence and the created world, which God has endowed with broad autonomy and freedom as he is not absolutely conditioned by it. God does not have to interfere directly—all that suffices are his signs, indirect symptoms and, as a final resort, the power of granting and taking away existence, which is also a form of judgment. In his fatherly attitude to the world God appears to be a “sensible parent” who does not riddle his offspring with ready-made (not to say “only true”) solutions to everything. Much rather, he would like to see his children grow in rationality, wisdom and ethicality. Let us repeat—in this approach the issue of “good vs. the Absolute” need not lead to metaphysical horror. We may halt at the largely reassuring mystery of the world’s creation, which both enables and sets boundaries to our ongoing historical drama (not horror or despair) of making the world as it should be.

4. HORROR AND COGITO The first of the mentioned methods of overcoming metaphysical horror involves the above-described idea of the Absolute. The second requires the introduction of human subjectivity interpreted as absolute, whose paradigmatic model is the Cartesian cogito (ego).

14

The ontological aspect of good was mentioned by, among others, Edith Stein, who stated that good “exuded perfection not only—as truth—by virtue of its content, but also by virtue of its existence”, and was involved in “the realization of something as yet unreal” (E. Stein, Byt skończony a byt wieczny [Finite Being and Eternal Being], transl. by I. J. Adamska OCD, Poznań 1995, pp. 329, 334).

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Where God dissolved into Nothingness as soon as thought tried to draw close to him and—as Kołakowski showed—punished us with renewed metaphysical horror for our over-zealous attempts at defining him, cogito appears to be something more familiar, near, our own, direct and simply present. And it seems that cogito is what “supplies us with the only direct intuition of existence”.15 Unfortunately, Kołakowski points out, “the history of post-Cartesian discussion, up to our time, has revealed the fragility of this insight”.16 As soon as we try to pinpoint pure, primeval ego it immediately shows itself to be nothing but secondary, a place of fulfillment for some previous reality which was to derive from ego. Ego stands before us as the continuum of memory or a designate of the pronoun “I”, and its every activity presupposes language—while the use of language “presupposes the entire history of the culture of which the language we use is an aspect”.17 Ego appears devoid of epistemological innocence and ontological virginity. “My own existence,” Kołakowski wrote relating the views of Merleau-Ponty, “cannot be reduced to the awareness of this existence”.18 What is more, because “to be a part of human community and to be involved in communication with others is an irremovable part of what is called improperly ‘the I’ (improperly, as ‘I’ is not a noun)”, then “by blocking the ego [closing it within an individual – J. D.], Cartesianism pushed it into nothingness”.19 The result is the glorious return of metaphysical horror. According to Kołakowski the modern-day “cogitationism” of Husserl’s phenomenology does little to change the situation. The effect of attempts to get rid of the substantiality of the Cartesian cogito by transcendental (phenomenological) reduction is that “ego seems to be no more than an empty recipient of derealized phenomena or a sheer movement of intention, an act without actor”.20 Things are no longer objects of cognition, replaced by an intended object present only in the awareness. And substance is no longer the subject of cognition, replaced by a transcendental “I”. In effect, we have “two no-things, supporting each other. We have reached the cognitive Absolute by emptying it of reality”.21 No need to add that here too one can feel the chilly breath of metaphysical dread. According to Kołakowski, metaphysical horror, which appears upon analysis of the “content” of human subjectivity, can be overcome by a “historically defined community”, alter ego, the social and historical dimension of existence. As it appears, however, by this Kołakowski does not mean full victory over cogitobred horror. His is merely an interim solution designed to ward of the most impeding threat of metaphysical horror. Because if ego cogito—in which we were to find the basic intuition of existence allowing us to order our view of a fragile 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

L. Kołakowski, Metaphysical Horror, op. cit., p. 26. Ibid., p. 56. Ibid., p. 59. Ibid., p. 62. Ibid., pp. 96–97. Ibid., p. 60. Ibid., p. 61.

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and changing world—has been transformed into a historical and social community, then its diversity and changeability again deprives us of measure, the sought-after criterion of truth, reality and sense. As Kołakowski notes, the history of the human community shows that “there is no all-encompassing language; and there are as many possible languages as there are possible angles from which the Being and Nothingness can be observed, which means: indefinitely many”.22 And if we accept this—as, for the sake of consistency, we must— we “are back at the very beginning of our horror. How can I stick to a particular language (or to an angle from which the world is seen, or to a rule of interpretation of the whole of experience) and not endow it with a privileged cognitive prowess?”.23 Thus, overcoming horror would require the emergence of a universal language as a framework adding stability and order to the vitality of the historical community. “Shall we one day see”, Kołakowski asks, “a genius who has proved (and not just said) that from the higher standpoint St Augustine, Spinoza, Hume, Kant and Hegel either said the same thing or at least expressed perfectly compatible visions of reality, as it can be seen from different angles?”24 In Kołakowski’s case the question is rhetoric, however I believe there is some hope when it comes to such geniuses. Of course it would be far-fetched to claim that a universal language has actually been formulated, systemized and accepted, nonetheless, at least since philosophy made history a part of its domain (i.e. approximately since classical German philosophy), it has clearly developed in the direction marked by Kołakowski’s question. Thus, from the point of view of Hegelian philosophy it is quite true that St Augustine, Spinoza, Hume and Kant said the same—and the same (albeit with some divergence) as Hegel, which means that Hegel’s thought merely complements theirs, and simultaneously explains the conditions under which one speaks—and must speak—like St Augustine or Hume. Besides Hegel, a similar consolidation of angles was proposed by Feuerbach, Nietzsche and Heidegger. I would not go so far as to claim that Hegel’s or Heidegger’s universalistic efforts were successful, but they were certainly not completely futile. This kind of philosophy functions as a kind of “glue” bringing all the existing philosophical perspectives together into an organized, to some extent ordered, and by no means closed whole. Kołakowski himself gives magnificent, albeit full of reservation, testimony to this when he writes: “Despite the dispersion of tongues, philosophy succeeded in marking, however imprecisely, a realm of cultural life, which, though often scoffed at, enjoys a wobbly legitimacy and absorbs various mutually unintelligible idioms.”25 For Kołakowski, the most open, non-arbitrary, undogmatic, “nonsubstantial” and continuously mobile method of building a universal language averting metaphysical horror is modern hermeneutics, which he calls a non22 23 24 25

Ibid., p. 101. Ibid., p. 102. Ibid., p. 104. Ibid., p. 113.

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theological and non-psychological way of comprehending in which we “understand the historical process as an unfolding of a Hegelian universal Mind which is neither divine nor individual-human, has no identifiable self-awareness and no transcendent means of subsistence, but paves the way for an indefinable goal by the intermediary of human efforts and desires; unlike Hegel, hermeneutics does not need, indeed, to track down the ultimate goal of the Mind and therefore it may glory in being metaphysically neutral. Yet it is not”.26 Whether it wants to or not, hermeneutics brings into history an impersonal and graduallyemerging Mind. Attempts to define this Mind will lead us to the end of metaphysical horror, to answers allowing it to be overcome. “It is rather that the meaning-generating Mind is being made actual in the very process of revealing itself to our mind, or that the meaning endowed Being is ‘becoming what it is’ thanks to human understanding of what it is. This comes closer to the idea, discussed above, of the ‘historical God’.”27

5. RESUME AND CONCLUSIONS According to Kołakowski, the starting-point of metaphysical horror is the awareness of the changeability, transience, contingency and fragility of the world and human existence in face of the abysmal and horrifying depths of Nothingness. Skeptical philosophy was nothing but a well-ordered and sophisticated expression of this abject condition, which, however, did not manage to eliminate the horror. The evident wish to overcome metaphysical horror led to the idea of the Absolute as a constant, basic and universal measure of fundamental for humans—and hence terrifying in their emptiness when inspected— concepts like existence, truth or good. The idea of the Absolute appears in two forms: God and cogito. Their analysis revealed multifarious dangers, still threatening with the return of metaphysical horror. In the case of the divine Absolute, horror appeared alongside basic, hence unavoidable questions about cognition of God’s, the reasons why He created the world, the relations between divine good and ethical judgments over the world. All these issues led to the brink of Nothingness, with salvation offered by the idea of historical God who attained His ends thanks to cooperation by humans. Analysis of cogito led Kołakowski to conclude that it is impossible to define the sphere of the pure “I”, the very “surrogate” of subjectivity—which again places us on the edge of Nothingness. Humans cannot comprehend and describe themselves from a point beyond themselves. The solution lies in “redirecting” the “I” issue onto a socio-historical community, whose appropriate way of understanding—a way that avoids the pitfalls of historical relativism’s cognitive annihilation and at the same time offers order and openness—is hermeneutics. The underlying idea of hermeneutics is convergent with the historical God concept. Thus, two paths to the Absolute culminate in one point of vanquishing metaphysical horror. 26 27

Ibid., p. 116. Ibid., p. 117.

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I must admit that I am not pleased by the presentation of horror in Metaphysical Horror. I say this with all due responsibility as I lay great weight on the concept of horror, its presence in philosophy and, most of all, the prospects it opens. I believe Kołakowski consciously refrains from full confrontation with the problem of metaphysical horror. In the assumption that reference to Nothingness and the accompanying sense of dread determine the human condition, Kołakowski ascribes to human nature a need for immediate, nearly blind escape from horror—an escape whose sole source, motive and goal is reference to the Absolute, to Being understood as constancy. Only through the Absolute can horror be overcome, only in its light does anything have meaning, and only by its cause is the world more than an illusion dissolving into nothingness. The most perfect tool to seek the Absolute with is philosophy, in which, however—as Kołakowski shows—we still encounter horror caused by the inability to attain the Absolute’s “absoluteness”. We always find gaps in the Absolute’s philosophical definitions, whose removal is the driving-force of philosophy. Nor can we resign our desire of the Absolute; a desire which is by now perhaps somewhat irritating, but at the same time soothes, calms and creates sense. “Our minds cannot escape the desire to reach the utmost limits of being”; “once philosophy appeared it was impossible to cancel it”.28 In philosophy horror, which heretofore manifested itself in a painful awareness of the world’s transience and contingency and which initiated the search for Being, becomes an effect of the quest for Being, a “leftover” of some error that was evidently committed in the construction of the Absolute. As philosophy develops, this “leftover” grows smaller and we learn to tame horror—the culmination of which in Kołakowski’s vision is the idea of the historical God and hermeneutics. The structure and placement of horror in Kołakowski’s book leads to the conclusion that its title belies the content. Its main subject is not horror but the escape from horror. It not so much “looks metaphysical horror in the eye” as lists ways and means against it (with, I concede, honest mention of their various side-effects). Therefore, it is a book designed to bring consolation, which at the same time discourages halfway efforts at consolation (whose effects may be very painful) in favor of more radical forms (historical God, hermeneutics). This interpretation of metaphysical horror depends on unspoken assumption that it would be best for humanity if it were able to overcome horror completely and if Nothingness ceased to concern it. In other words, if it were immortal. And important here is not so much the reality or irreality of such a wish as the perspective from which we regard our existence—which, in fact, is mortal. In our positive view of immortality we probably believe that its fulfillment would—immediately or after a period of adjustment to a new “immortal” reality—allow us to see the world with greater clarity, precision and insight. And that issues like being, truth or good would not be approached with nervous haphazardness but could finally be properly analyzed and resolved. Therefore, when we postulate immortality, we do not necessarily do it out of narrow28

Ibid., pp. 48, 11.

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mindedness or selfishness, but in the name of being, truth and good, which only immortality will allow us to recognize in their full extent; hence people who are concerned about being, truth and good cannot mentally accept mortality; even if they are painfully aware of their own mortal nature, they extrapolate their thinking to embrace the immortality of the Absolute. In this light our disagreement with Kołakowski’s interpretations of metaphysical horror must perforce lead us to consider the following, Kołakowskicontrary, and in itself quite surprising question: is there any justification for praising human mortality, human reference to Nothingness and positive acceptance of lurking horror? The answer appears to be affirmative, and it seems that the best starting-point for such reflection is the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. It, then, shall be the beginning and core of this triadic “mortality laudation”. First of all, in Heidegger’s view—and contrary to general belief—the finiteness of human existence is not a failure or imperfection. Death is not only a moment which interrupts life and hinders us in the completion of our affairs, but an important phase in our life seen in its entirety. For Heidegger human life is “Being” (Dasein), while death is “the possibility not to be any more”. Death brings home to humans that “their being is the constant possibility of its impossibility”.29 Man is a being thrown to Death unavoidably and inescapably. This fact causes a sense of pain, anxiety, fear and dread, from which we customarily seek refuge in our quite real and concrete daily chores. However, even when we flee such fears we are still beings towards death, and secondly—death will not allow itself to be forgotten. Fear of Nothingness can befall us in a variety of situations, sometimes as an expected sensation but more often appearing suddenly. This in turn provides us with “the possibility to notice that the process of being we are part of is by nature a possibility”,30 that our immersion in this process does not fulfill us, that it could well be none, or that it could be something quite different. Very important here is that even the mere realization that possibility of a different way of being is based upon the initial acceptance of the possibility of non-being. Whereas the most adequate expression of our escape from the everyday, non-authentic perspective of human being, an expression of our reference to being in face of its finiteness, is conscience. Conscience breaks into our everyday routine—quite frequently against our will—and bombards our daily life with demands and complaints that seem to originate in a different dimension, the dimension of the ultimate. “The voice of conscience is nothing else but the voice of fear-enveloped Dasein”.31 Possibly conscience would have never spoken up without fear, Nothingness and mortality. And without conscience the whole issue of truth, good, reality and values becomes questionable. This leads us to another aspect of this praise of human mortality. I think the following reasoning is not unjustified: If human existence were not threatened and doomed to perish, it would be difficult to find a “motive” for human investi29 30 31

K. Michalski, Heidegger i filozofia współczesna [Heidegger and Modern Philosophy], Warszawa 1978, p. 127. Ibid., p. 129. Ibid., p. 133.

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gations of the world (attainment of truth), ethical conduct, attention, concentration, or “economics” of thinking and acting (recognition of natural and moral laws). Here cognition could be constantly put off into the distant future without the slightest scruples. Indeed, why would we want to begin with it now? If we didn’t we wouldn’t be losing anything anyway. In this situation it could turn out that cognition for immortals not only is infinite, but also takes its beginning in infinity—in other words, never begins. Such ideal conditions could also considerably weaken the need for moral conduct. The crucial ethical compass of death would be non-existent, I wouldn’t have to pay special attention to the sense of the life I live, as from the vantage point of eternity nothing is irrestorable, irreparable or unjustifiable. There would also be no reason for me to pass judgment or pose moral demands on others, such needs having evaporated into a eternal void in which everyone will be able to improve, comprehend and mature. As immortal individuals in infinity humans would lose interest in what they had once known as earthly life, which they now would be in no danger of losing. Any disinterestedness or responsibility would be brushed away into a faroff future. This would mean that our cognitive interest in the world and moral sense are rooted in our mortality, our temporality and our stigmatization by Nothingness. That, hence, mortality does not destabilize or destroy truth and good but is the source and underlying core of humanity’s cognitive and ethical aims. If we became immortal we would probably (in fact certainly) lose all interest. This line of thought is also present in Kołakowski’s Metaphysical Horror: “The source of our passionate search for ‘reality’ is our fragility which God or nature could not have prevented us from experiencing.”32 Seen as a whole, however, Kołakowski’s book is not very close to this statement. Kołakowski omits to dwell on the fundamental character of this fragility, presenting it merely as the effect of the Absolute’s incomplete absoluteness, a task to be resolved, a problem to be overcome. As we tried to show here, Kołakowski’s metaphysical horror is the inevitable consequence of philosophies without an Absolute, or ones whose Absolute’s absoluteness shows noticeable shortcomings upon closer inspection. Here the development of philosophy is portrayed as conquering successive forms of horror (which appears amply in the history of philosophy) and a progressing towards a soothing, horror-stilling absoluteness (historical God, hermeneutics). This discovery of metaphysical horror in diverse and very different philosophical schools appears to me to be a rather hasty and somewhat forced conclusion. In the picture painted by Kołakowski horror is almost everywhere, inspiring successive philosophers to combat it, seek ways of vanquishing it and undertake efforts to bring it under their control to attain a seemingly ultimate and adequate absoluteness. In my opinion, this vision reverses cause and effect. In the here-discussed aspect I see the development of philosophy rather as a series of quite gratifying 32

L. Kołakowski, Metaphysical Horror, op. cit., p. 15.

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and horror-averting efforts at bringing some kind of order and sense into the world—and against which Nothingness nevertheless remains immovable. In the underground and indirectly, Nothingness paved its way slowly through the ages, achieving a form imbued with metaphysical horror approximately in our day and age, when it gained clarity and became almost tangible (Heidegger). In slightly different words: the horror of human existence, this suspension in Nothingness, found no direct reflection in philosophy; philosophy rather consisted in the calming, fear-averting concealment of Nothingness—or the irreducible temporality of human life. At the same time, however, the nature of the human condition prevented these efforts from fulfillment, completion and continuity. A constantly-milling medley of philosophical positions called for constant reference to and ever-deeper study of the sources of philosophical thought, until there arose the need to express the essence of not only Being but also of Nothingness. Indeed, despite its “sidelining”, Nothingness was always the “fuel” of philosophy, its external driving-force and—absurd is it may sound— enrichment. In Kołakowski’s vision, on the other hand, philosophy feeds upon itself, it is its own life-giving fuel; if so, then no wonder that it exhausts and perhaps even degenerates itself, providing philosophy historians with the rather pathetic privilege of heralding its end, demise, crisis.33 This accepting, even outright affirmative approach to the elemental fragility of human existence, to Nothingness as the fundament of Being, being, truth and good (whereby it must be said that Nothingness does not create its own “world”, that it is impossible to settle down in it, that it is precisely what it is, “nothing” and not “something”, but does provide a different view of “something”) can in a sense be said to lie beyond philosophy and metaphysics and in fact proclaim the end of philosophy. The charge is well-founded, but I believe there does exist a very philosophical (wisdom-loving) interpretation of the end of philosophy, an option suggested by Heidegger, who said that the end of philosophy signified philosophy’s failure to cope with its tasks, and that if it was indeed coming to its end, then only as a field of study and not as love of wisdom and thought. The heart of philosophy lives on forever. Finally we arrive at the third aspect of this praise of human mortality. It reveals itself when we compare human and divine existence. In such comparisons, we usually accept divine superiority as a matter of course, as God’s wisdom and power are bigger than ours, and first and foremost, who is immortal. It is not impossible that all of God’s remaining powers result from his immortality, which would make immortality his fundamental trait. The gods of ancient Greek 33

L. Kołakowski himself notices the pompousness of these hapless proclamations about the end of philosophy when he writes: “philosophy proves that it can safely and happily survive its own death by keeping itself busy proving that it has actually died”; however, when he sets about to explain why this is so, he states simply that philosophy “makes up an unremovable part of culture” (Metaphysical Horror, op. cit., pp. 7–8), which is an insufficient explanation and suggests that philosophy feeds on itself. From our position this undeniably present self-fuelling mechanism is a sign of deeper existential, metaphysical or other nothingness-involving inspiration.

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mythology, who were closest to humans in their appearance, differed from us in practically nothing besides immortality. If we were asked what we envy God or the idea of God most for, we would probably name immortality. And indeed compared to us it does appear to be his most distinguishing trait. And still, our mortality gives us a certain very visible advantage over God: God is a being, an existence. Constant, eternal, self-supporting. Existence is God’s essence, he cannot cease to exist as then he would not be a being. Therefore, God has no access to Nothingness and the comprehension of Nothingness. He is unable to imagine or think about Himself as non-existent. And if God has no access to Nothingness, then in fact he is unable to understand what it means to be, nor realize and appreciate the importance of being (Being). The meaning of life can be understood only by someone who can lose it, who dreads for it in face of Nothingness. Even if God creates from nothing, gives existence, he is unable to fully comprehend the nature of what he gives. The truth of Being reveals itself only to humans—and this is our edge over God, an advantage rooted in our fragility. “The evidence of human finiteness—death, suffering, historically-conditioned limitations—does not stand in the path of comprehension but opens it [...] It is ‘much rather the mortal who reaches into the abyss’ of that which is to be understood.”34 Therefore, the issue of God as well as his “activity” fail to reach the core of the existence question and exist on another level of thought. God – who after all “excludes from himself all lack of Being”—“cannot know nothingness”35 and therefore does not comprehend Being. “The term ‘Being’ not only does not apply to God, but is outright non-theological.”36 I would like to close these reflections on Leszek Kołakowski’s book with the following thought: metaphysical horror means that if anything is to have sense and meaning, then only in the light of Nothingness—in the face of death, in whose light in turn everything appears to lose all sense and meaning.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR — Professor Janusz Dobieszewski works at the Philosophy Institute of the University of Warsaw, where he heads the Philosophy of Religion Unit; professor Dobieszewski specializes in Russian and religious philosophy, his chief book publications are: Włodzimierz Sołowjow. Studium osobowości filozoficznej [Vladimir Solovyev. A Philosophical Personality Study], Warszawa 2002; Wokół słowianofilstwa. Almanach myśli rosyjskiej [Around Slavophilia. An Almanac of Russian Thought], ed., Warsaw 1998; Wokół Tołstoja i Dostojewskiego. Almanach myśli rosyjskiej [Around Tolstoi and Dostoevsky. An Almanac of Russian Thought], ed., Warszawa 2000; Wokół Leontjewa i Bierdia34 35 36

K Michalski, Heidegger, in: M. Heidegger, Budować, mieszkać, myśleć. Eseje wybrane [Building Dwelling Thinking], Warszawa 1977, p. 24. M. Heidegger, Czym jest metafizyka? [What Is Metaphysics], transl. by K. Pomian, in: M. Heidegger, Budować, mieszkać, myśleć [Building, Dwelling, Thinking], op. cit., p. 44. B. Baran, Saga Heideggera [The Heidegger Saga], Kraków 1990, p. 162.

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jewa. Almanach myśli rosyjskiej [Around Leontev and Berdaev. An Almanac of Russian Thought], ed., Warszawa 2001; Wokół Szestowa i Fiodorowa. Almanach myśli rosyjskiej [Around Shestov and Fyodorov. An Almanac of Russian Thought], ed., Warszawa 2007; Wokół Andrzeja Walickiego. Almanach myśli rosyjskiej [Around Andrzej Walicki. An Almanac of Russian Thought], ed., Warszawa 2009.

Witold Mackiewicz

NIETZSCHEAN TRAITS IN THE WORKS OF LESZEK KOŁAKOWSKI*

ABSTRACT The paper sets out to prove that Leszek Kołakowski remained under a considerable influence of Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideas, which is evidenced by the way he poses and solves theoretical problems as well as his critical and often ironical detachment from the modern culture. He devoted a great deal of attention to nihilism, and searched for mythical conditioning of the thinking of the man of today; from the late 1950s, he was a follower of the philosophy of freedom and opposed philosophical and historical determinism. He rejected systemic thinking and any fundamentalism in science. Keywords: nihilism; irony; human freedom.

INTRODUCTION Leszek Kołakowski said this about his opinion of Friedrich Nietzsche: “(..) I have never studied him in depth, nor did I write about him anything on top of some passing notices.”1 This is essentially true except that Leszek Kołakowski did write one treatise on ideas that included Nietzschean: A Comment on a Heidegger’s Comment to an Alleged Nietzsche’s Comment to a Hegel’s Aside on the Need for Negativity (“Archiwum Historii Filozofii i Myśli Społecznej”, vol. 34/1990).2 * 1

2

Chapter of the book: Myśl Fryderyka Nietzschego w Polsce w latach 1947–1997 [Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thought in Poland in 1947–1997], Warszawa 1999, p. 83–110. Po co Nietzsche? [Why Nietzsche?], Gazeta Wyborcza, 7–8 June, 1998, p. 22. However, in a lecture “Norms and imperatives”, given on 19 Dec., 1988, at the University of Warsaw, which I was pleased to attend, the Nietzschean “innocence of becoming” constituted a major theme of the talk (cf. J. Morawski, Diabeł zbawiony [The Devil Redeemed], Przegląd Tygodniowy, 1989/1, pp. 4–5). L. Kołakowski sometimes gave Nietzsche a telling-off or two, but he praised him as well, e.g. for his attempt to establish a new hierarchy of values following a rejection of the ones held so far. Such a nihilistic reduction, by R. Avenarius, was a token of resignation, but with F. Nietzsche it was a symptom of an optimistic and creative approach to the future (cf. L. Kołakowski, Filozofia pozytywistyczna (Od Hume’a do Koła Wiedeńskiego) [Positivist Philosophy from Hume to the Vienna Circle], Warszawa 1966, p. 228. Elsewhere we read: “he was a genius. This was a great German writer and a genius—one of mental seduction. We may say that we are living in a post-Nietzschean era, i.e. in a period where the traditional ideals of reason, faith in good and evil, and believing in some order of the world that we are given rather than have to create arbitrarily, have been ruined. It was Nietzsche that, more than anyone else, contributed to the undermining of those traditional beliefs”. Po co Nietzsche? op. cit., p. 22)

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The objective of this argument is, however, to demonstrate that Leszek Kołakowski remains under a considerable influence of Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy, which is evidenced by Kołakowski’s manner of posing and solving theoretical problems, his literary style, and his overtly critical—sometimes sarcastic— detachment from the contemporary culture, rather than by the few passing references to the writings of the German philosopher. Proving this, given Kołakowski’s scarce references to Nietzsche’s works, is not going to be easy or rewarding as it runs a risk of being charged with interpretative bias. The output of the great (or even the small, as of yet undiscovered) philosophers of the past is a common heritage that everyone has a right to use without necessarily describing each and every thought, in one way or another rooted in culture. Leszek Kołakowski has the right to make use of Nietzsche’s ideas, too; therefore calling upon us to describe each utterance in reference to previous statements would render communication impossible. Here, something else is the matter—to indicate the main threads present in Kołakowski’s writings that are clearly conspicuous and convergent with similar strands in Nietzsche’s theories. Dependence on the master need not be about a high frequency of making references to his writings. In formulating the proposition laid out in the title of the paper, I am not revelatory or unique. Jan Andrzej Kłoczowski wrote recently that “Kołakowski ought to be read in the perspective of post-Nietzschean thinking, i.e. nihilism”. The same author adds that “Nietzsche thinks that he has discovered the source, or force, which controls thinking”.3 Kołakowski’s quest for a mythical conditioning of human thinking and behavior, in my opinion, goes in a similar direction, whereas his retreat from the Hegelian and Marxist systemic understanding of philosophy in favor of the philosophy of freedom places him close to Bergson, Sartre and Nietzsche.4 Commentators on Kołakowski point in accord to his cutting literary style, adopted early on in his student years, where, alongside the matter-of-fact argumentation, his most effective polemical tool was mockery and a ridicule of his opponents5 (of all the philosophers I know, it was Nietzsche and Stanisław Brzozowski who did best in this form of discussion and criticism). Kołakowski has been charged with “polemical assaults” and reducing the ideas attacked to absurdities. This referred to his discussions with linguistic philosophy, theory of cognition and neo-Thomist anthropology, and it was coupled with discrimina-

3 4

5

J.A. Kłoczowski, Więcej niż mit: Leszka Kołakowskiego spory o religię [More than Myth: Kołakowski’s Arguments on Religion], Kraków 1994, pp. 190, 192. Cf. A. Borowicz, Rozwój filozofii kultury Leszka Kołakowskiego na tle filozofii polskiej w latach 1955–1966 [L. Kołakowski’s Development of the Philosophy of Culture against the Backdrop of 1955–1966 Polish Philosophy], Gdańsk 1997, p. 71. A weirdly biased 1950 review of “Przegląd Filozoficzny”, headed by W. Tatarkiewicz, served as an ex-post justification of the administrative closure of the periodical in 1949 (A. Borowicz, op. cit., p. 30).

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tory administrative measures taken against representatives of non-Marxist orientations.6 Friedrich Nietzsche, ingratiating himself with the reader in Ecce Homo, asked: Why I Am So Wise? Why I Am So Clever? Why I Write Such Good Books? etc. Leszek Kołakowski likewise: My Life (considering how successful I am with women)7 or My Correct Views on Everything8. Leszek Kołakowski is an intellectually heterogeneous thinker (this will be discussed on several occasions later) who treats the matter under cognition as magma, from which anything can be extracted, but all of which can be negated. Its researcher is a Nietzschean “flying arrow”, a personality constantly “becoming” i.e. not accountable for the views proclaimed before. In the brochure just mentioned, On My Correct Views on Everything, he wrote of Marxism that it was “(…) a system based on mass-scale slave labor and the most horrendous terror known in history”.9 Still, Leszek Kołakowski supported the system theoretically and reinforced it. He would rather not remember those times, or those that followed, and it would be best if they passed away to the prehistory of mankind. He wrote of them thus “The booklet (The Presence of Myth) was written in times so remote that one might suspect they never occurred”.10 Everyone can perfect their skills, and a change of ideas ought to be a consequence of consolidating the knowledge of the world and of oneself. One can report a doubt whether this is the case with Leszek Kołakowski. Also, there are contradictory opinions as regards the evolution of ideas of the author of 13 bajek z królestwa Lailonii dla dużych i małych [13 Tales from the Kingdom of Lailonia]. “The vast erudition and openness of thought afford the philosopher a multi-faceted view of phenomena in various perspectives: philosophical, sociological and one of social anthropology”. Also, “Despite what the philosopher says of himself, he is above all a highly consistent scholar”.11 However, if the philosopher says he is not a consistent scholar, but in reality he is a consistent scholar, then he mocks the 6

7 8 9 10

11

cf. A. Borowicz, op. cit., p. 31, the belligerent style of Kołakowski is clearly present in Światopogląd i krytyka. Sprawa krytyki współczesnej filozofii idealistycznej z punktu widzenia filozofii marksistowskiej [Ideology and Criticism. The Criticism of the Contemporary Idealist Philosophy from the Standpoint of Marxist Philosophy], “Nowa Kultura” 1955, no. 3; Nauka przed sądem ciemnogrodu [Science to Be Judged by Obscurantists], Myśl Filozoficzna 1954/I; O tak zwanych “społecznych” encyklikach papieży [On the So-called “Social” Encyclicals of the Popes], “Nowe Drogi” 1954/6; Recydywa obłędu, albo o pewnych katolickich koncepcjach społecznych. [Relapse of Madness: On some Catholic Social Ideas], “Po Prostu” 1948/3. Puls 1987, no. 4-5. My correct Views on Everything, The Socialist Register, 1974. Ibid., p. 5. L. Kołakowski, Obecność mitu [The Presence of Myth], Wrocław 1994, p. 5. The book has an aside saying that it was written in 1966, at the time of Real Socialism which he approached critically and reflexively rather than dogmatically. He is more ashamed of the preceding years: “(…) I was close to omniscient (…) when I was 20” (My Correct Views …, op. cit., p. 23). Leszek Kołakowski was 20 in 1947. M. Flis, Leszek Kołakowski – teoretyk kultury europejskiej [Leszek Kołakowski—A Theorist of the European Culture], Kraków 1994, p. 7.

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reader and misleads them or, alternatively, he forces them to undertake a cumbersome interpretative effort, possibly ineffectual; this is what Nietzsche would do. Therefore, one cannot find a leading idea behind the many works “due to the constant inner evolution and the related difficulties in establishing an unambiguous stance taken by the author as well as the mutual relationship of the stages in his creative activity”.12 In his rich polemical works the philosopher most commonly undertook casual topics: ones brought up by the moment and a need to voice an opinion on something (naturally one cannot forget about systematic works: Jednostka i nieskończoność [Individual and Infinity], Świadomość religijna i więź kościelna [Religious Consciousness and Ecclesiastic Bond], Filozofia pozytywistyczna (Od Hume’a do Koła Wiedeńskiego) [Positivist Philosophy from Hume to the Vienna Circle], Obecność mitu [The Presence of Myth], Metaphysical Horror or Main Currents of Marxism}. Even Leszek Kołakowski himself gave a rationale for this kind of literary attitude: any proposition (as deprived of the value of ultimate truth or ultimate falsity) can be proved and negated, even with solemnity, using a vast inventory of philosophical argumentation.13 This is well illustrated by Leszek Kołakowski’s O słuszności zasady: cel uświęca środki. [On the Truthfulness of the Principle that the Ends Justify the Means], which ought to be utilized in the formation of Communism. Here is a way of argumentation taken from there: “one cannot live tomorrow rather than today, even though any today is a preparation for tomorrow”, and “tomorrow justifies today as its hope”.14 Leszek Kołakowski attained a level of tragic self-knowledge rather early: creating a positive theory makes no sense if the truth can be grasped to no extent (Nietzsche thought likewise: creating a positive theory that explains something, and thoroughly supported by arguments, i.e. scientific and aspiring to be a true theory, is impossible). So, any theory is instantly subject to criticism and overcoming. Therefore... “Kołakowski ought to be defined as an open set of possibilities of undertaking polemical encounters.”15 The author of such a definition goes on to say that the whole of reality breaks down into the reality itself and the subjectivity of Kołakowski, or alternatively, being is divided into two component parts: Kołakowski and non-Kołakowski.16 A metaphor formulated by Kołakowski in 1958 that “(…) in the whole universe man cannot find a well deep

12 13 14 15

16

A. Borowicz, op. cit., p. 7. Nietzsche’s philosophical dissertations could also be called contemporary sophistry, of which I have written elsewhere. Cf. K. Jaspers, Nietzsche, Warszawa 1997, p. 352. L. Kołakowski, O słuszności zasady: cel uświęca środki, “Przegląd Kulturalny” 1956, vol. 18, p. 4. H. Eilstein, O stylu filozofowania Leszka Kołakowskiego tudzież o młodomarksowskiej i engelsowsko-leninowskiej teorii poznania [On Leszek Kołakowski’s Style of Philosophizing as Well as on a Young-Marxist and Engelsian-Leninist Epistemology], “Studia Filozoficzne” 1959, vol. 6, p. 157. cf. ibidem and p. 158.

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enough not to find, bending over it, a reflection of their own face”17 illustrates the stance of cognitive subjectivism, even if generic (still generic): one speaks not of an individual but—more generally—of man. No wonder that Kołakowski yet again praises Nietzsche because it was this thinker who, alongside Shestov, Miguel de Unamuno, Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky, “refused to negotiate with the self-complacent rationalism and progress. All of these were to become the prophets of our day, in which the everyday image of life is ambiguously overshadowed by an incessant awareness of both the blessings and the curses of scientific progress”.18

ANTHROPOCENTRICITY Commenting on Leszek Kołakowski’s allegory of the well of the universe and a human reflection in it, Jan A. Kłoczowski asked: “Is there a crack in the universe, peering into which man would notice a Face of the Other”.19 It is about transcendence and a possibility of capturing it in any cognitive process, but it has another meaning—Cartesian-Nitzschean—as a human individual is a unique being, especially in terms of thinking processes: I do not think with another man’s consciousness—Descartes; I do not feel with someone else’s acts of will nor do I do anything with another person’s actions—Nietzsche. My subjectivity (as a sense of my identity) is then an unquestionable fact. I think that, from Leszek Kołakowski’s standpoint, there is no crack through which man could see the face of the Other since even in this face will he see a reflection of his own: he does not see all faces but rather one he was willing to choose from a multitude of images of others or one whose choice is made possible by his limited ability to perceive or by some other circumstances. So, man is doomed to construct, by his own standards, an unlimited number of world images. Kołakowski writes that it is “(…) a domestication of the world of experience by its comprehending interpretation that refers to an unconditioned being”.20 Leszek Kołakowski claims that the Absolute is inaccessible to us by any means—except by a subjective mystical experience which is non-discursive. It is the same kind of symbol or myth as truth and falsity, good and evil, justice, etc., so it is a category of reason, its regulatory idea, not a fact that has any ontic existence. Therefore, Nietzsche is, in Kołakowski’s view, one of the “great prophets of atheism”; those prophets “did not negate (…) human frailty but, rather, refused (…) to grant it ontological permanence”.21 Man, then, perceived as a species or an individual, is always an observation center; man is “within” his own existence, the experiencing of which precondi17

18 19 20 21

L. Kołakowski, “Karol Marks i klasyczna definicja prawdy” [Karl Marx and the Classical Definition of Truth], in: Kultura i fetysze [Culture and Fetish], Warszawa 1967, p. 80. English translation as either Towards a Marxist Humanism or Marxism and Beyond. L. Kołakowski, Jeśli Boga nie ma [Religion: If There Is No God], Kraków 1988, p. 146. J. A. Kłoczowski, op. cit., p. 261. L. Kołakowski, The Presence of Myth, op. cit., p. 11. L. Kołakowski, Jeśli Boga nie ma [If There Is No God], Kraków 1988, p. 220.

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tions a recognition of an existence of anything. Therefore, “(...) it is impossible to (…) arrive at the truth (or any other value – W.M.) that were not implicated in the same situation of arrival”,22 J. A. Kłoczowski comments. When I am watching a photo of the other side of the moon, what I am holding is an object rather than the other side of the moon. The picture is not so much an image of the moon (the information recorded there is a tiny fraction of possible knowledge of the moon) as an image of its taker: it speaks of the tools used, the technical parameters written in and used, etc. If, at the foundations of the consistent Enlightenment man-centeredness, lay confidence in reason and its unlimited cognitive capacity, while the Nietzschean system was based on will, Kołakowski draws inspiration from both. The consequence of reason-power anthropocentrism was a passive position as the aim was to comprehend the world; the consequence of Nietzschean anthropocentrism is domination of the world, imposing on it the human imperialist and expansionist hierarchy of values. Kołakowski does not question the existence of an objective sphere, but he treats it as a chance for human freedom (Stanisław Brzozowski would say that Nature is a “matter of our duty”): behind each causative and cognitive act, as its condition and consequence, lies human free choice and human responsibility. This freedom is not testimony to the Nietzschean unrestrained heroism, though: we are bound to make choices (Sartre) and the accompanying anxiety regarding the rightness of decision reveals human frailty; man is “rooted in himself”. In other words, man acts in freedom, but not at liberty, playing various tunes on the keyboard of the universe but can only bring out those tones which are accessible within the keyboard and man’s own sensitivity. Sound is a feature of the external world, but if I am deprived of hearing, I will never experience it. Still, without man, the world would just as well, or maybe even better, exist. So as to sanctify the attitude of Zarathustra negating the “existing being”, Nietzsche planned to kill his hero. Sartre sought to prove that human existence has been “thrown” into being by chance, without some external rationale, and is therefore absurd. If, then, the world can do well without man, what is our reason d’être? Perhaps man can only state, at the turn of life, that it was just a nightmare? So, if man cannot find a rationale form being externally, it ought to be sought within. Failing to find rational arguments and answers to the above questions, Leszek Kołakowski chose the path of mystical experience and treated it as an escape valve for the tormented human consciousness. It is largely an escape into the protective embrace of “the unknown”, similar to the one Nietzsche chose when he abandoned the real world in favor of the imaginary world of the AboveHuman. Kołakowski’s question of what else there is, if there is no God is a broader one: what else is there if, in the infinity of being, man can only face himself? Gazing intensely in the cloudless starry sky above, man asks a question: whence, from which direction and when will there come a signal that man is not 22

J. A. Kłoczowski, op. cit., p. 166.

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alone? But then comes dawn, awakening and the time to return to his own homestead, “somehow” furnished and arranged.

LESZEK KOŁAKOWSKI AS A “FLYING ARROW” The Nietzschean Overman is on a constant quest for his own self. In the hike through life, he never knows where he is heading, what he is or will be, what he desires and what he despises. For his own self (and for others all the more) he is a big question mark as he is an “innocent child”, who can afford any variant of existence. But, according to Nietzsche, this is where he is superior to the “knowing” i.e. ones constantly enslaved in illusion. The protagonist of Leszek Kołakowski’s Aktualne i nieaktualne pojęcie marksizmu [The current and the out-dated idea of Marxism]23, informed of a sudden change in the opponent’s position, shouts “How come? (…) Such a change within a couple of weeks?” The same question can be redirected to Leszek Kołakowski himself as a constant change of ideas on the same issues is a distinctive feature of this thinker’s writings. “The dispute with Bultmann (on the relationship between religion and science — W.M.) is very significant as it means that Leszek Kołakowski had backed off from at least several opinions he had proclaimed before.”24 After 1953, Leszek Kołakowski commenced a series of publications where he set out to criticize the Stalinist, orthodox variety of Marxism, but also a critique of his own, previously held views. If he previously preferred a “reflection theory” in epistemology, now he claimed, as I mentioned before, that any investigative process, any description and arrival at knowledge by way of abstraction, is an act of the investigating individual making generalizations, who always makes a unique contribution into the theory. A question is raised immediately whether Kołakowski shifted to the positions of skepticism, relativism or pragmatism. Not yet, even though he questions the view of a “fixed subject” that justifies the adoption of constant natural and social laws (cosmocentrism) in favor of a humanist standpoint, where one can see traces of reading texts by Stanisław Brzozowski: “(...) philosophical thinking is characterized by its organizing axis being the social activity of people as moral subjects (bolded by W. M.), i.e. aware of obligations imposed on an individual on account of its participation in the collective life”.25 This is why philosophy is among humanities; moreover, any branch of knowledge is amongst humanities as a human vision of the world: we have no other vision but this one. For the supporters of a metaphysical penetration of being, it was an introduction to what was soon to become cognitive, axiological relativism and to conventionalism, too, since the 23 24

25

L. Kołakowski, Aktualne i nieaktualne pojęcie marksizmu. In: In Praise of Inconsistency. Uncollected Writings of 1955–1968, vol. II, London 1989, p. 5. J. A. Kłoczowski, op. cit., p. 261 (the dispute was about whether a religious experience, as an individual act, is a source of knowledge, hence the source of truth, or whether scientific cognition only can be such a source). L. Kołakowski, Światopogląd i życie codzienne [Ideology and Everyday Life], Warszawa 1957, p. 23.

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truth, in this expression, became a moral value, as changeable as any values of culture. Leszek Kołakowski’s view of religion underwent similar, if not even more profound, changes. Early on, he treated it as a negative value of culture which threatens man’s development (along with a classical Marx’s and Feuerbach’s theory of alienation of the figments of consciousness). Later, Kołakowski expressed religion in psychological terms: it is an antidote to human selfconsciousness of the fragility of human existence; it is therefore a “false consciousness” and a form of escape from reality. Finally, in his dissertations on the cause of some fundamental cultural phenomena, Kołakowski came to see religion as a lasting component of culture, albeit excluding its transcendental pedigree (a restatement of Stanisław Brzozowski’s position on that matter, characteristic of the final stages of his philosophy). Currently, Kołakowski treats religion as a sphere of sacrum, i.e. a value that stems from man’s sense of inability of self-fulfillment in the earthly reality that is accessible.26 Kołakowski’s view on human condition underwent a similar transformation: from an enthusiastic trust in “rational man” (Enlightenment rationalism) and a conviction that man is good by nature, to a diametrically opposite stance that reason pushes itself in blind alleys and man is by nature evil, with evil being a lasting feature of any existence. If earlier, cognitive and moral order was in Kołakowski’s view guaranteed by “social consciousness” and “collective experience” (still in 1959 he claimed that there are “constant parts of human nature” or “unchanging human needs and relationships” that allow the tracking of constant progress in culture from a historical perspective)27, he would decisively abandon this optimistic guarantee of order and social harmony in the course of time. He did not find any rationale for an acceptance of empty and unsustainable categories of “human nature”, “social consciousness”, or “collective subject”.28 Notwithstanding the remarks formulated here, it ought to be wished that Leszek Kołakowski’s arrow would fly on for as long as possible or, better still, that—like Nietzsche’s arrow—it would never stop flying: there are philosophers who aspire for their thoughts to never be thoroughly and ultimately decoded and comprehended. To this end, Leszek Kołakowski wrote a number of anecdotes and theatrical plays with a hidden message and plenty of captivating tales for the “old and the young”.

NIHILISM, RELATIVISM AND THE REJECTION OF METAPHYSICS The Christian commentator of Kołakowski, referred to many a time before in this paper, wrote: “Today we see clearly that the so called ‘death of God’ stems from a deep-reaching crisis; atheism is a child of nihilism, of a fundamental cri26 27 28

Cf. J. A. Kłoczowski, op. cit., pp. 125–131. Cf. L. Kołakowski, Karol Marks i klasyczna definicja prawdy [Karl Marx and the Classical Definition of Truth], in: Kultura i fetysze, op. cit. p. 70. I wrote similarly on that issue in Ontologia jednostki [Ontology of an Individual], Warszawa 1995, pp. 36–37.

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sis of values, and even more deeply: of a crisis of the understanding of being. Man has lost a ‘zeal of reality:’ it no longer makes him happy, spontaneously hopeful or trusting in life. It is increasingly more often reaching the consciousness of Christian thinkers.” This plight was brought on by Nietzsche, above all but not only. The anxiety it gives rise to preoccupies lay thinkers, too: “An awareness of this state of minds and hearts is shared by prominent thinkers from outside the Christian circle. Allow me to mention the name of Leszek Kołakowski.”29 In the aforementioned statement, there is an inherent conviction that it is faith only, or more precisely the “supreme mind”, that warrants the cognition of the truth. Once rejected, the “lowest mind” (the human one left to its own devices) will never ascend the heights of the subtle and effectual cognitive act. Leszek Kołakowski claims outright that the privilege is earmarked solely for God: if we reject God, we remain in the vicious circle of opinions and hypotheses, i.e. the imperfect human cognition. Therefore, a rejection of the view of the existence of supernatural transcendence makes man the kind of existence which knows about its permanent incapability of self-fulfilment; this is dramatic for man (Pascal). If man cannot attain fullness in any dimension of existence and is doomed to permanent partiality, then any efficient way of its expansion is justifiable. Thus, in Nietzsche’s world, nothing is decreed from above, there is no space for an objective, plan or progress.”30 But in Kołakowski’s worldview, evil is irremovable, so it is a position entirely incongruous with Christian eschatology about the ultimate overcoming of evil with good and love, and falsity— with truth. Our thinker can thus say that “the world of values is a mystical reality. (…) It is thus known as a praecedens of all experience”.31 So, values do not exist in an objective manner as there is no “thing in itself”, its eidos or essence: these are only human categories imposed on facts in the process of cognition, by way of convention. However, in 1955–1956, Kołakowski did not yet accept the Nietzschean concept of chaos that provides endorsement for constant change: “A need for change is no consent to subject oneself to fate but rather a desire for new material for moulding.”32 And yet, soon he would opt for changeability and a creative approach to the world: he would hold that “complete consistency is identical with fanaticism; inconsistency is a source of tolerance”.33 Thence it is just a step away from another proposition that one cannot sensibly speak of the idea of moral progress since this category can neither be described nor rationally or experimentally justified: “(…) there is no other way by which we can judge the past than using our own criteria formed by an activity of the contemporary opinions, images or superstitions.”34 Therefore, according to Kołakowski, 29 30 31 32 33 34

J. A. Kłoczowski, Nihilizm współczesny – zagrożenie człowieka, zagrożenie wiary. [Contemporary Nihilism: A Threat to Man, a Threat to Faith], “W drodze” 1987, vol. 3 (163). L. Kołakowski, Komentarz do komentarza..., op. cit., p. 128. Idem: The Presence of Myth, op. cit., p. 33. Idem: Światopogląd i życie codzienne, op. cit., p. 189. Idem: In Praise of Inconsistency, op. cit., vol. II, p. 155. Ibid., p. 73.

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this is of value which fulfills a human need; needs are individual, situational and thus—changeable. Values, therefore, exist in a similar manner as objects, i.e. unnecessarily, accidentally, whereas nothing can be said of metaphysical objects—these are improvable.35 If the totality of being is permeated by the omnipresent change, our behaviors are not defined by any permanent reasons. “A great number of my behavior is made up of compromises (…) Everyday life is composed from such agreements.”36 Present day postmodernists speak the same language, extending the proposition to scientific procedures. The commentator concludes: “Nietzsche’s nihilism is more consistent than the casual atheist consciousness—if there is no God, it is hard to spot a reason in the world why we should judge anything to be true. Somewhere within that I see Kołakowski’s thinking”, and then adds “Kołakowski pays no particular attention to the nihilist even though the figure is ubiquitous in his discussions”.37 Although Kołakowski claims that “Nietzsche devoted his life to salvaging us from nihilism”,38 we can say that this very nihilist is among his major protagonists: the figure discreetly weaves throughout his writings, as if some eminence grise, side by side with another prominent character—the relativist. Both make up an alter ego of the philosopher. The relativist is most commonly (albeit not necessarily) a utilitarian and strives for the objective, heeding no rules, principles or accepted norms; the character respects them only if it secures success. Also the relativist is not averse to tactical lies to provide a hope and an illusion of a better tomorrow.39 Along this sort of ideology, “a personal existence is in some weird sense unreal. It is a convenient attitude for any enslavement ideology”,40 since an abstract “social body” is ascribed a rank of factual existence. One can thus say that Leszek Kołakowski opposes totalitarian ideologies here, but is against any theoretical and practical attempts to universalize changeable and local values. Justifying his soft relativism, allowing for respecting norms and rules adopted by some community, Leszek Kołakowski wrote: “(...) the instability of a value system (…) need not be taken as a symptom of weakening but, rather, as a result of exploratory multi-directionality and testifies to a non-extinct skill of starting up, which is a trait of the young”.41 This forecast clearly resembles the Nietzschean ideas of the “philosophy of dawn” brought against the Hegelian “philosophy of twilight”.

35 36 37 38 39

Cf. L. Kołakowski, Jeśli Boga nie ma [Religion: If There Is No God], op. cit., p. 100. Idem: The Presence..., op. cit., p. 29. J. A. Kłoczowski, Więcej niż mit [More than a Myth], op. cit., pp. 195, 321. Po co Nietzsche?, op. cit., p. 22. Those who promote totalitarian systems usually behave this way, cf. L. Kołakowski: Totalitaryzm i zalety kłamstwa [Totalitarianism and the Advantages of Lies], “Aneks” 1984/36, p. 104. 40 Ibid. 41 L. Kołakowski, Kultura i fetysze, op. cit., p. 219.

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In Ecce Homo, Friedrich Nietzsche confessed that he did not want to be holy, i.e. one who cultivates the rules of order, science or any other regularities. Rather, he would be a “marketplace jester”—a free spirit.42 Kołakowski, too, prefers a character of a jester who, in his writings stands for “questioning existing absolutes. The stance of permanent criticism was identified by Kołakowski with a creative attitude”.43 In his tragic confession Zawód błazna jest mi bliższy [the job of a jester is closer to me],44 he formulates his idea about the absurdity of a position that assumes the existence of general values, e.g. freedom means as much as one does with it, while in some cases it may be a tool in a tyrant’s hands. The idea of man or mankind as a perfect being can only be accepted within “imagination, thanks to neglecting the reality of the world”, etc.45 The interlocutor puts it this way: “The philosophy before Nietzsche betrayed its helplessness”, but Leszek Kołakowski goes silent about Nietzsche, he prefers to speak for himself: “philosophy need not be reprimanded for not settling those (fundamental questions — W.M.) nor its pride need be aroused by expecting it could do that”.46 In doing so, he does prove Nietzsche right in that positive philosophy that aspires to solve problems and understand the world is an illusion. If a priest dwells upon the complexities of an established being, that which has been given, then in the attitude of a jester “what is only potential becomes effective and real in the character before it becomes actual. (…) We are in favor of the philosophy of jester, and thus support a negative vigilance for any absolute”.47 Hence, though lacking a coherent philosophical theory, Leszek Kołakowski is a staunch opponent of metaphysical thinking—he is convinced of “a hopeless impossibility of metaphysics”.48

BEYOND THE TRUE AND THE FALSE If I say “I am an Oscar winner”, however imprecisely, I did write the following information: I formulated a thought; hence I am ego cogito, a thinking subject; I managed to win something; the gain is the annual award of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Hollywood, LA. Obviously the last information is false as I have never aspired to the award and nor am I going to. Or, alternatively, I formulate a statement: I am having dinner, my everyday meal. And again, I find there some accompanying information: my health condition is one that allows me to take in meals, even though dinner consumption can also do me harm; I consume products meant for humans, farmed or manufactured to 42 43

Cf. Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is (the passage “Why I am a Destiny”). A. Borowicz, op. cit., p. 73, cf. L. Kołakowski, Kapłan i błazen. Rozważania o teologicznym dziedzictwie współczesnego myślenia [The Priest and the Jester. Discussions of a theological heritage of contemporary thinking]. 44 Z Leszkiem Kołakowskim rozmawia (korespondencyjnie) Paweł Śpiewak [Paweł Śpiewak speaks, by letters, to Leszek Kołakowski], “Res Publica” 1988/9. 45 Ibid., p 29. 46 Ibid., p. 30. 47 L. Kołakowski, In Praise..., vol. II, op. cit., pp. 179–180. 48 Idem: The Presence …, op. cit., p. 66.

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this end by a specific manufacturer; I am having the meal in the afternoon; during the consumption I am not in a horizontal position or even less so in a vertical position head-down, etc. So, there is no pure act of winning an award, nor a pure act of eating, and neither is there a pure act of speaking of those activities. By analogy, one may say that there is no pure act of thinking or a pure act of cognizing an object. Therefore, in a classical formulation of the term, there is no truth (seen as an adequate predication by a descriptive judgment about a state of the matter): no reporting judgment, and even less so an explanatory judgment, describes the existence of anything in an exhaustive manner. On top of that, any act of thinking and experiencing the external reality or one’s own mental and life states is mediated, i.e. immersed in a wealth of accompanying sensations, which we are unable to recognize in their totality. Therefore, Leszek Kołakowski says that truth and falsity never occur in their pure, extracted forms, in themselves: “The world is what it is; it does not refer to anything and neither does it require a question of reasons.”49 And yet we are not interested in a simple statement: x exists; we do want to know why it exists, what it is like, and why it is the way it is, what it might be like, etc. We will never find a satisfactory answers to these questions. Therefore, the truth is a “(...) value that cannot be possessed”, it is a “metaphysical entity”.50 Metaphysical thinking always ignores an “observation point”, ever present in experience, and the situational context in which the cognitive process is being actualized.51 Therefore, the incomplete knowledge that man constantly experiences (i.e. falsity) allows us to exist safely: the luxury of omniscience, particularly in terms of what we have experienced ourselves, would be unbearable. Luckily, we have a skill of forgetting and freeing our consciousness from excessive burdens.52 Thanks to it we can expect change and are able to associate with hope and mystery. If, along the classical canon of beauty-good-truth we cannot possess the truth, we also do not know what the other two are, so we experience evil (as, according to St. Augustine, a lack). Leszek Kołakowski even gives evil a biblical interpretation: “God from the genesis saw that what He had created was good, but His creatures lacked that knowledge. Our forefathers had to commit evil before they learned what good was; sin had brought them to knowledge and made human.”53 Not all are convinced by Leszek Kolakowski’s argumentation and do not accept the diagnosis of human condition he proposes. His philosophy is dramatic “because it is about exposing never-ending aporia. Our existence is implicated 49 50 51 52 53

L. Kołakowski, ibid., p. 78. Idem: Kultura i fetysze, op. cit., p. 211. Cf. ibid., p. 6. Cf. Leszek Kołakowski, Czy diabeł może być zbawiony i 27 innych kazań [Can the Devil Be Saved and 27 Other Sermons ], London 1982, p. 155. L. Kołakowski, If There Is No God, op. cit., p. 216. I have not found an answer to the question: If our ancestors by experiencing sin became people as God had wished, then why as a result of their experienced, humanizing evil were they expelled from the paradise?

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in those”.54 It is his conviction that one cannot formulate true statements in absence of the “supreme intellect” that is questioned above all. Helena Eilstein speaks of a “yelling” and “unbelievable way of argumentation for a thinker of Leszek Kołakowski’s format”, combined with a manner of leaving his propositions unsupported.55 The statement “There in no truth”, ought to be substantiated and proved right; how does one do that if its expected truthfulness is unavailable? Thus, Kołakowski falls into the traps of his own labyrinths of thought mainly because he gets involved in extremities—either truth or falsity—without reckoning with intermediate states. Also, the author of the above argument remarks that the truth is not the same value as e.g. love: it is an autonomous value, independent from an action implicated in some context. She also notes that cognition is not creativity—it is imitation: “(…) the objects were indeed red before the appearance of man”.56 Without getting into the argument, it ought to be noted that H. Eilstein does not distinguish between descriptive and explanatory statements. The statement object “x is red” contains information of little cognitive content until we find out why it got the color. I assume, however, that we are dealing with a fundamental dispute here: (im)possibility of formulating the truth, irrespective what it is about. Here, Leszek Kołakowski will always be a rewarding object of criticism from representatives of the philosophy of science. One can say: that is good, too, as Nietzsche enjoys their utter contempt on account of his ideas that are, in fact, quite similar.

FAITH VIS-A-VIS RELIGION According to most critics of Nietzsche’s philosophy, the German philosopher was a staunch opponent of all religion, and Christianity in particular. Still, there are others who claim that Nietzsche was a man of true, deep faith even though he never declared it: he rejected pretense religiosity, Philistine religion, as for a Philistine the most supreme God is Money. Having dismissed false gods, he preached joyful wisdom as good news. But Nietzsche’s words about the matter in question leave little unsaid: “(...) there is nothing in me of a founder of a religion—religions are for the rabble, after an encounter with religious people I must wash my hands...”57 Leszek Kołakowski, as if another Zarathustra, preaches how to live in the wake of a loss of all (lasting) values, which is—for many—a true catastrophe for modern man. But, how does one live? There is no answer; the evasion is better than any attempt at prescribing a therapy for which the author could be stoned.

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55 56 57

S. Morawski, O utopijnym antyutopizmie Leszka Kołakowskiego, [On the Utopian Antiutopianism of Leszek Kołakowski], in: Obecność: Leszkowi Kołakowskiemu w 60 rocznicę urodzin [Presence: To Leszek Kołakowski on His 60th Birthday] London 1987, p. 27. H. Eilstein, Jeśli się nie wierzy w Boga. Czytając Kołakowskiego [If There Is No Faith in God. Reading Kołakowski], Warszawa 1991, pp. 5–8. H. Eilstein, O stylu..., [On Style...], op. cit., pp. 161, 182 –183. F. Nietzsche, “Why I Am Destinty”, in: Ecce Homo, op. cit. I.

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In a number of his publications, Kołakowski does point to the eternal human quest for lasting and inviolable values and subjects the phenomenon to scrutiny. He calls the pursuit sacrum, and religious predisposition is one of its possible particular manifestations. And yet, some commentators claim that his preoccupation with sacrum is proof of his faith and a religious way of thinking. Father Józef Tischner notes that “the meaning that contemporary philosophy of religion attaches to sacrum is not justified by the sense of the notion”. Investing it with solely theological contents “means degrading Sacrum to the level of emotions”.58 It needs to be understood that religion has an emotional base: e.g. delight and fear of God. Like Nietzsche, Kołakowski makes unequivocal declarations about the impossibility of reconciling his theoretical position with recognizing the transcendence of the supernatural world: “Humanism, which assumes man to be free not only in the sense that he can turn to good and evil, but also in that he does not discover any rules of good and evil that he himself has not decreed; that no norms have been passed to him by God or Nature but he has an unrestricted right and power to make these as desired (as we remember, good and evil, truth and falsity respond to changeable needs — W.M.) — that humanism cannot be reconciled with Christianity in any recognizable sense.”59 Such statements do not come from Kołakowski’s earlier campaigns against “the culture of Obscurantism”, but from the later, (self-)critical works. A suggestion that Leszek Kołakowski is a believer surfaced as early as in the 1960s particularly following his lecture “Jesus Christ—a prophet and reformer”, given on 22 Oct., 1965 at KMPiK in ul. Nowy Świat, Warsaw.60 L. Kołakowski said: “The mission of Jesus Christ is to reveal the misery of worldliness” (we could add that the mission of Kołakowski is to reveal the misery of philosophy). We go on to read that Jesus Christ proclaimed “annulment of law for the sake of love. (…) The thought entered the European culture as a conviction that relationship among people based on trust annul contract relationship; where mutual trust and love organize an order of solidarity, contracts are unnecessary and so are claims and duties. Indeed, relationships among people need not be based either on the principles of transcendental (universal) reason or a contract between man and God. These are regulated either by the consumption and exchange of goods, group solidarity or a sense of cultural, blood, racial or religious community.” We also read that “(…) the person and teachings of Jesus Christ 58 59

J. Tischner, “Kołakowski i Kartezjusz”, in: Obecność, op. cit., pp. 88–89. L. Kołakowski, Szukanie barbarzyńcy. Złudzenia uniwersalizmu kulturowego [Looking for the Barbarian. Illusions of Cultural Universalism], in: Cywilizacja na ławie oskarżonych, [Modernity on Endless Trial], Warszawa 1990, p. 32. 60 The text was published in “Argumenty” 1965, no. 51/52. I listened to the lecture and the discussion. One of the participants said: “This is our Professor!” and another added “I saw Christ in person!” Following some further attempts to transform the meeting into a manifestation of the religiosity of its numerous attendees, Tadeusz Mrówczyński, the then editor-in-chief of “Argumenty,” and the president of the meeting, felt it necessary to remind the audience that the profile of the periodical that had organized Kołakowski’s lecture was “slightly different”.

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cannot be eliminated from our culture or annulled if the culture is to exist and continue to be created”. I can expand this idea: neither Jesus, nor Kant, Hegel, Marx, Kołakowski or a number of other individuals can be eliminated from it. The existence of culture is possible without them, which is evidenced by the times past, when nobody heard about them. Still, without them, culture would be different; different culture is not available to us in the same way as living in another incarnation is inaccessible to us. Religion, and more specifically the teachings of Jesus Christ are necessary, not on account of God’s plan of existence but because of the identity of our culture, and only such a value can be ascribed to them. Kołakowski’s evaluation of Nietzsche is ambiguous in the above aspect. “Nietzsche’s hate towards Christianity and Jesus was a natural consequence of his faith in the unlimited potential of human self-creativity. Nietzsche knew that Christianity was a consciousness of human weakness, and he was right.”61 What Nietzsche saw in Christianity cannot be seen by Christians themselves; they proudly extol themselves above others and are unable to recognize evil in themselves: “(…) In this sense there have always been few Christians.”62 So, Nietzsche demonstrated to Christians that they were not a chosen people, some privileged community but are as imperfect as all others; also the stigma of the original sin bears heavily on them. However, this expository merit of Nietzsche’s is immediately cancelled by another, notable remark: the teachings of Nietzsche or Marx “formed an ideological cover to justify the two most ominous tyrannies our century has seen”.63 This judgment by Kołakowski needs relenting: neither Marx nor Nietzsche had planned to create any “ideological cover” for any tyranny. It is our century that is both their observer and stimulator. The symptoms of the “ominous” character of our times are also contained in Kołakowski’s ideas that justify the arch-rule of evil; it is still in its infancy but it will yield fruit of which no ear has heard (I mean a total ecological disaster, predatory exploitation of nature, terrorism and organized crime, famine and a number of other calamities plaguing the contemporary civilizations). Implicating Nietzsche or other theorists of the past in the ominous products of culture and civilizations makes no sense.

CRITICISM OF CULTURAL UNIVERSALISM Leszek Kołakowski did not deal with the philosophy of science, theory of natural sciences or—more generally—ontology. He was critical of attempts to build metaphysical visions of the world seeking to present holistic theories of existence by making use of clear, plain and obvious rules of theory-making. He dealt with Positivist philosophy for a short time and just enough to be able to undertake a critique of its theoretical paradigm, which can obviously be seen in the 61 62 63

L. Kołakowski, O tak zwanym kryzysie chrześcijaństwa [On the So-called Crisis of Christianity], in: Cywilizacja na ławie oskarżonych, op. cit., p. 128. Ibid., p. 134. Ibid., p. 128.

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evolution of Kołakowski’s position regarding anthropological analyses: from a consistent, Prometheist and imperialist (Positivist-Marxist) man-centeredness to profound skepticism. “The critique of Positivism had led Kołakowski to seeking parallel between art and science, and a similar theme can be found in his reflection on the history of culture.”64 European culture has been saturated by metaphysical thinking that searched for ultimate explanations in terms of rules and principles of existence and introduced order, necessity, implication and justification in every sphere of cognition and activity. This thinking is continued by Neopositivists but also by representatives of Thomist metaphysics. Kołakowski interprets the world from the standpoint of man, a conscious and changeable individual, “who is besieged in culture by man’s own thoughts and artifacts. One can make a proposition that his thought develops in the field marked by the message of ‘the death of God’ proclaimed by Nietzsche”.65In other words, Kołakowski, like a number of supporters of the Nietzschean metaphysics, rejects the idea of existing being, making man the “measure of all that exists and all that does not exist”. His numerous opponents cannot agree with this relativist point of view (in its consequences), and they periodically produce fruits in the form of holistic (totalizing) or universalistic theories. Kołakowski speaks about that in this way: “Many people used to live unconscious of residing in two irreconcilable worlds, and they shielded their comfort of faith with a thin shell, at the same time trusting progress, scientific truth and modern technology. This shell was bound to be crushed one day, and it was done by the noisy hammer of Nietzsche.”66 Kołakowski’s optimism regarding the finality of Nietzschean noisy operation is exaggerated. The style of thinking and philosophizing it criticizes is still doing rather well, and it even aspires to be a leading current in today’s culture. Leszek Kołakowski argued in favor of he benefits of adopting a “human point of view” rather early on—in 1962. He then formulated an idea that “the human point of view allows an unlimited expansion of the knowledge of the world, but our universe will always have as many dimensions as we ourselves have”.67 Therefore, no universalism is acceptable, be it called “transcendentalism of values”, “supreme intellect” or “universal reason”. Syntheses of values can be performed for theoretical and abstract purposes, but in life “they will manifest themselves in contradiction if applied to individual cases. The Eden of human universality has been lost”.68 The most imposing guard of the universal dimension of cultural values was Immanuel Kant. His philosophy becomes anti-philosophy, though, be it only for its questioning of a need for “incessant quest”, i.e. what true philosophy should 64 A. Borowicz, op. cit., p. 97. Cf. texts by Kołakowski: Nauka jako sztuka piękna [Science as a Fine Art], “Argumenty” 1969/43; Historia jako nauka piękna [History as a Fine Science], “Nowe Książki” 1962/1. 65 J. A. Kłoczowski, Więcej niż mit [More than a Myth], op. cit., p. 316. 66 L. Kołakowski, Cywilizacja …, Aneks, 1985/40. 67 L. Kołakowski, Kultura i fetysze, op. cit., p. 189. 68 L. Kołakowski, Czy diabeł..., in: Cywilizacja …, op. cit., p. 119.

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be famous for. However, Kołakowski admits that we could not do without some Kantian propositions today as we cannot agree with Nietzschean teaching that “the criteria of good and evil can either be impossible to establish or, worse still, may be deduced from the actual human behavior, from instincts or the real course of historical processes”.69 However, it is not the universal reason that guarantees values in culture. In order to recognize e.g. human rights, one needs no transcendental reason. Also, one may break its conclusions not only, in effect, endangering culture but, conversely, reinforcing it by denying evil-doers and felons such rights. If it is not the universal reason that vouchsafes security and continuity in culture, what is it? Kołakowski gives no answer as he aspires to no such role: he prefers to ask questions and question accepted judgments. Kołakowski’s writings might make you think that such a guarantee of a continuity of cultural values is constituted by irrational, mythical factors or faith in the “Divine Absolute”, “Holy Spirit”, who organized everything that exists according to his own plan and oversees it. But such ideas, as the critic notes, bring Kołakowski close to “contemporary utopian thinking”.70 However, Kołakowski proposed a positive solution while relying on non-positive arguments (in the classical sense of the term): “Our worldly destiny is a never-ending care, eternal inconclusion. Thus, in the spirit of uncertainty about its very self, can European culture can maintain its spiritual certainty and its right to calling itself universal.”71 One can assume that Leszek Kołakowski accepts the “unestablished” intellectual personality of a philosopher as a token of his superiority over expressive and completely formed personalities (like actors who abhor being ascribed to one part, even if excellent). Being closed in a pattern gives a philosopher a sad, drab and fossil image. Therefore, the “juvenile starting over” is a beautiful and attractive feature, with Nietzsche about to applaud upon the news, but … most of the audience left confounded and unsure which play has in fact just been performed. Such a scenario of Kołakowski’s (and Nietzsche’s) reception is wished by those who favor an in-depth cognition and comprehension of the world. Why is the opposite true, then? Why do the works of the two reach top readership figures and continue to be commercially successful? Do readers, perplexed by civilizational dilemmas and the permanent crisis of values, possibly prefer to read that life is an incessant series of torments and uncertainty, the experience of which is shared by others, too?

69 L. Kołakowski, Kant i zagrożenia cywilizacji [Kant and Civilizations in Jeopardy], in: Cywilizacja na ławie oskarżonych [Modernity...], op. cit., p. 74. 70 S. Morawski, O utopijnym …., op. cit., p. 33. 71 L. Kołakowski, Szukanie barbarzyńcy...., op. cit., p. 36.

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EPILOGUE Leszek Kołakowski’s philosophizing is most tragic. It not only testifies to the author’s conviction of a permanent human inability to self-fulfill in anything but also to his view of the nonsense of any existence. The protagonist of Kołakowski’s philosophical dissertations, hard to grasp on first reading, a vague and ambiguous figure, is the Nietzschean wanderer on a quest of his/her own self, but all they see is just a pretense: their own fleeting shadow. Jocularity, mockery and irony are the author’s defenses against an ultimate resignation and a recognition of an absurdity of existence that embraces us all. Hence he is only a step away from proclaiming himself a “new Messiah” and the “crucified one”. Both Nietzsche and Kołakowski demonstrate a similar attitude to fellow countrymen: a reluctance to work among their own folk. They alienated themselves to too many people and the balance of grievances on both sides is considerable. In the experience of each adult, the memories of youth are often the most precious treasure. Kołakowski, as a young man, fully accepted Marxism as a Prometheist, imperialist program of the amendment of the world, which turned out to be a tragic mistake. This experience remained in the philosopher’s soul as a sense of incapability of filling the vacuum thus created and of regaining the lost sense. Following the great, passionate, first, tragic and unfulfilled love, every other can only be a one-night stand. Translated by Lesław Kawalec

ABOUT THE AUTHOR — philosopher, habilitated doctor, professor of the University of Warsaw in 1992–1997. He deals with the history of contemporary philosophy and philosophical anthropology. His major works include: Brzozowski (1979); Nietzscheanizm i marksizm w literaturze i filozofii okresu Młodej Polski [Nietzscheanism and Marxism in the Polish Modernist Literature and Philosophy] (1989); Filozofia współczesna w zarysie [An Outline of Contemporary Philosophy] (1992); Myśl Fryderyka Nietzschego w Polsce w latach 1947–1997 [Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thought in Poland in 1947–1997] (1999); editor of a three-volume monograph Polska filozofia powojenna [Polish Post-war Philosophy] (2001–2005). Since 1986 in charge of the University of Warsaw bi-quarterly periodical Edukacja Filozoficzna. Retired in 2008.

Janusz Kuczyński

THE UNIVERSALISM OF JOHN PAUL II— THE UNIVERSALISM OF LESZEK KOŁAKOWSKI. AFTERWORD

INTRODUCTION It is quite probable that current developments will result in a growing and ultimately explosive antinomy between different groups of human beings and society—and perhaps even our civilization’s self-destruction—as political threats mount alongside the ever-lurking metaphysical dangers stemming from humanity’s frailties and contradictions, its existential dimension and religious, cognitive, existential, ontic and axiological incertitude. Modern (also contemporary) history tells of repeated genocide committed in the very heart of Europe and instances when mankind virtually toyed with (self-)annihilation. Already Russell and Einstein warned of the danger of nuclear selfdestruction, today largely averted by the end of the Cold War. But is the nuclear spectre not haunting us again today, evident in the increasingly frequent instances of technological failure (even of rocket missiles) and fears that today’s terrorism, be it biological, chemical—or quite soon perhaps even nuclear – may soon evolve into a civilizational clash? In this situation, it will clearly be necessary to seek effective remedies— mainly by reaching into the “spiritual” and material sources of such threats. Not the usual solutions will be needed but rather “symptomatic” and improvised measures, as applied e.g. in ecology (and analyzed alternately by the Meadows, Uexull, several Nobelists, and Dialogue and Universalism). The need for such measures is especially pressing in light of the rising threat of biological, bacteriological and chemical warfare. The vanquished Cold War (Once? For all? Everywhere?), with its ominous “balance of forces” based on fear of mutual annihilation and “controlled” show of force by the reigning superpowers, appears to be making way for coldblooded terrorism, a new “banality of evil”—expressed in daily, open, self-driven and uncontrolled bestiality. Putting it most bluntly: we are witnessing the rise of horror politicus, the social equivalent of what Leszek Kołakowski called horror metaphysicus. Unfortunately, both appear to be mutually reinforcing to an uncomfortable degree. Are they, however, able to properly express the metaphysical and political side of the human condition? Is the search for solutions to the antinomy between individuals and society through the certitude of existence to prove an eternal— and perhaps ultimately futile—search?

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Precisely a decade ago, Leszek Kołakowski told at International Society for Universalism symposium in London that civilization’s salvation called for a radical change of mentality—metanoia. And he has also prepared the theoretical groundwork for such a change—based in the deepest sense on his own, original thought. In an effort to spread the metanoia idea (a cause which is fast becoming a major mission of Dialogue and Universalism), we have decided to analyze several categories which should constitute at least a partial—if not complete— basis for its further expansion and the directions this expansion should take. * “Main Currents of Christianity” In a very general sense we can say that the most prominent of Kołakowski’s works is Main Currents of Marxism. However, he has authored so many voluminous books and essays on religion—from Religious Consciousness ... and Religion. If There Is No God ... to God Owes Us Nothing ... and countless essays and papers printed in many languages (and always to broad acclaim)—that they could easily be compiled into a huge and perhaps even more momentous work, which could possibly be entitled Main Currents of Christianity. These “currents” appeared to develop in an opposite direction to the above-described—a fact so obvious that its mentioning here would have been unnecessary if this were merely another sphere of Kołakowski’s work. However, his reflections on religion proved culturally important in Poland as they greatly influenced public awareness, not least thanks to the philosopher’s prestige and the need for theories backing radical change. Change is in itself an interesting study matter, we, however, are chiefly interested in its consequences for—what appears to be increasingly needed today— a new phase of dialogue. Kołakowski’s intellectual authority and in-depth analyses give hope for a new dialogue phase, this time leading to true and global metanoia, to all, also non-believers. His works reach far beyond all boundaries set by faith (notwithstanding the Author’s personal preferences) or even religion. This is best expressed in his appeal to “regard Buddhism as metaphysical and moral wisdom, not a religion in the strict sense of the term” [If There is no God . . ., p. 7]. Through his universal, deeply analytical texts, Kołakowski in fact—and despite never having openly declared such intentions—enabled Christianity’s reuniversalization. Stalinist ideology and all primitive forms of atheism and nihilistic agnosticism see religion primarily through an ideological, or even political prism. However, already in 1953, Kołakowski, then a mere university graduate, entered a sharp dispute on the atheistic vs. pantheistic essence of Spinoza’s philosophy with professor Ossowska during his Ph.D. exam. The title of his thesis alone— The Individual and Infinity. Freedom and Antinomies of Freedom in the Philosophy of Spinoza—went considerably beyond the “philosophical correctness” of

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the day (and was duly shelved for five years prior to publication). Then came the momentous Religious Consciousness and Ecclesiastic Bond, which set new horizons and challenges for Catholic traditionalism. These reflections, however, never sank in very deeply into the public mind and were definitely swept away by the mounting repressions and primitiveness of the Władysław Gomułka years.

Universalism: Pluralistic, not totalitarian Luckily Kołakowski’s Voice in the Debate on Christian Universalism survived in Notes on Contemporary Counter-Reformation (1962). Inside are some very important distinctions whose value today is undiminished although their connotations may have shifted: “In one specific sense, the term ‘universalism’ denotes that characteristic of the doctrine which makes it aspire to maximal all-round expansion; the striving not only to elevate the doctrine to a monopolistic position in the world, but for its domination over all walks of human life: customs, thoughts, knowledge, art, social life, the economy, politics—everything. This, hence, is a universalism based on the assumption that the doctrine from its position can solve all human problems successfully and that its highest values must perforce dominate over all others in existence. Seen this way, universalism is in fact equal to totalitarianism, a tendency looking back on a rich tradition in the Christian world and by no means extinct in the 20th century” (1962, p. 87).

From the position of tradition, this is a meaningful conclusion—and only fully comprehensible today. It proves beyond doubt how important and “multifunctional” the dialogue with religion and its undercurrents were. It is also clear today that this form of universalism is unacceptable. Next we read: “In its second, narrower sense, universalism is also a feature relating to the scope of aspirations… a feature of the doctrine whereby it is to be acceptable to all people and proclaim values suitable for universal acceptance regardless of race, environment, geographical location, political system, social class, etc. ... This, however, does not assume the doctrine’s striving for total domination over every sphere of life; the doctrine only wants to spread its highest values... It is common knowledge that Christianity in this sense was universalistic from its beginnings, as opposed to Judaism, from which it emerged... thus understood, universalism in not solely Christianity’s domain” (p. 88).

This is precisely the kind of universalism we should be striving after. Especially promising in this respect is the fact that the general wish for such universalism is itself becoming almost universal (if not always duly justified or recognized). To put it most briefly: many of today’s aspirations are inspired not only by a quest for dialogue but even by a certain kind of noble rivalry in “imbuing (one’s own) universalism with universality” to the highest possible degree. And this, of course, gives cause for hope. One could even risk saying, L’universalisme—c’est la jeunesse du monde.

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This is why it is so encouraging to see that many cultures are changing their attitude towards universalism (or at least its major representatives). Still in the early 1980s, professor Mushakoji, then Deputy Rector at the United Nations University (UNU) and subsequent President of the International Association for Political Science, criticized the universalism propagated by our periodical (then called Dialectics and Humanism), accusing us of “spreading western, imperialistic universalism”. One should not forget, however, that such differences of opinion did not hinder this eminent Japanese scholar in his extremely universalism-friendly daily practice—among others, UNO helped us organize a 1984 conference entitled Global Perspective of Europe in Warsaw, whose main paper was Young Europe—Pluralism and Universalism (see issue 1/1985). Kołakowski continues: “In its third meaning universalism is a feature related to the very essence of the doctrine and based on the inherent assumption that all people are equally capable of attaining the values it propagates, especially in the sphere of eschatology . . . Christian personalism is meant to be a form of expressing this tendency. This feature of Christianity is, among others, what over various historical periods allowed Christian ideas to function as an ideology of the oppressed and repressed. Today universalism understood in this way appears to have lost its social force” (pp. 88–9).

Referring our readers to the full text (perhaps even more actual today than 48 years ago), we wish to note that at that time its author was working on his momentous and multi-dimensional work Religious Consciousness and Ecclesiastic Bond, whose first edition came out in 1965. Preparing the book took Kołakowski seven years. And finally: “In its fourth and final meaning universalism is a feature of the doctrine related to its expansion methods. Thus understood, universalism is the readiness to accept as a value the maximum diversity of human expression forms in various spheres of human spiritual life, art, lifestyle, mentality, theory, philosophy, etc. This, in fact, is what we sometimes call pluralism, an attitude in crass opposition to universalism in the first of the here-quoted meanings. Of course this must not be confused with universal and indifferent tolerance” (p. 89).

Written 48 years ago, these words are in many ways as important today (perhaps with “expansion” substituted by “receptiveness” or “accepting openness”). When they first saw the light of day, they stood in striking contrast to the day’s predominant trend towards ideologically-flavoured expansion. Secondly, they lifted dialogue onto a higher plane: openness and readiness for concrete, argument-based debate in place of negotiations and polemic was now to evolve into acceptance of the other side’s values. In other words, into a readiness to learn— definitely strengthened by an apparent wish to “absorb” values heretofore unknown or untolerated. Thirdly, universalism in this sense chiefly pursued its own self-enrichment and not pure tolerance or indifference.

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This gave rise to a debate which stood in deep contrast to the day’s predominant moods. Leszek Kołakowski said he would welcome, “. . . attitudes showing a basic friendliness towards the diversity of human life, attitudes of open acceptance towards all that can be of value to humanity, acceptance of the multifarious forms of life, thought and expression without resigning from the struggle for one’s own values” (p. 90). Noteworthy, however, is the fact that neither this initiative—nor even universalism itself—were put to broader debate at the time. As they well could not be.

JOHN PAUL II AND LESZEK KOŁAKOWSKI “Faith is intellectually valid, unbelief is intellectually valid...” This Kołakowski’s very significant 2002 statement appeared in the preface to the Rev. Professor Obirek’s book What Binds Us? Dialogue With Non-Believers (p. 13). Is legality “certitude” of the kind sought so astutely by the Philosopher? Can we not—very tentatively and hypothetically—assume that there is ample room for both, not only within dialogue but within the social, sometimes even synergic, coexistence of people with differing views? Can denial of religion’s ontological justifications not go hand in hand with recognition of its positive—and very important—influence on ethics and culture? Indeed—and unfortunately—the Church has rejected liberation theology, but it, as well as clerical Marxist movements in France and Spain and the many varieties of Christian socialism, have definitely left their mark on the Church— and certainly a multitude of crucial problems. Here Kołakowski masterfully portrays the diversity and depth of possible directions and solutions. It is precisely his enormous and manifold influence on Church intellectuals and various non-religious groups which opens up a new dialogue phase, perhaps even a path to synergy—and certainly a new dimension of universalism. Marxism and Socialism after Kołakowski Main Currents of Marxism certainly reshuffled theory. From the standpoint of the abovementioned dialogue paradigm of contradicting philosophies at least partly bound by universalism, we may say it shows Marxism defeated as a “scientific approach to history and the world” and totally disproved and compromised as a “science-based ideology”, nonetheless it presents Marxist thought introspectively and in a broad spectrum as perhaps the most influential trend in contemporary philosophy.

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Speaking in Dialogue and Universalism terms, we could say that Marxism has been “dethroned” from the status of a metaphilosophy to the position and debate level of a “regular” philosophy—and no scholar, philosopher or historian—not even those who staunchly reject Marxism—will deny that it was one of the most important and inspiring of all thought schools. Possible successors to the “metaphilosophical throne”—heretofore so illicitly (and, as it turned out, unluckily) occupied by the theories of Marx and Engels and their many acolytes from the Frankfurt School, Gramsci, analytical Marxism, etc.—would be surer if they were made by “open public tender”—with rivalling philosophies bidding for the status in an exclusively scientific, dialogue-based and honest competition. It would be a great waste to see the great ideas of Marx and Kołakowski do no more than clash in destructive theoretical warfare. All the more so since sociologically and psychologically Marxism’s position appears to be regaining popularity: in a recent Guardian poll Marx was named the millennium’s most important philosopher, while a 2002 most popular German in history ranking in Germany placed him third—after Konrad Adenauer (!) and Martin Luther; paradoxically, Marxist publications run particularly high in some Third World countries and the United States. It would be a great shame if researchers failed to make use of the great “negative inspiration” offered to contemporary intellectual culture by Kołakowski’s most important work. Especially as some of his proposals also carry definitely positive elements and are forwarded in a good cause, even if they only have—to put it jokingly—a “particular validity”. Marxism is one of the biggest milestones in humanity’s eternal striving to organize its social life according to the rules of science and ethics. The terrible consequences of the well-meant slogan “the individual is nothing, the individual is nil”—forwarded by a great poet who committed suicide when he realized the system’s workings—were the product of historical circumstances characterized by an absence of not only scientific but also of moral norms. Stalinism, and, unfortunately, for the most part also “real socialism” were administered solely by politicians. Scientists and ethicists had nothing to say, their role being rather that of cosmeticians employed to “touch up” the system—at best they could present their more liberal ideas and studies abroad. This rather shocking truth sheds light on the need for science as such, and ethics, to become a fundamental—or at least a formative—element of metanoia and civilization’s salvation. Ideally, politicians should be the executors of projects prepared in total, unhampered freedom by scientists. Most important here would be the work of those researchers whose concepts merit the term “metaphilosophy”. Today, after the “Breakdown” that was the fate of all philosophies unable to answer humanity’s major questions, the time for a true metaphilosophy and a universal ethic appears at hand. The failure of to-date attempts to find one (also by UNESCO) must by no means discourage further efforts. Let us, however, be realistic and not expect visions projected by eminent scholars and ethicists to be unquestioningly implemented by politicians. Inste-

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ad, let them be universally known and honestly debated—and they will defend themselves. Kołakowski’s 2002-published work What Is Left of Socialism is one of the most comprehensive presentation of the Philosopher’s own views on the issue. Globally this is considerably more significant today than attitudes towards religion or Marxism, which is why we not only refer readers to the text but also declare ourselves open to a related debate on institutionalism and political systems. We also wish to recall that we already proposed this at the First World Congress of Universalism in 1993/94 in our presentation of the 20th century’s perhaps most important document, Pope John Paul II’s Laborem exercens encyclical, as a unique foundation for a universal society (most of its social proposals are almost universally acceptable). Laborem exercens was sometimes considered by certain western intellectuals as a Marxist work. Even the most ideal forms of capitalism or socialism have little chance for universal acceptance. However, this is possible for a universal society model, proof of which is the fast-spreading term “universal civilization”, used already by Znaniecki and quoted several years ago by Nobelist Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul. Kołakowski paired with the Pope serves as an ultimate denial of all stereotypes about Polish Catholicism’s “essential particularism”. Secondly, it gives serious cause for hope that the contemporary, highly effective Polish dialogue model which influenced Europe so profoundly and the earlier-mentioned complementarity between the work pursued by the Pope (whose pontificate saw the global Catholic population rise from 1,000,000,000 to 1,300,000,000) and the Philosopher. Our own quiet dream is for the process to be founded upon the already mentioned most significant texts: Husserl and the Search for Certitude, What Is Left of Socialism and Laborem exercens. Dialogization: Paths to Catholicism’s rebirth and “transforming the face of the Earth”—Poland, Europe, and the world. “The man who embraced and heaved the world” We must try to realize the full significance of John Paul II for dialogue and ecumenism, a significance reaching beyond all religions. One must even say that this Pope’s authority seems to increase with each of his pilgrimages, thus effectively endorsing the universalism idea. One of the first Karol Wojtyła biographies, Williams’s (Harvard) excellent The Mind of John Paul II calls him a “Polish, Slavonic and Universal Pope”. I met the author at Harvard shortly before his death. And I remember that he pointed out this particular phrase, at the same time referring to Słowacki’s prophetic poem about great hopes. Still as cardinal Wojtyła, the future Universal Pope himself encouraged dialogue with Marxists, a fact confirmed by the Rev. Andrzej Woźnicki from San Francisco University in his book about the Pope—the first ever written about John Paul II.

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Although not mentioned outright in his writings, the Pope’s universalism actually adds to the original essence of St Paul’s doctrine, probably the world’s first universalism, elevating universalism to new heights but at the same time addressing it to all human beings. After his pilgrimage to Mongolia and his homily to its essentially non-believing people, Jan Szczepański and I addressed an open letter to John Paul II (D&U, no. 9–10/2001). We wrote on the Pope’s strivings for dialogue, or even a full social reconcilement of materialism and Christianity in the perspective of universalism from the very onset of his pontificate. Elevation of the Earth Without naming them directly, John Paul II incorporated universalistic ideals and values into his teachings, both in the most remote corners of the earth as well as on the UN and UNESCO forum. These organizations in turn, in a sense perched “on top of the world”, received his words with enthusiasm, as universalism was what they had been propagating from their outset (and have since adopted it as a household idea). “Heaving the earth” did not mean an immediate change for the better, but it did mean recognition—factual and emotional—of the urgency of many issues. Most significant in this respect was that human affairs were elevated onto a level of higher importance, thanks to which good solutions found it easier to become universal. The Earth thus became a better place—a place of growing hope. Future generations will one day perhaps realize what forces—and how—contributed to overcoming the nuclear threat, preventing catastrophe and an “ideological Holocaust” in Poland, and instead allowed for the once-unimaginable peaceful transition from communism. Those who accuse the Pope of excessive strictness with respect to sexual ethics and matters discussed in the Dominus Iesus document, can justifiably fall back on the many tragic examples of what exaggerated morality can lead to in the first case, and charges of religious exclusivism in the second. Nonetheless, every philosophy should always be viewed through the prism of its universal acceptability. In other words, from the position of commonly accepted universalism, which is possible only when perceived on many levels (the fundament of metaphilosophical universalism). Moreover, John Paul II’s rigour is more an appeal, a request, an admonishment and a prayer than wrathful censure. It must be understood that there can be no essential dialogue here—just as no one is prepared to “negotiate” about their most revered values (especially if, as here, they are not superimposed but offered). True enough, moral restrictiveness has led humanity into many a tragedy, nonetheless it is probably the force which ultimately “heaves the world”. Close to a decade ago our Centre for Universalism organized an international conference entitled Earth, Our Home, one of whose papers, The Domestication of the Earth: An Interpretation of Leszek Kołakowski’s Project of Metanoia [D&U, no. 8–9/1996] ran in a similar vein.

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Such is the nature of historical change. Leszek Kołakowski wrote: “The Dominus Iesus declaration contains nothing new, nothing which has not been said many times before, but, as we know, the meaning of words also depends on historical context. The Roman Church accentuates that it is the only true church. Nonetheless, if at the same time it appeals to its faithful to pray for Christian unity, then this idea of unity can only be understood in one way: everyone must revert to the Roman faith and all other Christian communities must be done away with.”1

However, this problem—frequent in missionary work—can probably be resolved by accepting that faith in the doctrines of one’s own religion or philosophy may (and indeed should) justify their propagation to others only as long as this does not involve intolerance. Teaching and co-creating universalism The “Faith is intellectually valid, unbelief is intellectually valid” subtitle above was invented by Kołakowski, who probably had good reasons for this most surprising conclusion. What must be asked, however, is: what is “intellectually valid”? The answers to this question may well inspire a new phase in the dialogue—and perhaps even overall relations—between faith and non-faith. One answer indeed lies close at hand: at issue here are not doctrine and dry theory, “but rather opposing mental and moral codes… both are necessary for our culture”. Does therefore “intellectually valid” mean as much as “necessary”? Surely not in the most trivial and practical sense. In explaining this, Kołakowski refers to the fundamental ethos of his philosophy: “in order to survive [culture] will always require conflict between opposing beliefs, as absolutely certain truths do not exist” (p. 13). Was the “search for certitude” therefore in vain? Twice no! First of all, because although the Philosopher did not point to specific doctrines, he did come out with quite a few proven theories (which we shall dwell upon in more detail in the next part). These theories were transcendental, universally significant and pursuant of the famous “universal validity”, many of his minor statements were also frequently proven as completely true. Let us add here that the frequency with which these theories appear and their place in the structure of the doctrine may have a bearing on dialogue and the extent of its “legalization”. Most important, however, is that both faith and unbelief are necessary—we need the conflict between them, or, putting it another way, the tension, or “negative complementarity” between them provides a chance for unusually strong synergy. Totalitarianism is rejected here as a force disturbing this tension. This is an essential strain in Kołakowski’s philosophy. It also determines the diversity, multifariousness and, if I may say so, varying intensity of the elements 1

From the above-cited preface to: What Binds Us? Dialogue With Non-Believers…, p. 13.

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and categories which form the new universalism phase (variety, uniqueness, complementary opposition, multilevel identification and simultaneous unity, areas of certitude; true, certain kinds of unity provide a basis for certitude, but the problem in such cases are the limits of such unions, “Others”, etc.). And this is only the top of a long list of area- and structure-related issues which we must always try to situate in their broader context (although not the Universe). We may even say John Paul II and Leszek Kołakowski are part of a breakthrough in universalism, new and rising needs, questions and postulates elevating its heretofore only formally recognized luminaries to the rank of Major Thinkers. The great—but good—paradox here is that even the best and most warmly received teachings should evoke in their receivers a wish to spread their newlylearnt knowledge, to offer it to others—in other words, to co-create. Today, this is becoming a major issue for promoters of active, perception-based and creative education. St Paul’s first universalism was a “one-way” doctrine which could only be taught and learned or absorbed. The non-believers, Greeks and heathens who listened to St Paul two thousand years ago were merely listening audiences— “absorbers”—at his speeches. Today, students of universalism are not only absorbers. Contemporary universalists want to be partners in the movement (if only on a very modest scale). Among them are also those who choose to contest, question or even reject universalism’s main ideas—this also is part of the new, co-created dialogue model, in which creation and destruction are sometimes separated by a very thin line. Surprising and inevitably cost-consuming as this may be, is it not the fulfillment of Kołakowski’s great postulate—which today preconditions not only civilization’s existence but its very survival? The dialogue between intellectual and political elites is thus becoming more “democratic” and concerned for the full “subjectivization” of its earlier “absorbers”. This dialogue’s addressees, inspirers, supporters and executors want to and should also be its co-creators. Did not the “Threshold of Hope” recall synergy’s prototype? And did it not speak about humanity as the co-creator of the Earth? Prometheanism, humanism, scientism, positivism, materialism, atheism, agnosticism, terrism Those of the non-religious who strive for ideas, values and the authentic common good, may find an unexpected source of strength in certain theoretical elements of prometheanism, humanism, positivism, scientism or materialism, which can frequently (but not always) be seasoned by atheism, agnosticism, terrism or their varieties (certainly the future ought to produce a Main Currents of Unbelief).

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For the most part, however, they approach matters of fundamental and eternal significance with a lazy mindlessness (although faith too can become “automatic”). Only a very few, their philosophies today grouped under collective names, can be true partners in the great philosophical dialogue. Kołakowski’s works constitute perhaps the most comprehensive and inspiring “theoretical roadmap” of intellectual and educational preparations for a new dialogue phase between the faithful and non-believers. And let us hope this phase brings to both more of what today appears most important—and, in the sense of the Hegelian “concrete universal”, most enriching—in universalistic praxis: synergy. Using mostly Kołakowski’s terminology, let us list at least some of the categories constituting this “roadmap”: heaven, Earth, sacrum and profanum, the mythical order, mystical transcendence, “harmonious coexistence”, “total enforcement in the theocratic order”, “the relative autonomy of the profanum under supervision of the sacrum”. Dialogue and Universalism’s part in the debate added atheism, agnosticism, anticlericalism, prometheanism, humanism, and terrism—and the dialogue process synergy, and “areas of reconcilement in multi-levelled universalism”. Also fascinating is the way in which Kołakowski’s theories evolved. I do not so much mean his earlier works (also unquestioningly rejected by their author), but the abovementioned Voice in the Debate on Christian Universalism [Głos w dyskusji o uniwersalizmie chrześcijańskim], which, although it would certainly carry a different message today, in my opinion contains lasting values—among others it introduced some of the most well-founded and clearest categorizations. Another example is the humanistic morality definition, which I personally still consider pivotal in the sphere here-discussed (I wrote about this in my Ph.D. thesis under Kołakowski’s personal direction, see Demise of the Bourgeoisie [Zmierzch mieszczaństwa], 1967, pp. 27–29). Similarly with Kołakowski’s famous statement on “...dialectic thinking, to which human reality, even most perfectly reformed, will always present itself as dialogue between human and object. A dialogue that never ceases, as the ‘uncompleted’ situation” is an organic and formative element of human life and all endings except death are illusory. Living and Thinking [Żyć i filozofować], 1969, p. 475. Hopes for a social project of Young Europe, Young Humanity and Universal Civilization? In the most recent decades Poland’s gift to Europe (and the world) has been its pioneering role in modern history’s biggest breakthrough, its critical stance towards the system (in theory as well as in practice) providing the basis for the Solidarity revolution. Unfortunately, not very much has remained of the first Solidarity—and solidarity—of those days (several years ago at the University of Warsaw Kołakowski gave a memorably bitter lecture on this entitled, On Solidarity With a Small “s”). What those days did bring, however—freedom and the best political situation in centuries—is doubtless of major value. Alas, our inde-

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pendence has cost us a terrible price: our territory was significantly diminished, we suffered horrendous human losses with about 35 percent of our population killed, slaughtered, lost or displaced by World War Two, the Holocaust and migrations, our country was ruined, our capital razed to the ground, our works of art plundered... And still Poland managed to master its fate, surviving all the antinomies brought on it by history, all the totalitarianism imposed upon it and all the criminal acts of aggression committed against it by its neighbours, to process its experiences into vast resources of theoretical lore. John Paul II’s mission truly “embraced and heaved” the world. Also true, however, is that although the Poles loved their Pope, they had neither understood him nor listened to his words. Almost no one in Poland was carrying out any of the far-sighted visions contained in Laborem exercens, even the debate on applying Christian social science and the gospel to ease the misery of the country’s millions of unemployed and halt progressing moral deterioration was vastly insufficient. Also to blame for this are non-believers, who refused to take up a debate on the Pope’s reception in his native country, limiting themselves to perhaps honest but nonetheless superficial praise of the Pontiff. Despite the Church’s declarations about non-believers in parishes and dialogue-propounding conferences (also organized by materialistically oriented and liberal groups), it would be difficult to name one socially meaningful and far-reaching project launched from such undertakings. And today a similar fate can befall Leszek Kołakowski’s works. Therefore, and also in light of his global renown, it is almost our duty to carefully absorb his words and make good use of the chance they offer to society. We also invite scholars, intellectuals, scientists and people of the Church to theoretical and practical discussion on the above topics (in his 1994 London appeal for metanoia Leszek Kołakowski especially pointed to the clergy as the group with the biggest chance to influence the masses). May it prove fruitful. We are also directing a special appeal to the intellectuals within the political elite, people who, regardless of their political hue, declare to base their work on social science and ethics. Unfortunately, politics is usually (or, perhaps, essentially) particularistic and frequently quite openly and cynically applied to serve the interests of select social groups. It is, therefore, aimed against Others, usually the weakest. Only true statesmen are capable of acting for the common good (which in our day and in the future will probably mean the whole world), and only in times of extreme threat or challenge. The philosophy, or metaphilosophy, we are dealing with here (provisionally described as a comprehensive and broadly albeit not unreservedly accepted summary aimed at overcoming philosophy’s shortcomings and errors) is certainly the best, and perhaps only effective way to fight political particularisms. Translated by Maciej Bańkowski

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ABOUTH THE AUTHOR — Professor of Philosophy. He is the author of numerous articles and books including Homo Creator (1979), Dialogue and Universalism as Way of Thinking (1989), Ogrodnicy Świata (1998), Młodość Europy i wieczność Polski (1999). J. Kuczyński is the founder and the longstanding Editor-in-Chief of Dialogue and Universalism. A creator of contemporary universalism, the founder and the first President of the International Society for Universalism, the Honorary President of the International Society for Universal Dialogue.

Marek J. Siemek

LAUDATIO ON THE RENEWAL OF LESZEK KOŁAKOWSKI’S PH.D. AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WARSAW

Norwid’s poem, In a Diary, features a speaker who, looking at himself in the mirror of time, realizes that what he used to think of as his is in fact merely borrowed from his ancestors and tradition. 15 From you, as from burning chips of resin Fiery fragments circle far and near: Ablaze, you don’t know if you are to be free. Or if all that is yours will disappear. 16 Will only ashes remain and confusion Whirling into the void?—or will there shine Amidst the ash a starlight diamond, The dawning of eternal victory! Cyprian Kamil Norwid, W pamiętniku […]: 15, 16

Your Magnificence, Mr. Dean, Dear Professor, Our eminent Laureate hardly needs introducing to the here-gathered members of our University community, government representatives and delegates from other Warsaw academic schools. We all are well aware that professor Kołakowski is one of the most eminent personages in the 20th-century Polish philosophy and humanities, a fact also mentioned by his honourable reviewers: professor Barbara Skarga, professor Jan Andrzej Kłoczowski and professor Krzysztof Michalski. Let us mention here the most important and most prestigious of the many distinctions awarded to professor Kołakowski: first and foremost the John Kluge Prize, a unique humanities “Nobel Prize” awarded since recently by the US Congress Library, whose first laureate he was. Also noteworthy are the coveted German Booksellers’ Peace Prize, the European Essay Award, the Italian Ninio Prize (awarded to the “masters of our times”), and a prize from the PolishAmerican Jurzykowski Foundation. On top of this, professor Kołakowski is a member of numerous world-ranking institutions and academies, including the International Institute of Philosophy, the British Academy, the American Academy of Science and Art, Academia Scientiarum et Artium Europaea, and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Professor Kołakowski is a world-renowned

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scholar and an eminent authority in his field. His works, written in several languages and translated into more, today belong to the canon of contemporary philosophy, humanities and essayism. Among the renowned European and North American academic centres in which professor Kołakowski has lectured and worked are Berkeley University in California, Mc Gill University in Montreal, the University of Chicago, Yale University in New Haven, and, last but not least, the University of Oxford, where he settled down as a Senior Research Fellow at the prestigious All Souls’ College. In recognition of his outstanding work, professor Kołakowski has also been awarded honorary doctorates from numerous foreign—and, over the past fifteen years, also Polish—universities (in Poland he has received honoris causa Ph.Ds from the universities of Łódź, Gdańsk, Wrocław and Szczecin). Today, we join the broad and eminent circle of institutions which have had the honour of distinguishing professor Kołakowski. However, today’s occasion is not merely another in the long line of honours, which over the past years have been bestowed on him in Poland and worldwide. In this case, the University of Warsaw is in a special position, being the only college that cannot grant Leszek Kołakowski the highest of all academic distinctions—an honorary doctorate— since it was here that, over half a century ago, he received his regular Ph.D. To have bred such an eminent scholar is doubtless a cause for pride—but also a severe restriction—on Kołakowski’s Alma Mater. As his mother school, the University of Warsaw cannot distinguish the professor with an honoris causa diploma, only ceremoniously “renew” his original Ph.D. This, however, is in itself no small honour as doctorates can be renewed only after fifty years. While naturally limiting the number of candidates, this rule also makes such a distinction a just reward for mature creativity and a worthy crowning of a lifetime’s achievements. On December 29, 1953 the Council of the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Warsaw granted Leszek Kołakowski a doctorate in philosophy for a dissertation entitled, Spinoza’s Teachings on the Liberation of Humanity. His doctoral tutor was professor Adam Schaff, the dissertation was reviewed by professors Maria Ossowska and Tadeusz Kroński. Today’s ceremony of renewing professor Kołakowski’s doctorate is our way of expressing our heartfelt admiration for his work. Indeed, professor Kołakowski is in a sense “ours”, having spent at least a decade of the past 50 years here at the University of Warsaw. Far from settling in as just another staffer, he soon became a very active member of our academic community—and one of the University’s most popular lecturers. At the time, he was on the staff of the Philosophy Faculty, where he quickly and brilliantly rose from assistant lecturer to a professorship, eventually taking over the History of Modern Philosophy Unit, where, 40 years ago, I myself had the honour of making my first academic and teaching steps under his wings. I need not remind how greatly professor Kołakowski contributed to our faculty’s image in its golden years at the turn of the 1950s and 60s. Those who had the good fortune to study philosophy at the University of Warsaw at the time—and I see quite a few such persons among the professors,

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deans and Senators here with us tonight—will quite certainly never forget that excellent school of thought—a school, in which professor Leszek Kołakowski was one of the foremost teachers. The professor taught philosophy in the best of all possible ways—by consistently practicing it himself. His lectures and seminars always drew crowds—students as well as younger staffers, including quite a few from other faculties. They came not only to learn from his erudition, but also to participate in serious philosophical reflection about the condition of the human world. Leszek Kołakowski taught us not only how to study philosophy, but also—and perhaps most importantly—how to understand it. He knew how to inspire us with his deep love of the intellectual beauty inherent in great human thought— and how to feed our doubts and force us to criticial reflection on seemingly obvious matters. Leszek Kołakowski also showed himself to be a masterful writer (a talent even good teachers often lack), his numerous publications proving to be true intellectual milestones which further strengthened his position as a philosophical authority. Those years saw the birth of his best-known works, today counted among the classics not only of the “Warsaw history of ideas school” which he cofounded and illustriously represented, but of Polish philosophy and human studies in general. Leszek Kołakowski’s writings are the works of a true scholar in the finest sense of the word, impressively combining a philosopher’s indepth knowledge with the research zeal of a historian of ideas and culture theoretician. Most mentionsworthy among Kołakowski’s works is the excellent monographic study, Individual and Infinity. Freedom and Antinomies of Freedom in the Philosophy of Spinoza. This 1958-published treatise crowned years of indepth study of Spinoza, who was his first intellectual passion and doctoral subject. In the book, Kołakowski revealed the many levels of Spinoza’s philosophy and the conflict between its humanistic defense of the individual’s universal emancipation and simultaneous quest for intellectual union with a well-ordered, infinite Absolute. Individual and Infinity not only opened new, broad horizons before Polish philosophy and social thought, but also set very high literary standards for authors. Kołakowski fully lived up to these standards in everything he wrote and published, including his translations and editing work on foreign material. Simultaneously to his Spinoza studies, he published Polish translations of the philosopher’s works from Latin and Dutch. First to appear was the standard treatise The Ethics (in a re-edited translation by Ignacy Myślicki), followed in the 1960s by Letters and the important Early Works (translated and extensively commented by Kołakowski himself). It was also Spinoza and his times that inspired Kołakowski’s interest in another of his major fields—17th-century philosophy and religious-moral culture. This too is the subject of the second major work written in his years at the University of Warsaw —the 1965-published Religious Consciousness and Ecclesiastic Bond. This extensive volume, subtitled “a study of 17th-century nondenominational Christianity”, is doubtless one of Leszek Kołakowski’s most important and most interesting works. Its focus is on selected religious

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doctrines from the time of the so-called second reformation, which the author subjects to a penetrating and innovative analysis, once more proving his mastery and skillfullness as a historian of ideas. The book, however, is not purely historical, its main question—about the phenomenon of religion and religiousness, their essence, and their place in the human world—being in fact strictly philosophical. Basing his analysis on the frequent discord between personal encounters with the transcendental Absolute (religious awareness) and the collective institutionalized rites of religious communities (church bonds), Kołakowski developed an original and useful interpretation of religion, in which he reached far beyond his source material and contributed greatly to the development of modern-day religious and cultural philosophy theory. Professor Kołakowski successfully tied in his studies of 17th-century philosophy and religion with his teaching work. Always discussed at his immensely popular and well-frequented 1960s lectures at the Philosophy Faculty were the metaphysical, moral, and even theological aspects of the fundamental debate around faith, reason, nature, grace, theodicy, evil, and human freedoms and responsibilities. In 17th-Century Philosophy, an excellent anthology specially compiled for academic use, he aptly introduced generations of philosophy students to Christianity’s paradoxes and dramatic turns at the outset of the modern era. His lectures and publications ranged from studies of the German and Dutch Reformation to Descartes, Pascal, France’s Jansenists, and the philosophies, religions, and cultures of baroque Europe. Simultaneously, however, Kołakowski devoted increasing time to another major trend in modern European philosophy: the intellectual and reason-based search for the philosophical essence, source and origin of human knowledge undertaken by diverse naturalistic-positivistic schools. This was also the subject of one of his best books, Positivist Philosophy from Hume to the Vienna Circle (1966). Here Kołakowski combined a seasoned historian’s perceptiveness and an eminent philosopher’s novatory vision into a historical synthesis of the main trends and theories in positivistic philosophy from its medieval and earlymodern roots (especially Hume), through 19th-century classics like Comte, Mill, Bernard, Renan and Spencer and the modernistic “second positivism” (empirical criticism, conventionalism, pragmatism), to the “logical positivism” of the Vienna Circle (in Poland also known as neopositivism). The book is rich in facts, which the author subjects to indepth and critical analysis and truly hermeneutical interpretations worthy of none but the finest philosophical mind. Professor Kołakowski’s theoretical and critical debate with the positivistic tradition constituted a part of his broader and more fundamental confrontation with the philosophical aspects of contemporary reality’s cognitive experiences and practical/ethical challenges. The main points in this confrontation are outlined in the 1967 Kultura i fetysze1, the last book Kołakowski published in Poland. Amongst various essays and studies the book contained texts which deeply and lastingly influenced Polish philosophy and human sciences in the 1

Literally Culture and Fetish, English translation as either Toward a Marxist Humanism or Marxism and Beyond — editor’s note.

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latter half of the 20th century, like Karl Marx and the Classical Definition of Truth; Cogito, Historical Materialism, and Expressive Personality Interpretations; Ethics without a Moral Code; and Religious Symbols and Humanistic Culture. The thoughts contained therein clearly led towards the all-embracing diagnosis of modern culture’s inner conflicts and tensions, which Kołakowski so aptly described in his work The Presence of Myth (written and sent to print in Warsaw in the mid-1960s but actually brought out by the Paris-based Literary Institute in 1972). Kołakowski expounded and developed his culture diagnosis in his 1970s and 1980s writings, which included such universally-known classics as the threevolume Main Currents of Marxism (1976–78), books on Husserl (1975) and Bergson (1985), and the much-publicized works on the philosophical problems inherent in religion (Religion. If There Is No God, 1982) and metaphysics (Metaphysical Horror, 1988). This part of his work, however, saw light of day at a considerable distance from Warsaw and Poland, during the years of professor Kołakowski’s exile, forced by the shameful March, 1968 decision to remove him and five other eminent professors from the University of Warsaw. This move, which gave the beginning to an unprecedented countrywide purge of the academic milieu, was authored and brutally executed by the then government, without the University’s consent and against its will. The whole of the University of Warsaw protested, most notably our faculty, which was among the victims of these repressions. In effect, Leszek Kołakowski disappeared from our midst for two decades. His university, however, although itself in need of recovery from those years of dishonour and shame, did not forget what it owed to him. Leszek Kołakowski also remained in the grateful memory of Polish philosophy, science and culture. We read the works he published in the west, frequently in Polish translation in émigré periodicals, later in Polish underground materials, which, although illegal, were sprouting up all over the country. I am sure, many here remember that already in the mid-1980s students and university staff could purchase foreign or illicit editions of almost all Kołakowski’s titles in the University of Warsaw inner courtyard, where the infamous “March events” started in 1968. These texts were discussed in classes, lectures, seminars and open sessions in our Institute of Philosophy—and, as far as I know, in other academic schools in Poland. They also frequently provided material for MA and Ph.D. dissertations. Therefore, when professor Kołakowski was allowed to return to Poland after 1989, Polish philosophy, science and culture were ready to give him a fitting welcome. The early 1990s saw not only the publication of his books by leading Polish publishers, but also the appearance of a broad selection of studies on his philosophy and lifework. Today, there are well over two hundred titles on Kołakowski, with further works clamouring for print. Among them are short articles and essays as well as indepth studies and extensive monographies—and I am (somewhat selfishly but justifiably) proud to say that many recall the

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importance of Kołakowski’s years at the Univeristy of Warsaw for his later work as scholar and teacher. In this way, dear professor and “renewed” doctor, you have with your own example uncovered for us one of those unique paradoxes of human life, thought and deed in the world of culture and history which you have always pursued with such determination in your lectures and books. The human being as a subject of humanity’s eternal and restless search for philosophical and scientific answers can find true fulfilment only when his thoughts leave him to become a meaningful object for others. Hence, a true creator of culture must accept the fact that his work itself constitutes one of the many important products of culture, experienced and absorbed “objectively” by the outside world. And, although we do understand the existential and mental inconveniences this may at times mean for the author, we beg you, professor, to allow us to supplement our sincere congratulations with best wishes of more long years of productive work—also in the name of Your now so “objectivized” presence in contemporary Polish philosophy and culture. Translated by Maciej Bańkowski

On 10 February 2006 Friedrich Wilhelm University in Bonn saw the ceremony of granting the honorary doctorate title to Professor Marek J. Siemek from the University of Warsaw, Poland. The event was considered the more significant because it was the first doctorate from a German university for a Polish philosopher. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Marek J. Siemek, born in 1942; Professor of Warsaw University. Major publications: Fryderyk Schiller, Warszawa 1970; Idea transcendentalizmu u Fichtego i Kanta, Warszawa 1977 (German edition: Die Idee des Transzendentalismus bei Fichte und Kant, Felix Meiner Verlag, Hamburg 1984); Filozofia, dialektyka, rzeczywistość [Philosophy, dialectics, reality], Warszawa 1982; W kręgu filozofów [In the circle of philosophers], Warszawa 1984; Hegel i filozofia [Hegel and philosophy], Warszawa 1998; Demokratie und Philosophie. Die Antike und das politische Ethos des europäischen Denkens, ZEI, Bonn 1999; Vernunft und Intersubjektivität. Zur philosophisch-politischen Identität der europäischen Moderne, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 2000 (pol. Wolność, rozum, intersubiektywność [Freedom, wisdom, intersubjectivity]), Warszawa 2002); Von Marx zu Hegel, Verlag Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2002. Marek Siemek died in 2011.

Karol Toeplitz

A FAREWELL TO PROFESSOR LESZEK KOŁAKOWSKI (1927–2009) ABSTRACT The author presents Leszek Kołakowski from the perspective of his private acquaintanceship, lasting for about 47 years, as a witty man and a workaholic. L. Kołakowski never formed a classic “school”, but there is something all his disciples share: a thesis, key to understanding his ideas, which holds that “THERE IS MORE THAN ONE CORRECT OPINION IN THE HUMANITIES”, i.e. we will ALWAYS have opinions for and against, which goes against any dogmatism, wherever it may appear; this also bears consequences in diagnosing the socio-political reality past and present.

Writing this text does not come easy to me. It is not going to be a discussion of Professor, Leszek Kołakowski’s works. Instead, I set out to give a personal account of those years of mutual contact. My acquaintance with Leszek lasted for 47 years, it began in 1962. I do not call him by his first name simply because it is customary in Poland to do so upon a person’s death; in fact, he suggested that we should come to first-name terms in the late 1970s, and I honestly do not know how I deserved that. Later, he called me an “old friend”. I was one of the five doctors the Master had supervised; I have called him Master for decades. We have been scattered throughout Poland: Warszawa, Łódź, Poznań, Kraków and Sopot; the five of us—today holding the title professor ordinarius—have never met in one place and at the same time, not even at the burial... But there is “something” that creates a close tie between us, also comprising a great number of other people who own up to being (rather than having been) his disciples. Unlike Plato or Aristotle, Leszek did not create a classical philosophical school … and yet he gave us the sort of guidance and taught us the kind of principles that allow us to say of ourselves we are “Leszek’s”. [In our days, this phrase will particularly come to mean more than it used to, and we—a large group of people—will be recognizable]. This was expressed by e.g. Barbara Labuda in 1997 when, representing President Aleksander Kwaśniewski in conferring upon Leszek an honorary doctorate of Gdansk University, which coincided with his birthday, following the President’s speech, she made her own address: “I came down here from Warsaw to pay back this debt on behalf of the cosmopolitan liberal inteligentsia, who opposed totalitarianism and for whom you were the Master … Your behavior, reasoning, as well as intelligence, and wit—were constitutive of my life path, too. I belonged to the generation of those young rebels who organized protest demonstrations at Poznań University. I am paying a debt—a karmic one, one might say—I have incurred with You.”

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There are uncountable examples of statements and attitudes of this kind not only in Poland but across the civilized world, as well. Why do I write about the world? Is it justified? Among a plethora of awards, the rationale for the Italian Ninio of 1997 deserves a special mention: “to the master of our day, for the originality that manifested itself in an opposition to any dogmatism (!), totalitarianism and in solidarity with those who suffer physically and morally. (!)” Sapienti sat. In reviewing the Gdansk honorary doctorate, Father Józef Tischner, who was being operated on the same day in Krakow, wrote: “Leszek Kołakowski’s liberalism cannot and will not be liberalism without values. If it is of value to him, it is just because freedom enables man to make choices between different values, try and implement them and become more human in this process.” Thus, Kołakowski was no relativist. Quite often he indicates what should not rather than what should be done. In one imperative he appeared consistent, though: “try not to do evil, do not harm others!” He was not (alas, from now on we will be using the past tense) indulgent towards totalitarian concepts: he exposed the lies of the ideology that made totalitarianism legitimate, in which he offered a form of “katharsis for enslaved minds”. Kołakowski was one of the critics of the criminal system, and was among its annihilators. True, before Leszek started teaching freedom, he had to learn it. He initiated the process when in Moscow, and summed it up in saying “Heresies originate in party schools and monasteries”, and “heretics are more dangerous for a doctrine than its overt enemies”. No comment! What is it then that brings together him, the five PhD holders he supervised and the great number of educated people worldwide? There is no doubt that it was honesty to himself and to others, scholarly, theoretical and—notably— practical reliability, and finally a continuous strife for truth. Like Lessing and Kierkegaard, he believed that if God held the truth in his right hand, and in his left the pursuit of truth, he would not hesitate to turn to his left. Understandably, Leszek fought dogmatism. Nonetheless, we find a number of universal themes in Leszek’s ideas, even if they do not form any coherent theory. May I point to one such theme: in his honorary doctor lecture in Gdansk, he made a reference to the Epistle to the Romans to commend cosmopolitanism: “There is no incurable incongruity between a cosmopolitan attitude where it is has a decent rationale and an attachment to one’s own national heritage. We need powerful cosmopolitan spiritual forces to muzzle manifestations of ethnic fanaticism... The ideas of culture closed in a national cage, as well as ideas of economic autarchy are an infallible recipe for national suicide...” the Professor concluded his lecture. Another thing that characterized the Professor was his struggle to defend individual dignity. Still before, but congenially with, Gaudium et Spes, he wrote that untrue or undue statements need to be fought but the dignity of the critic, his person, must be respected. Like Kant, Kołakowski assigned supremacy to practical rather than to theoretical thinking, as well as an uncompromising intellectual honesty which bent

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to no consequences, not even to those that might put him at risk in everyday life. No power could remain idle when criticized by someone who spared no effort to condemn anything that went against individual freedom and dignity. Not infrequently, his honesty and intellectual reliability enabled him to abandon once-professed ideas which, upon a more careful analysis, failed to withstand criticism. This was always a proof of exceptional courage. He was an unquestionable authority for many intellectuals, for a wide circle of educated people worldwide, as is evidenced by the numerous academic distinctions conferred upon him. * This text is not supposed to be scholarly, nor does it seek to synthesize the output of the deceased. That would take volumes. Also, it is not easy to interpret the Professor. The intrinsic meaningfulness of his thinking abhors an ultimate synthesis. His thought balanced between extremes. He was a dialectic philosopher who experienced a dramatic crack in our nature. In Józef Tischner’s opinion (and they knew each other well), Leszek proposed “understanding without indulgence”. Indulgence would be tantamount to a lack of rational criticism, and a lack of understanding would mean ignorance of the complex fate of man. In many ways the Professor was a pioneer; he was a Pole and a defender of the tradition of European culture. His whole writing is a search for perils for culture, but he forever remained a philosopher, a historian of ideas, the most profound and comprehensive critic of Marxism, an author of tales, a priest looking for transcendence or a learned (!) jester exposing any dogmatism at its very core. He was fascinated by poetry, which he demonstrated in a booklet, a collection of the poems he deemed most precious and corresponding with his personality. On one occasion he tried to write a poem himself, but he backed off as he was facing the challenge of none other than Schopenhauer. It would be easier to say what the Master did not do. Indeed, from the very beginning on, he was interested in religion. Here, too, he evolved from his Notes on the Current Counter-reformation as far as accepting the meaning of Christianity for the Mediterranean culture. His personal attitude to faith is another issue—Kołakowski’s religiosity can be a deterrent. He distinguishes between God and gods (in any meaning of the term), the latter of which he mercilessly attacks. He does not speak about God: the Divine is supra rationem and he was much closer to negative theology. The institutional side of religion was on numerous occasions harshly criticized in his writings on historical grounds, be it just owing to the history of Europe. He represented a non-denominational religiosity, perhaps even a non-denominational Christianity, which he studied and published on in the early 1960s. He never escaped difficult questions, although he did ignore some; he was a sceptic and an ironist—he was a thinker who brought up aporia or stated their existence. Even though I did not set out to speak about his intellectual output, and did focus on a personal recollection instead, an outcome of close to 50 years of ac-

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quaintance and then friendship, I simply could not fail to mention the values he professed. Our fully-fledged acquaintanceship (and in connection with Kierkegaard) resulted from a meeting at a public lecture at Warsaw’s MKPiK which the Philosopher dedicated to the great Dane. I had just completed reading Fear and Trembling, and it was the book the thinker devoted his discourse to. I had a 25page typescript with me, which I handed to the Professor. We arranged for a phone call. Two days later, Kołakowski “dragged” me out of bed in the heart of night and in mincing words, he said more or less this: “the text calls for some far-reaching alterations; it is not fit for printing. Do work on the problem, but there is no one in Poland who deals with the “Dane” except J. Iwaszkiewicz...” I hinted to the Professor that he should simply dump the text. “No, if your interests are in this direction, please, keep working on it”, I heard him say. As we can see, the Professor could just as gracefully discourage one from working as he could encourage one. Things then accelerated. We arranged that I should send my text to the Professor bit by bit, and I would then go to the Professor’s place in Senatorska Street after PAN science academy seminars, conducted by Prof. B. Baczko and attended by the high life of the Polish humanities. There we would discuss the texts submitted. Once I took the liberty to disagree with the Professor’s opinion and anxiously awaited his reaction. He read the passage in question once more and—my heart trembling in waiting—I heard: this rationale is acceptable because there is more than one correct opinion in humanities. I sighed with relief. I believe the thought became Kołakowski’s intellectual motto, one he never dropped. This explains the openness of his thoughts and the respect he felt for a justified dissenting opinion, from which he endeavored to extract the values he considered precious and true. Contrary to a belief shared by some, and as I pointed before, he was no relativist; at best he made relative those values which could aspire to the rank of unshakable truths irrespective of the plane on which they appeared. Then he contrasted them with other arguments, convinced there are not only pros—there are cons, too. However, the point was not to demonstrate an equivalence of judgments. Leszek’s creed implied that our choices are made on the basis of incomplete knowledge, which means that in the volitional sphere they must be accompanied by risks, while in the cognitive one—by uncertainty. The results of the choices will thus be both predictable and unpredictable, expected and unexpected, positive and negative in their consequences, which means that there are no absolutely good choices, i.e. ones that end up in solely positive results. In other words, a choice of one value must be made at the expense of another. Such an attitude could not have been liked by any of those who had a deep conviction that only they knew the truth and were right, who thought only they knew what should be chosen and in what way. In intellectual terms, Kołakowski must have had both friends and foes. The mere fact of the Mediterranean culture being rooted in a JudeoChristian tradition, which was fundamental for the Professor, contradicts the claim of his ideas being relative. In my lectures I often make use of an example

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that comes from my conversations with the Master. “A person who hardly knows anything about Christianity, especially Roman Catholicism, will never understand much of Hamlet, who—seeing the murderer of his father praying at an altar, which constitutes a unique chance to kill him—suddenly puts his sword down and goes away.” How hard-working the Professor was may be illustrated by the following episode. It may have been around May, 1965. The heat in Warsaw was tremendous. Whoever could, fled to the country side, and when I came to the Professor’s home, he asked me to put some wet sheets on the window, which would enable him to continue his reading. What was he reading? Works by Church Fathers in their original versions... At that time he taught Latin translation classes at the department; I may be wrong, but that could have been some passages from St. Anselm which students translated with the Professor throughout the term and where they recuperated the nuances of medieval thought from. On a simple example he proved that one single sentence could be translated in a number of ways depending on the context; those might entail a number of theoretical and practical consequences. He demonstrated those latter ones time and again. On one occasion he indicated a wrong translation of the Bible by St. Augustine, which justified his concept of original sin, or actually created it, and which involved tragic practical consequences for Western Christianity. One meeting resulted in convincing me to undertake a translation of Kierkegaard from the original. Until then I had read the Dane in English and German; the Professor was prophetic (this would come true) when convincing me that I should learn Danish. I remember his words: “This could turn out useful”. One effect of this conversation was putting me in touch with Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, as a result of which, paid by the Polish Writers’ Union [ZLP], I began visiting Copenhagen, first to learn the language and then to read “the recluse of the North” in the original. The President of the Writers was at that time translating Fear and Trembling from the original and then he submitted it to the Professor to review it. He asked me for my opinion on how faithful the translation was; under translation was another text, a philosophical treaty The Sickness unto Death. I appraised it along with my conscience: “In literary terms the translation is beautiful, but I would change a lot in terms of the substance.” The worried Professor wondered how he should convey that to the great Iwaszkiewicz straightforwardly. I suggested that he simply say it was my opinion. This was what would happen in the end, and for some time my contacts with the Writer ceased (history would confirm that particularly the translation of The Sickness unto Death had been carried out with no philosophical spark, as seen in the conference held by the PAT Theological University of Krakow on the 150th anniversary of the Copenhagen thinker’s death). Another visit, with the then supervisor of my doctoral thesis, was taking longer than usual; about 10 PM Tamara, the Professor’s wife, entered the room. I thought I had been given to understand that it was time to leave. No way. Asked when my next train to Sopot was scheduled for, I said it was 6:30 AM. “Well, we have the whole night, then”, I heard him say. To the discontent of the family, we

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worked the night through until it was 5 AM. The topic was the Hegelian Left. We had both read Karl Löwith From Hegel to Nietzsche. The Professor shocked me: not only had he contemplated the lengthy volume through and through, but he also reached out to the sources. He rattled off with quotes from Logische Untersuchungen by Trendelenburg (beside Jan Garewicz, he was the only contemporary philosopher who knew this work). So was the case with the writings by the Bauer brothers. I was always greatly impressed by Kołakowski’s unbelievable memory: As late as in 21th century he remembered our difference of opinion on some sections of the doctorate from 40 years before! I think I was not the only one who was struck by that phenomenon. I wish I had been able to record that night’s dissertations by the Master. Or maybe … this recording does exist; there was a post office under the Kołakowskis’ home, and Professor was under surveillance at the time following Gomułka calling him a revisionist and his subsequent expulsion from the party [one reason being his “opinion on the notion of information,” virtually unknown in Poland and worth popularizing, prepared by the Professor and approved by Prof. M. Ossowska and Prof. T. Kotarbiński (Sep. 1965) as an expert analysis related to the trial of J. Kuroń and K. Modzelewski; the Author investigates, in his unique manner, the interrelationships between facts, judgments, ideas and interpretations]. Was this discourse recorded in the end, perhaps? That would be an invaluable contribution to the history of philosophy, if found. The post office was one of the reasons why politics was practically never discussed in the apartment. The visit had one more funny aspect. When I tried to leave after 10, I explained I had not slept the previous night. The Professor asked, not without irony, “Who was the beauty that did not let you sleep? Was it worth it, at least?” A sense of humor was not alien to the Professor. It was so human... When, after nine months, I submitted my final doctoral thesis to the Professor, he summed it up briefly: “After 9 months children are born”. We sat down and the Professor sketched a new plan of the dissertation; I wrote it in the following 2 years. A few more facts. At the Philosophy Department of Warsaw University, there were several people standing around the Professor: Adam Sikora, Andrzej Kasia were there for sure. I do not remember the fourth one. The Master said that the Office of Censorship, UKPPiW, had records filed for each name or title “and you, gentlemen, will need to have texts published. Because there are no professional philosophers there or the employees suffer from overwork, there is an easy way of getting round their possible negative opinion: at the beginning or an end of the publication there should be a reference to some of the classics of the official ideology, and this should make their alertness grow dull”. This is what we did, and it hardly affected the quality of the papers. Apparently, even Kołakowski’s tales or biblical stories could have proved dangerous for the system, as evidenced by his “Lot’s Wife or the Charms of the Past” [Żona Lota, czyli uroki przeszłości] not making it through censorship. This is what the times were like, those were the tricks one needed to play, quite incomprehensible for today’s generation.

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A meeting in a similar company resulted in one more suggestion by the Master. After the publication of a specialized text in the PAN annals, the Professor asked, “How many have read these expositions? Ten, perhaps? How many have drawn scientifically significant conclusions? Five, six? Gentlemen, you should take after Socrates and go to the street with your esoteric knowledge so that it will become exoteric. Write popular science, stories or even tales...” And so it happened. Adam Sikora wrote texts characterizing individual philosophers to “Radar” (they lost no appeal and recently they were republished), Andrzej Kasia “accessibly” fought the devil, whereas the undersigned has written a great number of commentaries, mostly of the Bible, from the perspective of ethics and the philosophy of religion. On Leszek’s 80th anniversary I published a book dedicated to him: He/u/resies or the Proto-ancient Present; to Leszek Kołakowski on his 80th Birthday, which was to some extent a collection of scattered texts. I think Leszek was glad to see his suggestion implemented by us all. Did he not provide countless examples of popularizing most difficult philosophical and existential issues in his TV lectures? The reader will not miss them now that they have been published e.g. Minilectures on Maxiquestions [Miniwykłady o maksisprawach]. In the mid-1970s I was abroad gathering materials for my habilitation when there came a proposal from Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz and PWN Publishing to translate Either/Or with him. I did not know what to do and asked the Professor for advice. It was my understanding that he would offer me an existential reply in line with his approach to many an issue: please decide for yourself, considering a number of possibilities, anticipating the consequences of the choice and weighing the pros and cons. He surprised me. I was given a series of very specific suggestions. To reconstruct it from memory: from Iwaszkiewicz you will learn a great deal in terms of literary techniques, you will enter the biggest scholarly publishing house in Poland, and this in a good company, which will pave the way for further publications there; and the family will benefit materially. However, you will need to postpone your habilitation.” Most importantly, “I think any philosopher or humanist aspiring to make a name for himself must translate at least one book; it is translation work that opens the depth of the author’s thinking, points to the many variants of understanding and interpretation, forces extreme precision of thought: it is a great school of philosophical thinking.” Each of the points He made proved true. The effect of the suggestions is known: Either/Or came out... One more, very personal, remark in this context. It happened on a number of everyday occasions that I came to wonder what Leszek would advise me to do. It was a result of a very intimate contact with the Master. As someone put it, He was a genius of friendship and you could rely on him. He was this kind of “trustworthy guardian”. Is it not proof of the greatest trust to ask a friend for advice, as if telepathically, aware of it being somewhat irrational? Leszek’s 70th birthday was an opportunity to award him an honorary doctorate of Gdańsk University. The municipal and provincial authorities received Leszek and His Wife in a truly regal manner. He was accommodated in a Sopot

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manor that hosted state leaders, including the crowned ones. Our families became friends, and the Professor demonstrated particular courtesy to our daughter Violetta, on whose head he would often put his world-famous hat. That was an extremely pleasant gesture. His visit to the University resulted in another significant event. I asked Minister Labuda about a possibility of reinstating Leszek in the capacity of Professor at Warsaw University. Her surprise was great: how could it be that this had not occurred to any of the university authorities after 1989? Leszek was to celebrate his birthday in two days and there was no chance to set the move in course. But the idea did not die. A few days later the Minister, acting on behalf of President Aleksander Kwaśniewski, asked me if the Professor would accept the Order of the White Eagle. I immediately contacted Leszek and he, in his usual modesty, wondered whether he deserved such a distinction; “there are people who deserve it more”, etc. In the end he gave in to the idea. We know the rest. At the turn of 1988 I wrote a column that initially nobody wanted to publish, “A Letter to my Emigrant Friend”. The leading idea was: “come back, this is not exactly a desert here”. Readers instantly realized the addressee was Leszek Kołakowski. In the text he was identifiable e.g. in that during official ceremonies, the Master—surrounded by disciples (not necessarily collaborators)— started some thought, and each of the companions would complete the story until it came back to Leszek. He would then sit down upon it at home and create some Tales from the Kingdom of Lailonia. People called from all across Poland to ask if Kołakowski was coming back. Is there a university brave enough to employ him, etc.? Finally, Wrocław University, where I completed my habilitation and professorship, also upon the review by Leszek, approached me about reviewing the honorary doctorate of my teacher. On the one hand it was an honor but, on the other hand, how could I write one: it is so hard to fathom the complexity of his output, not to mention its reception! I took pains for some time to complete it; the motto was THERE IS MORE THAN ONE CORRECT OPINION IN THE HUMANITIES, with all the possible conclusions that follow; i.e. in all questions they are arguments pro and contra. I included another observation: the Doctorate Candidate was a demon for work. Literally: “he was a workaholic”, which the Master later reacted to by saying, “My friend overdid, as usual”. Thanking all those who contributed to having the honorary doctorate conferred upon him, he said in a characteristic manner: “I did not read the reviews, but judging from the result, they must have been written in the spirit of friendship and cronyism.” It is a fact, and that too made its way to the review, that he had an incredible gift for making a presentation on a recently assigned topic, like King Midas, who turned everything he touched into gold: each subject matter evoked a deep reflection with Professor Kołakowski, without a recourse to notes, systematic points or any loose sheets of paper. This was his normal practice. He would walk in the auditorium and gave fantastic lectures. He was helped by his phenomenal memory, a skill of eidetic thinking and an unbelievable ability to synthesize.

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Prof. Leszek Kołakowski participated in all fundamental changes of modernity and the world, including the ones that took place in Poland, far away though he may have been. These included the changes in the fields of the spirit: political, economic, cultural, religious, etc. It was his tremendous erudition that helped him voice his opinion on the fundamental issues of the day. He was (alas, the past tense again) a classical example of open humanism, sensitive to people who have been wronged, to some basic questions people ask themselves. A characteristic of Leszek’s thinking, regardless of whether it was a scholarly treatise or another tale, was asking readers a lot of questions, forcing them to undertake an effort of independent (!) thinking, and he did not deem it right to give answers. Was he always consistent? Was his book In Praise of Inconsistency, accidental? No, it was one of the aspects of this ingenious thinker’s charm. Reviewing the accomplishments of the Master at Wrocław University, I expressed a thought that has not become flesh, and so may I repeat it: THE TIME HAS COME TO PUBLISH OPERA OMNIA by Leszek Kołakowski. We owe it not only to him, but to the entire Polish and global culture. It is not going to be an easy task. The monograph by Father J.A. Kłoczowski discussing Kołakowski’s ideas, More than a Myth... indicates more that 350 texts. A number of years passed since in this seminal Oxford Philosopher’s life, and even the items published in the book do not include all publications scattered all over the world. Concluding the recollections, obviously incomplete, I should like to stop over a significant and complicated problem: Leszek’s personal approach to faith—not to Christianity, which I have sketched above and for which there is a comprehensive literature. Leszek’s personal attitude to faith was greatly influenced by his thorough knowledge of the various doctrines of Christianity, chiefly Latin, the differences within it, disputes that were often bloodily settled, current discussions related to e.g. the increasing secularization processes, and finally his knowledge of Buddhist and Hindu texts. We can find out about that when we read Religion. If There Is No God. He did not limit himself to Christianity: religions of the East were His world, too. In one of his interviews he said “If someone complains that the book does not conclude with a clear declaration, they must bear in mind it was written by a philosopher. Let the human spiritual need speak with the language of religious texts.” Different ones, I should add as a side note to the book. In an old essay concerning Jesus—probably coming from the 1960s—he wrote, “the personality and the teachings of Jesus Christ cannot be eliminated from our culture or declared invalid if the culture is to exist and continue to be created”. This is some kind of macro plan by Leszek, impersonal but affecting the author of these words. Asked outright about his own Christian faith, he responded in a book-length interview, “I side with Christianity, but I am not its warlike ally; also I do not partake of its liturgy, and nor do I confess my sins. I do appreciate the institution of confession as I deem it important that people should confront their sinfulness.” He went on to say, “In some general sense I cannot define, I am attached to the Christian tradition, the great power of the Gospel, the New Testament.” One needs to know the precision of Leszek’s statements to realize it was not an answer to the question. Likewise, in an interview with Adam Michnik, he

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says in the end, “The wisdom of the Bible is absolutely remarkable; whenever I read the Book of Job, I am as astonished as I can be at how wise the people were such a long time ago.” This fascination with the Scripture considered revealed undoubtedly projected itself upon his personality. When in Religion. If There Is No God he analyzed the alternative—the world with or without God—he was quite unambiguously for God’s existence; more precisely, he writes about the usefulness of religion to people—they need it. But again, this is a macro plan. In it he spoke against a confessional exclusivity. In my opinion, he was more in favor of non-denominational outlooks (cf. Świadomość religijna i więź kościelna [Religious Consciousness and Church Bond], Erazm i jego Bóg [Erasmus and his God]), not only Christian, but above all those. When pressed against the wall by a friend, “Leszek, so is there God or not?” the Philosopher responded in a manner typical for his profession: “Yes, but … hush, you should not speak about it aloud.” In 2007, answering the question asked by Martin Jay, he said, “I treat Christianity seriously, but I am not a Catholic in the sense of belonging to the Church or the confession, even though I do feel … friends with Christianity.” This thought is no hindrance for some thinkers (Tony Judt) in classifying him a Catholic. Piotr Mucharski, in an interview published in the same “Tygodnik Powszechny” (no. 43 of 28 Oct., 2007) elicited this from Leszek: “I am no Catholic philosopher” (understandably: he was too skeptical, even though neither did he extol reason). Again, one needs to see a difference between a Catholic philosopher and a believer in that vein... Finally, when asked a specific question about his faith, he answered like a philosopher would, “God knows ...” Bishop Bronisław Dembowski, Leszek’s friend for years, when celebrating a mass in a church that had a rich history for the opposition, said that the Philosopher had never declared himself as a Christian, dismissed questions about his faith, but he had written much and well on religion, treating it as a foundation for culture and ethics. In conclusion of his sermon he quoted Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz: “May I ask God to accept the good that Leszek did.”... Leszek made us sad. Sadness, though, may either result from weak faith or from the fact that for some time we simply feel orphaned. There is some void, a silence when you would want him to keep speaking to us, to keep being. This is so with people who are dear to our hearts, this is what we clutch at most. We do not want to let him go. In some time, reading and immersing in his reflections, new horizons will open up and our perception of people and the universe will broaden to include the content we have not noticed before. His inspirations will enrich us, and sadness will be replaced by joy: such MAN was and lived among us! “Leszek, come back!” I wrote 20 years ago, “This is not exactly an (intellectual) desert here,” and it is also your achievement. He has returned, albeit not in the form we would have desired... the Heroes’ Hill in the Powązki Cemetery is no place where Leszek Kołakowski’s thought will rest in peace; it cannot. His ideas will hover high above the earth—above the ground where he was buried... Translated by Lesław Kawalec

A Farewell to Professor Leszek Kołakowski (1927–2009)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR — he is one of the five PhD holders whose theses were supervised by Leszek Kołakowski (his was entitled Wiara i wybór moralny u S. Kierkegaarda [Faith and Moral Choice in Kierkegaard’s Philosophy], 1967). Habilitation in 1983 from Wrocław University upon Egzystencjalizm jako zjawisko kulturowe [Existentialism as a Cultural Phenomenon]; in 1993 Professor, also at Wrocław University, upon authoring the study Nad Kierkegaardem i egzystencjalizmem [On Kierkegaard and Existentialism] (Warszawa: PWN 1989). Professor ordinarius since 1995 with reviews by Leszek Kołakowski, Janusz Kuczyński et al. Author and translator of 15 book-length publications, approx. 180 scholarly papers published in Poland, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark... Therein he gave lectures, usually in the languages of the hosts. He also published approx 250 popular science and literary texts as his 11-year-long contributions to a nationwide literary weekly. Upon his motion, the title of honorary doctor of Gdańsk University was conferred on Leszek Kołakowski; he was among reviewers (alongside R. Panasiuk) of a similar doctorate at Wrocław University. His Post mortem et in memoriam clearly implies that it was not just a scholarly bond, but one of friendship, which Leszek Kołakowski remarked on in one of his publications, too.

Jerzy Szacki

LESZEK KOŁAKOWSKI (1927–2009): REMEMBRANCES AND SOME COMMENTS ABSTRACT Author tells the story of his close and very long-lasting acquaintance with Leszek Kołakowski as well as commentates on his intellectual biography and achievements as political and literary essayist, philosopher, historian of ideas, and public figure. In particular, he describes in details the first half of Kołakowski’s life, namely the period when he made his long journey from being communist in his student years to becoming as a young scholar the leading figure of Marxist revisionism in the late fifties and, after a time, a principled critic of Marxism itself and a fervent anti-communist. In many respects, Kołakowski’s itinerary was not exceptional but it had at least two noteworthy characteristics. First, in opposition to quite a few other cases, his way away from communism turned out to be scholarly fruitful as it resulted in an uniquely in-depth historical research, covering the founders, the golden age and the breakdown of so called “scientific socialism” (his voluminous work Main Currents of Marxism remains one of the best and the most comprehensive monographs of the topic). Second, Kołakowski’s abandoning of his former Weltanschauung was followed by his discovery of religion as an extremely important part of human experience and sine qua non condition of the survival of civilization, permanently menaced by barbarians. However, it is to be doubt whether he may be considered as a convert or a religious thinker in the strict sense of the word since he believed in horrors of the absence of God rather than in the real presence of his in the world. As defender of transcendence and tradition, Kołakowski certainly became a kind of catholic-Christian without denomination but as a critical philosopher remained at the same time highly skeptical about everything. Dreaming of solid fundaments, he was all his life an uncompromising enemy of any fundamentalism. Being nostalgic about the Absolute, he was incurable anti-absolutist. Keywords: censorship; Christianity without denomination; communism; contemporary culture; democratic opposition in Poland; heresy; history of ideas; the left; Marxism; philosophy; religion; revisionism; Roman-Catholic Church; skepticism.

“To write about him is like making a public confession: such an important part of life has he become to his friends.” So many of my acquaintances could start their writing about Leszek Kołakowski from those words which I actually took from his own remembrance of Tadeusz Kroński (Kołakowski 1989, I, 194)! And it was not just the part they spent meeting him but also, unfortunately, the much longer part of their lives, lived out in a sense of a continuous spiritual communion and a constant curiosity: “How’s Leszek doing?” “What’s happening to Leszek?” or “What would Leszek say to it?” I was lucky to be able to meet him here and there and even spend a whole term with him at the All Souls College, Oxford, where he eventually settled down, but this did not diminish the sense of impoverishment I felt upon his emigration. His articles and books written abroad did reach Warsaw, but the

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written word could not replace his physical presence among us that was now gone, but which (like the former presence of some others, expelled around that time from the University of Warsaw following the events of 1968) had made us more self-demanding. The circulation of those books was limited and a generation of Polish intelligentsia was forming which knew Leszek Kołakowski just from passing mentions as even after the establishment of the alternative circulation some things were still either unavailable at all or inaccessible to many. However, there remained a number of individuals for whom Leszek Kołakowski’s ideas remained a vital point of reference rather than just a memory “(…) from a time so immemorial that”, as he wrote years after “one might suspect they never existed.” In the 1970s, owing to some of those people, he became a living legend of the democratic opposition which, however, without his inspiration and support, would not have become what it ended up. Following the end of the next decade, his rather frequent visits to Poland were truly triumphal comebacks. His first lecture for years at the University of Warsaw attracted huge crowds because in academic circles the name “Kołakowski” had gained some magnetism comparable to that of Czesław Miłosz (if we stick to prominent individuals having no backing in powerful institutions). He had become one of the most famous Poles and probably the only Polish professor in Polish history whom the most serious newspapers devoted firstpage editorials without arousing astonishment on the part of anyone who took interest in our most recent history and the contemporary history of European culture. We are speaking of columns other than expository of character flaws or scandals because, as in the case of Czesław Miłosz, there were some who only waited for a perfect occasion like that one, on which Kołakowski’s errors would be raised and condemned. Repulsed and baffled though I am by those people’s attitude, I am not going to go silent about those “sins” or deplorable errors, especially that he himself did not attempt to neglect or cover them up (cf. Kołakowski, I, 2007–2008). Moreover, the blunders committed at the outset of his intellectual biography allow us to understand almost half a century of its later part, to a large extent dedicated to, and affected by, amendment of those errors. It was about both getting fair and square with Marxism and Communism, which he initially believed in, but also a gradual refashioning of Christianity (and, more generally, religion) from something treated with open resentment, critical analysis or, at best, purely intellectual fascination, to perhaps the most important theme of his own philosophy, and—in some ways—its inspiration. I do not intend to dwell again upon the causes and circumstances of the grand illusion shared at the time by a large section of the European intellectuals, which he succumbed to as well. A library’s load has been written about that. He also spared no sharp criticism to it and looked for no easy excuses for being a believing Communist for a number of years after WWII and for seeing only a bright side in the Marxist doctrine.

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I did not know Leszek in his distant past while based in Łódź, when he was going through the most acute stage of his revolutionary disease whose symptoms he would later on so unmistakably diagnose. Neither did I know Leszek’s beginnings in Warsaw for, being a Social Sciences’ student, I rather seldom frequented philosophical seminars and lectures where his star was shining. When I first met him, what struck me was that he did not really match my representation of Communists, which I had at the time, having fallen into the Communist Party from the merging Polish Socialist Party and expecting nothing good from ex-ZWM and the former PPR members. He was still, indeed, a great hope of the Party, and gave good grounds to be perceived like one, but in the early 1950s it was evident that it was not the people like him who were setting the tune for the band. He distinguished himself from the rest of the activists with superior manners, education and logical culture and also with the language, in which, even if he spoke the same that the others did, you could see no traces of the newspeak that was getting so popular at that time. His impeccable Polish was a distinctive feature. Also, he always cared somewhat more than others about relevant argumentation which, as far as I remember, those more tough “comrades” complained about saying that he criticized ideological opponents rather than exposing them the Bolshevik way. The impression of Leszek’s difference got reinforced the more I got to know him and discovered that, among other things, he was endowed with an extraordinary sense of humor. This was an evident sign that one did not make a perfect Communist or an exemplary doctrinaire. A closer intimacy was facilitated by an imminent increase in a number of mutual acquaintances—an inevitable development at a university that at that time was much smaller than today. Another fact that helped us to get closer was my being recommended by my caring tutors to the famous “school of Janissaries”, i.e. the Institute of Social Sciences (INS, formerly Institute of Scientific Staff Training, IKKN) at the Central Committee of the communist party, where I started studying after I graduated from Social Sciences, just closed down, and where Leszek had started studying and working a little earlier and was by the time a highly prospective junior academic. Then we would live close together, the third of the triangle being Bronisław Geremek. That was no insignificant period as this was when my milieu and I were subjected to accelerated re-education, greatly affected by the author of What is Socialism? and The Death of Gods (Kołakowski 1989, II). The Institute, modeled after the Moscow Institute of Red Professorship, was a tool for an express refashioning of the more intelligent party apparatchiks into new-model scholars and making research hopefuls, who had started their academic career in a regular way, exemplary apparatchiks. The latter, young activists, had not yet been apprenticed and “tempered” enough, on account of which, as was said at the time, they were in danger of a disparity between scholarly development and psychological “maturation”, most important for the founders of the peculiar academy. The imbalance might lead to ideological instability and all sorts of divergence from the correct path. The History of Philosophy unit,

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chaired by Prof. Bronisław Baczko (later on to become an emigrant, like Leszek Kołakowski), and in some ways resting upon Leszek Kołakowski, turned out by some weird coincidence to be a bunch of the latter kind. Leszek may not have been an object of any particular care of his superiors at that time, but it was he that appeared to embody the disparity most completely. As a prospective scholar, he already knew a lot, having read, since an early age, plenty of books of a different kind and in various languages, little known to most, as if he had been John Stuart Mill of sorts; in his “political maturation” he had evidently come to a halt, though. Whatever the case may be, I do not remember him teaching our group anything but philosophy or keeping in motion the brain-washing-machine we were supposed to be in. I hardly knew his state of mind then, but I sort of felt how traumatic an experience a visit to the “brotherly” Moscow Institute must have been for him, like for a number of other teachers of ours, where it became clear what would befall us along the journey we had so recklessly embarked on. Marxism’s beginnings in the Polish People’s Republic regardless, it would have been hard to imagine those “elder brethren” for whom the basic scientific problem was usually how to quote someone, with the main source of world knowledge being the resolutions of the recent plenum of the Central Committee. In my recollections on what made me see in Leszek more than an ordinary “combatant on the scientific front”, and even begin to notice a contrast between him and a substantial part of the milieu we mixed in (and which could ever more clearly be seen on public occasions) at that time of mental barracking, I do not mean to diminish either his unquestionable membership in the formation to be later called the “spotty” or his decade-long commitment to a cause he would himself come to call wrong. Not at all. Be that as it may, it was his side those days, however detached from it he could have begun to feel. By that time, he had only plucked up enough courage to go silent in some situations, embarrassing for reasonable men, and to do mockery in a rather tiny circle of friends I was part of (at times and rather indirectly, as a rather good friend of Paweł Beylin, whom Leszek Kołakowski was very close to and who excelled in sowing the seeds of doubt and lacking earnestness, an attitude so desirable by the superiors). If one were to find elegant terms to call the then attitude of Leszek’s, probably the most adequate one would be “ironical conformity”, coined by Vladimir Jankélévitch (cf. Konermann 2009, 116), applied by him to the ancient cynicism. I was myself, despite a repeatedly felt discomfort, on the same side as Leszek, even if much further away in the background and with no idea for a change, which would soon occur to him. In those days, he had not yet got rid of the “rationalist” (as he liked to think about it) zeal, which pushed him to fight religion and the church in his youth; the fight could not have been just at that time even if he had been philosophically right. In 1955 (a year of political easing up), he published Szkice o filozofii katolickiej, which many would later rub their noses in. It was a book conceived from the spirit of the “bygone era” albeit far from ignorant or wrong in all its theses since the philosophy under fire was never one you could not but praise,

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and it did have a large number of proponents. He knew only too well it had epistemological origins and sought to answer questions that needed to be answered anyway. Whether, however, the book carried any relevant argumentation mattered little, as what it really signified was not a contribution to a philosophical debate but taking sides on the “ideological front” by aligning himself with the party which had the most powerful guns, still firing. Rightly ashamed not so long later, the author sentenced his literary debut to oblivion, even though the Catholic Christianity would certainly remain an extremely and continually important challenge for him, just to mention that the Bible, the masterpiece of world literature, was to him the most beautiful book ever. He did not cease to study religious literature, which he commenced from hostile positions, and the readings included an ever more specialist theological literature. Ever more often he would treat theology as a peculiar kind of answer to questions that were par excellence philosophical, with philosophy seeming less and less of a staunch opponent to theology. This is a different story, though, which I need not tell here for there is a far better narrator than I am—Father Jan Andrzej Kłoczowski—who, from philosophical positions of a theologian and a man of the Church, has traced Kołakowski’s ideas in these terms and arrived at an apparently paradoxical conclusion that the final effect can be called a “non-denominational Catholic Christianity” (Kłoczowski 1994, 2009). This conclusion seems right to me, but I would find it suitable to state it more emphatically that there was no religious conversion sensu stricto because what Leszek believed in was the imminent evil of the world without God, rather than God proper. Perhaps, he would have happily received “the grace of faith”, but he seemingly remained an unrepentant unbeliever. He did not doubt, however, that Christianity, with all its failings and limitations, not only remained a lasting foundation of our culture but an indispensable condition of its continuity as, like any other culture, it needs transcendence and tradition. Whatever our reason speaks against faith, it does not diminish its social and moral significance. If faith cannot be rationally justified—the worse for reason. In other words, there would have been no sophisticated faith in Kołakowski, supported in time with sentiments found in the depths of soul, without a sense that the contemporary world was facing barbarity that could not be confronted by making use of reason alone and upon a sole guidance from whatever was in line with a scientific methodology. Science is a great human achievement (Leszek hated its postmodernist condescending belittlement) but no “scientific outlook” is possible. He expressed it numerous times while debating both Marxism and Positivism, whose analysis, but also refutation, could be found in Positivist philosophy (1966). Therefore, he remained such a unique unbeliever, perplexed by a mere thought that religion might cease to exist. So much for Leszek Kołakowski’s “conversion”, which incidentally did not come about from day to day because before he drew near Catholic Christianity, he had been involved in some “playing with the devil” and then spun a yarn of “biblical stories” in Klucz [Key to Heaven] (Kołakowski 1964) “for reproof and

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warning”, which have been called “Voltairian” for a good reason. Then he moved towards an as of yet quite abstract reflection on the “presence of myth”. This pondering need not have led him to the destination he eventually arrived at; it could have stopped, say, around Eliade’s philosophy of religion without a consequence of calling upon the Christian Lord God and extensive mentions of Catholicism. It appeared that Leszek needed something more. It is hard to say when it turned out, but it became evident following the publication of Religion (1982), which Polish readers got to know some time later as Jeśli boga nie ma [If There Is No God] (Kołakowski 1987). That was a very long path—hard to grasp and often worrying for Leszek’s friends, who were anxious about him possibly distancing himself from In Praise of Inconsistency and disowning his statements from his Ethics without a Moral Code [Etyka bez kodeksu], thus falling into a true religious conservatism. Reading some of his pronouncements, they indeed had a reason to worry although they remained hopeful that he was unwittingly provoking them rather that calling upon them to go to hell as he had found better friends. The hope prevented them from entering into argument with his new ideas—except for the staunchly atheist Helena Eilstein (Eilstein 1991)—choosing to consolidate the ideas that preceded the “conversion”, and whose best manifesto was probably the essay Kapłan i błazen [The Priest and the Jester]. In this circle, Leszek’s search for God met with indulgence rather than understanding even though we hardly thought religion to be a superstition and the Church—a Fortress of Obscurantism, knowing ever better how anachronistic such ideas were. The fears proved groundless. Leszek found no charm in a confessional stance (and no appeal in a prospect of a church-dominated state) and nor did he stop being the skeptic we knew and liked. We can be convinced of that reading his last book, posthumously published (Kołakowski 2009), where it reads on the very first page: “As in almost everything I have written in the recent years, I cannot reach ultimate conclusions in the most fundamental questions and I keep stumbling over difficulties that need to be evaded with the awkward and run-away ‘on the one hand..., but on the other...’ This may be a failing on the part of the author, but it may just as well be a shortcoming of being. This is what Kołakowski was like: he reached a “final” conclusion once in his lifetime and has regretted it ever since. While I do recommend a further reference to his attitude to religion and Christianity in the book by Kłoczowski, where the author traces the path Leszek followed, allow me to note that his way along the path must have been considerably influenced by John Paul II in the Holy See; Leszek met him when the pope was still Karol Wojtyła and he would frequently meet him in Castel Gandolfo during lengthy discussions organized by the Vienna-based Institute for Human Sciences, whose patrons both of them were in their own ways. On top of the various other topics to discuss, what brought them together was a great anxiety about the future of culture and a longing for the homeland. Worthy of mention is the influ-

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ence of those Catholic priests and laity who, though initially critical (cf. Tischner 2002), did open up to him and offered friendship, not just the pinch of liking duly extended to any participant in the anti-Communist alliance. I know best the beginning of Leszek’s path to becoming an ideological, if inexorably creedless and critical, Christian. The first step was obviously his breach with Marxism and Communism. It went along a pattern known from a number of biographies but at the same time it went far beyond it. As a thoroughly inquisitive and principled man, Leszek could not simply distance himself from the ideas he had embraced and the actions he committed before, only to go on to do something more and more to the contrary: he deemed it right to expose the nature of the fatal error—the ideological choice he made as a young man. He could not have become an ordinary ex-Communist who would refer to black as white, and who would be more or less apologetic without really changing the way of thinking typical of Communists. He undertook tremendous intellectual effort to thoroughly analyze and profoundly overcome the style, exposing its peculiarities as well as deplorable consequences and the historical origins, which a reasonable man cannot just reduce to the eternal scheming of the Antichrist and the enemies of the homeland. He started this work as a Party revisionist who, despite the facts he knew only too well and began to call their real names, rather groundlessly assures that “Socialism is a really good thing”. He continued it as an intellectual freed from illusions—an author of countless critical essays and, above all, the Main Currents of Marxism (Kołakowski 1976–1978) i.e. the fullest and the most thorough response to questions of the origins and history of the Marxist doctrine and also the historical poisons inherent in it. He became an anti-Communist who knows best what and why he rejected and not because he had resolved to believe in something else; most rightists think it is enough to curse Marxism and annul once and for all any questions that the Left has ever posed. His adventure with Communism had inoculated him against shortcuts and dogmatism. In the criticism of the Left, he did become fanatical at times, but it is not hard to forgive him that if you realize what nonsense its recent representatives once pronounced; they incidentally expected him as a famous revisionist and a natural-born rebel, to Leszek’s horror, to be their ally. They could not have known that if he ever were to be a Socialist, he would at best be a “conservativeliberal” one (Kołakowski 1984, 203–205) which, even ten years later, at the time when he was making the declaration, must have seemed an unheard of eccentricity. In short, Leszek turned out a considerable problem to both the Old and the New Left, whom he said many a bitter word. In the ironical Great Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Political Sciences [Wielka encyklopedia filozofii i nauk politycznych], he placed, alas, no entry about Slavoj Žižek, but it takes no prophet to predict what the relevant entry would be. There is no need to dwell upon revisionism as this is a most remote past. The texts written under that brand in, e.g., Ideology and Everyday Life [Światopogląd i życie codzienne] and the second volume of Uncollected Writings [Pisma rozproszone] (Kołakowski 1989) were indeed an unforgettable lesson of

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critical thinking for those on the Left capable of self-reflection and have not lost any of the initial intellectual and literary appeal, but they were situated only at the doorstep of his true independence. They had as a starting point three obviously false assumptions (I am not to judge whether they were adopted out of some deep conviction and a temporary lack of a better terminology or perhaps out of a censorship-related necessity of remaining within the bounds of calling for a democratization rather than democracy—that was changing from one month to the next). According to the first of those, the dispute under way was about something that could be repaired even if its amendment demanded truly Herculean work; the second one had it that people could roughly be divided into those more or less enlightened who sought progress and the rest with which one had a problem how to talk to even though it was getting increasingly more evident that they were right in consistently calling felonies their true names; the third assumption was based on a conviction that diatribes by a bunch of intellectuals who had grasped a true “ideological sense of the notion of Left” and discovered what was, and was not, timely about Marxism, could affect real politics and have consequences more serious that an administrative closure and subjecting those involved under surveillance of the political police. The October changes had transformed Poland considerably but not as much as that. Kołakowski was among the first ones who realized the falsity of revisionist assumptions. Also, he inevitably discovered that, other than cultivating his own field where his ever more serious works on philosophy and religious thought of the 17th century were maturating, an exploration of the most modern European thinking (mostly French) was going on and, more importantly, a unique philosophy of culture was sprouting (Flis 1984). He had no choice but provide a moral testimony and apply himself in what would soon come as an in-depth analysis of the theoretical foundations of the ideology that he found himself systematically rejecting. Giving a testimony ended up the way it was bound to, given the setting and the nature of the system Leszek rebelled against. He was expelled from the Party amongst vocal criticism and sidelined. It may even come as a surprise that it happened only after the tenth anniversary of October, 1956, even though less than what he said or attempted to say was enough to warrant imprisonment in other Communist countries, such as in the case of Wolfgang Harichin the GDR. The tolerance of the authorities in the Polish People’s Republic was illusory, though, as it was about keeping up appearances for longer than elsewhere. Not only did Leszek lose a possibility of speaking up his mind to the full extent but he was also under threat of the authorities sniffing for subversive content even in his politically innocuous philosophical texts. The name itself became a problem. It should be remembered that he was subjected to an increasingly troublesome surveillance, which could only reveal what was otherwise well known, that is the “object” had definitely broken with Communism and, what is worse, it was the wisest thing he could do having discovered its unembellished theory and practice.

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However great Leszek’s achievements as critic and hardworking scholar of Communism and related theories and phantasmagorias may have been, it would be foolish to stop at indicating his vast merit in the field. Not even for a moment was he a man of one topic. He liked to have (to recall an ironical title of a vital volume of his) the “correct views on everything” and he was able to write about anything that came to his phenomenally retentive head in the course of his countless talks and readings. Also, he loved a variety of literary and philosophical games, which he found to have a value in themselves, without each time being involved in a politically selfish persuasion or theoretical squaring up with the past. Above all else, he continued his intensive research while ignoring the repeated problems he encountered with publication and foreign visits. It would be a big mistake to look for constant references to what I have written above in whatever he wrote. Under the Communist rule, the reader would have tended to seek allusions and metaphors in his texts. Even his esoteric—i.e. monstrously scholarly—work of non-denominational Christianity in the 17th century was interpreted in such a way as if the old conflicts between heretics and the Church orthodoxy in fact represented the recent clash between revisionism and the “institutional Marxism”. I admit that I was myself unable to resist the associations at times. The Polish reader of those days had a right to seek those, and Leszek was aware of the way in which he used to be read under censorship, and he had no objections. It was also his game, one by the author of The Key to Heaven [Klucz niebieski] and a number of other intellectually playful texts, a writer who could not speak with an “overt text” but who was yet unable to break the still present taboo, not solely on the grounds of possible repressions, of writing to the likes of the Parisian Kultura. The journal—however interesting and likable—was not taken into consideration for anything except a personal level of communication with some of its individual authors already met. I remember that Leszek’s crossing the Rubicon after leaving Poland was, in my circle, an event rivaled only his leaving the Party for ever, leaving the University and then—leaving Poland for good. I would not recommend that anyone except historians should continue reading pre-emigration texts by Kołakowski as fables written in Aesopian language. There are enough reasons to reach for those texts as unrelated to the context of the day. This is testified to by their incessant success in the market filled with books, including high readership among the readers who have no clue about the context. This is simply good literature, good columns, good philosophy and philosophical historiography, good promulgation of knowledge and sometimes all in one. Let us not forget how much Leszek wrote in emigration, where he did not need to beat about the bush and used the freedom of the press with no internal or external limitations. He did well leaving Poland, all the more so that being an international success he kept Poland in his thoughts and faithfully sided with those who endeavored to change it for the better.

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Let us not think too much of Kołakowski’s political merits. This is an author who created things more enduring than any political situation. If anything purely circumstantial in his writings were to disappear one day, he would not become even slightly less first-class. While deeply feeling for current and local events, he posed questions of a lasting and universal nature. In that respect, he kept up to date with the contemporary humanities, but he did not succumb to the many eccentricities, which he time and again mocked, jeopardizing the authority of one author or another, such as frowning on the current popularity of Nietzsche or Heidegger. He was also able to stand up to the omnipotence of narrow specialization and the tendency of addressing mainly one’s scholarly colleagues. Truly did he know what our insoluble maxiissues were (Kołakowski 1997, 1999, 2000) and what great philosophers ask us about [O co pytają nas wielcy filozofowie] (Kołakowski 2004, 2005, 2006) and in speaking and writing about these things he was second to none. He was a master of philosophical essay and, when a need arose, also of a political pamphlet. By some coincidence he also became an aphorist (Kołakowski 2000). One cannot even list the literary genres (not just literary; bear in mind his TV talks and interviews) which, alternately or simultaneously, he was involved in until the end of his life when, almost blind, he collected and commented on, with his daughter’s help, the subsequent Breadcrumbs of Philosophy [Okruchy filozofii] (Kołakowski 2008). In his capacity of scholar he was first a historian of philosophy having an extensive scope of interest and competence as he covered more periods than usual and also the border areas of philosophy and other disciplines where hardly any historian of philosophy ventures, leaving those to other specialists or representatives of the omnivorous intellectual history. Speaking of those other fields I mean, on the one hand, the early opus magnum, i.e. on religious consciousness and ecclesiastic bond [Świadomość religijna i więź kościelna] (Kołakowski 1965) where he was still wandering along revisionist frontiers of Marxism and, on the other, the fundamental work, started several years later and respectfully described earlier here, featuring the rise and fall of “scientific” Communism. The preparation of the latter required readings even more remote from “pure” philosophy than the works by the darkest mystics and quite often much more boring. One cannot help but wonder how he could simultaneously deal with existentialists, positivists, or whosoever, in as serious a fashion as he did. He could read and understand all that just as well as when he dealt with Bergson, Husserl or the most beloved one—Pascal. Incidentally, the evolution of his way of reading the author of Thoughts that went from the sophisticated Marxism of Lucien Goldman to the direct question about God and the horror of His absence, allows us to see the scale of the transformation this article touches upon time and again. As a historian of ideas, Kołakowski was a genius of hermeneutics, endowed with a superhuman memory and diligence. What is most astonishing, he never bragged about those skills and gifts, and unlike most of us, neither did he ever say he was terribly busy. He sort of had time for everything: literary novelties,

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theater, poetry, socializing. This is why his technique of work remains a mystery to me, which I can hardly solve without a speculation about some lay Holy Spirit influence. Without this assumption, it is unthinkable to imagine how he could write so much falling short of verbosity, which does befall most of us sooner or later but rarely leads to us making excuses, as was the case with Leszek, on account of that. His texts, written on various occasions for a variety of readership in a number of countries, inevitably overlapped here and there, but that is no problem if you appreciate their style, which is their equally distinctive feature as the theses and antitheses they contain. This is hardly an appropriate place to discuss his output as a historian of philosophy and, more broadly, a historian of ideas, which I could have a natural propensity for as one who perhaps owes him most in that respect, and is sometimes numbered with the same “Warsaw school of the historians of ideas” which is claimed to have been formed in the years preceding his emigration (Walicki 2007, Sitek 2000). May I note that whatever could be said of that school or “school”, it would merit an aside that there was one genuine philosopher there who did a great job as a historian but who actually had a different calling. Bronisław Baczko, Andrzej Walicki, or Krzysztof Pomian are surely great historians and ones with an exquisite knowledge of philosophy, but in attempting at description of their works we do not need to ask them about their own philosophy. Such a presentation of Kołakowski would not make sense or could at best be a chapter in a much larger study. Naturally, what I mean is not so much a most appropriate labeling of his legacy as it is to emphasize that even in his earliest works, surely enough marked by “reductionism”, which favored the issue of social origin and function of ideas, rather that a question of their truth or falsity or a timeless meaning, there was a noticeable tendency to go beyond the limitations posed by the formula that “being determines consciousness” (Kołakowski 1965, 42) and to understand that, say, the religious phenomena being studied were not merely an inversion of social conflict, which they otherwise surely reflected in some way. In other words, as early as that first harbingers could already be seen of the discovery of “the presence of myth”, which can by no means be explained by purely historical or sociological studies, Leszek’s “metaphysical sense” showed up early on even though his expressionist historiography undoubtedly originated in Marxism, and entering a debate on a classification of religious phenomenon to “primary or secondary level of experience” from a side other than the one he did at that time was only just beginning; he did know only too well what the horror metaphysicus was that would so deeply penetrate his subsequent writings, not solely the sketches collected in a booklet thus entitled (Kołakowski 1988, Polish edition 1990). Well, without pretending that I am some sort of expert on philosophy, I may say of that legacy in sum, on top of what I have stated already, that no one should ignore it because it constitutes a unique attempt at discovering a sense in the experience of the 20th century and weaving into one thread what is elusive in the many different strands of individual reflection on existential and his-

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torical situation. Kołakowski knew well that that attempt was unsuccessful but he had undertaken it without the degree of certainty which is longed after by both the deeply religious people and the many great lay philosophers. He could die, however, aware that in choosing an endless quest he had not made a mistake. The moral from the intellectual biography is this: it is worth making an effort to keep searching, constantly fending off an idea that there is nothing to find. Philosophical skeptics have their own reasons, mystics have theirs, and they are the ones who in Kołakowski’s eyes represent the purest and wisest variety of religiosity; the ones who are hopelessly wrong are nihilists, though. We must always come back to fundamental questions that were asked in the beginnings of philosophy. There are no answers that were not subject to questioning and that could be included into a closed system, but asking should never stop because this conditions the very existence of culture. Finding the absolute is not ours to accomplish (“Absolute is something nothing can be said of, whatsoever”) but woe unto us if we believe it does not exist and cannot exist. The Truth lies inexorably beyond our imperfect mind’s grasp but striving and calling for it makes our existence sensible. “The cultural role of philosophy”, he wrote “is not about providing the truth but about cultivating the spirit of truth” (Kołakowski 2000b, 59). Searching ought not to be limited by boundaries, which is done by those who say there is no truth and also by the believers in truths they think they have found once and for all. He argued with the former and the latter, but he appeared to dislike the former more. In the peculiar combination of maximalism with minimalism, absolutism with relativism, buoyant cognitive ambitions with modesty and sobriety about limits man cannot cross, I would be inclined to see the quintessence of Kołakowski’s way of philosophizing. Throughout his fully, so to speak, “adult” life, he was constantly aware of both temptations and dangers of fundamentalism and the misery of those who forgo the construction and reconstruction of foundations. In a way he canceled the antinomy of “priest” and “jester” by demonstrating with his own example that a true philosopher may and even must bear in mind the need—irresistible in fact—for sacrum, respecting that which is postulated by priests, is not just in the best interests of the believers. Rightly did he say once that Abelard’s title Sic et non would be a suitable title of what he said (Kołakowski 2000b, 110–111).

BIBLIOGRAPHY* Czas ciekawy czas niespokojny. Z Leszkiem Kołakowskim rozmawia Zbigniew Mentel [Interesting Time, Turbulent Time, Zbigniew Mentel Interviews Leszek Kołakowski], 2 volumes, Kraków: Znak, 2007–2008.

*

Translator's note: A regular font in square brackets presents a paraphrase of the Polish title, italicized phrases in square brackets represent the existing English title.

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Eilstein Helena, Jeśli się nie wierzy w Boga… Czytając Kołakowskiego [If One Does Not Believe in God... Reading Kołakowski], Warszawa: Aletheia, 1991. Flis Mariola, Leszek Kołakowski – teoretyk kultury europejskiej [Leszek Kołakowski—A Theorist of the European Culture], Kraków: Universitas, 1994. Gromadzki Stanisław (ed.), Bibliografia wybranych prac Leszka Kołakowskiego (do roku 2007) [Bibliography of Selected Works by Leszek Kołakowski until 2007], in: Przegląd Filozoficzno-Literacki, no. 3–4 (18), 2007 [special issue on L.K.]. Herczyński Ryszard, Spętana nauka. Opozycja intelektualna w Polsce 1945–1970 [Science in Chains. Intellectual Opposition in Poland in 1945–1970], Warszawa: Semper, 2008. Kłoczowski Jan Andrzej OP, “Jeśli Boga nie ma” [If there is no God], in: Gazeta Wyborcza, 14–16 Aug., 2009. _______, Więcej niż mit. Leszka Kołakowskiego spory o religię [More Than a Myth. Leszek Kołakowski’s Disputes of Religion], Kraków: 1994. Kołakowski Leszek, Czy diabeł może być zbawiony i 27 innych kazań [Can the Devil Be Saved and 27 Other Sermons], London: Aneks, 1984. ________, Czy Pan Bóg może być szczęśliwy i inne pytania [Can God Be Happy and Other Questions], Kraków: Znak, 2009; ________, Filozofia pozytywistyczna (Od Hume’a do Koła Wiedeńskiego) [Positivist Philosophy from Hume to the Vienna Circle], Warszawa: PWN, 1966). ________, Główne nurty marksizmu. Powstanie, rozwój, rozkład [Main Currents of Marxism. The Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown], Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1976–1978. ________, Klucz niebieski czyli opowieści biblijne zebrane ku pouczeniu i przestrodze [The Key to Heaven], Warszawa: PIW, 1964. ________, Mini-wykłady o maxi-sprawach [Mini Lectures on Maxi-issues], 3 series, Kraków: Znak, 1997–2000. ________, Moje słuszne poglądy na wszystko [My Correct Views on Everything], Kraków: Znak, 2000a. ________, Myśli wyszukane [Sopisticated Thoughts], selection by Andrzej Pawelec, Kraków: Znak, 2000b. ________, Obecność mitu [The Presence of Myth], Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, 1994a. ________, O co nas pytają wielcy filozofowie [What Great Philosophers Ask Us About], 3 series, Kraków: Znak, 2004b, 2005 and 2006. ________, Okruchy filozofii [Breadcrumbs of Philosophy], Warszawa: Prószyński i spółka, 2008. ________, Pochwała niekonsekwencji. Pisma rozproszone z lat 1955–1968 [In Praise of Inconsistency. Uncollected Writings 1955–1968], 3 volumes, Zbigniew Mentzel (ed.), London: Puls, 1989. ________, Szkice o filozofii katolickiej [Sketches on Catholic Philosophy], Warszawa: PWN, 1955. ________, Świadomość religijna i więź kościelna. Studia nad chrześcijaństwem bezwyznaniowym siedemnastego wieku [Religious Consciousness and Ecclesiastic Bond. Studies on Nondenominational Christianity of the 17th Century], Warszawa: PWN, 1967. ________, Światopogląd i życie codzienne [Ideology and Everyday Life], Warszawa: PIW, 1957. ________, Wśród znajomych. O różnych ludziach mądrych, zacnych, interesujących i tym, jak czasy swoje urabiali [Among Friends. On Various Wise, Noble and Interesting People and on How They Shaped Their Day], Kraków: Znak, 2004c. Konermann Ralf, Filozofia kultury. Wprowadzenie [Philosophy of Culture. Introduction], transl. by Krystyna Krzemieniowa, Warszawa: Oficyna Naukowa, 2009. Sitek Ryszard, Warszawska szkoła historyków idei [Warsaw School of the Historians of Ideas], Warszawa: Scholar, 2000. Tischner Józef, Polski kształt dialogu (1981) [Polish Dialogue], Kraków: Znak, 2000.

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Walicki Andrzej, Leszek Kołakowski i warszawska szkoła historii idei (1984) [Leszek Kołakowski and the Warsaw School of the History of Idea], in: “Przegląd Filozoficzno-Literacki”, no. 3–4 (18) 2007. Translated by Lesław Kawalec

ABOUT THE AUTHOR — sociologist and historian of ideas, professor emeritus of the University of Warsaw and the High School of Social Psychology (SWPS); senior fellow of the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 1967–1968, deputy Dean of the Social Sciences Department of the University of Warsaw and in 1981–1983 Dean of the University’s Philosophy and Sociology Department. In 1968–1969, in charge of the Social Thought History Unit at the Institute of Sociology of the University of Warsaw. Member of the, Polish Society for Social Sciences (PTS); in 1972–1976 its President. His publications include: Kontrrewolucyjne paradoksy [On Counter-revolutionary Paradoxes] (1965), Tradycja. Przegląd problematyki [Tradition: A Review of Issues] (1971), Historia myśli socjologicznej [History of Sociological Thought (Contributions in Sociology)] (English edition 1979, Polish edition 1981, 1983; revised edition: 2003), Spotkania z utopią [Encounters with Utopia] (1980, 2nd edition 2000), Znaniecki [Florian Znaniecki] (1986), Dylematy historiografii idei oraz inne szkice i studia [Eilemmas of Historiography of Idea and Other Studies] (1991), Liberalizm po komunizmie [Liberalism After Communism] (1994, English edition: 1995, German edition: 2003).

Bibliography of Leszek Kołakowski’s Writings edited by Stanisław Gromadzki 1. 2. 3.

4.

5. 6. 7.

8.

Szkice o filozofii katolickiej (“Essays on Catholic Philosophy”; Polish only), PWN, Warszawa 1955. Wykłady o filozofii średniowiecznej (“Lectures on Medieval Philosophy”; Polish only), PWN, Warszawa 1956. Światopogląd i życie codzienne (“Word-View and Everyday Life”), PIW, Warszawa 1957. Also in Serbo-Croatian: Filosofski eseji, transl. by Svetozar Nicolić, Nolit, Beograd 1964 (=Biblioteka Sazvežda 2). Jednostka i nieskończoność. Wolność i antynomie wolności w filozofii Spinozy (“Freedom and the Antinomies of Fredom in the Philosophy of Spinoza”; Polish only), PWN, Warszawa 1958. Der Mensch ohne Alternative. Von der Möglichkeit und Unmöglichkeit, Marxist zu sein, 1960, transl. [from Polish] by Wanda Bronska-Pampuch, Piper, München 1960, 2 ed. 1964. Notatki o współczesnej kontrreformacji (“Notes on Contemporary Counter-Reformation”; Polish only), KiW, Warszawa 1962. 13 bajek z królestwa Lailonii dla dużych i małych [written about 1960], Czytelnik, Warszawa 1963; 2 ed. 1966, 3 ed. 1995. Prószyński i S-ka, Warszawa 1998, [2005]. In German: Dreizehn Fabel aus dem Königreich Lailonien für gross und klein, in: Der Himmelschlüssel. Dreizehn Fabel aus dem Königreich Lailonien für gross und klein, transl. [from Polish] Wanda Bronska-Pampuch (Erbauliche Geschichten) and Mikołaj Dutsch (Fabeln aus Lailonien), Piper, München, Zürich 1961 (=Serie Piper), 1965, 1966, 1981, 1985; Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M. 1968; Patmos Verlag, Düsseldorf 2007; – Dutch: Dertien fabels voor groot en klein uit het koninkrijk Lailonie, transl. by L. van Vlijmen, in: De hemelsleutel of stichtende verhalen uit de Heilige Schrift ter ter waarschuwing waarin opgenomin, Moussault, Amsterdam 1968; – Spanish: Las Fábulas del Reino de Lelonia, in: Las Claves del Cielo, transl. [versión castellana] by Norberto Silvetti Paz, Monte Avila, Caracas 1969; Trece cuentos del reino de Lailonia para pequeños y mayors, transl. by Dariusz Kuźniak and Iván García Sala, KRK Ediciones, Oviedo 2008 (=“Tras 3 Letras”); – Swedish: Sager för stora och sma, Uppsak [Stockholm] 1984; – Serbian: 13 bajki iz kraljevine Lajlonije za velike i male, transl. [from Polish] by Slobodan Grković, Dečje Novine, Gornji Milanovac 1987; – English: Tales from the Kingdom of Lailonia and The key to heaven, transl by Agnieszka Kołakowska (Tales from the Kingdom of Lailonia) and Salvator Attanasio (The key to heaven), The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, London 1989; – Japanese: Raironiakoku monogatari: otona-mo kodomo-mo tanoshimeru 13-no otogibanashi, transl. by Numano Mitsuyoshi, Shibata Ayano, publishing Kokusho Kau-kokai, Tōkyō 1995; – Macedonian: 13 skazni od kralstvoto Lajlonija za golemi i mali i drugi skazni, transl. [from Polish] by Matej Kačorovski, List, Skopje 2002; – Chinese: SDX Joint Publishing Company, 2007 (=Culture & Life). Der Mensch ohne Alternative. Von der Möglichkeit und Unmöglichkeit, Marxist zu sein, transl. [from Polish] by Wanda Bronska-Pampuch, authorized by author, Piper, München, 2 ed. [new] (=Piper Paperback) 1967; ed. new (with Der Mythos der menschlichen Einheit, transl. by Leonhard Reinisch), Piper, München 1976 (=Serie Piper 140). In Hebrew: ‘Al ha-reshut ha-netunah. Mivkhar massot, transl. by Mosche Gil, Si-friat Poalim, Tel Aviv 1964;

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– Swedish: Människan utan alternativ. An det möjliga och det möjliga, att var marxist, transl. by Lars Höög, Bonniers, Stockholm 1964 (=Orionserien); – Finnish: Ihminen ilman vaihtoehta, transl. by Taisto Veikko, Kirjayhtymä Oy, Helsinki 1966 (=Ihminen ja maailma-sarja); – Norwegian: Mennesket uten alternativ. Om det mulige og unmulige i a vaere marxist, transl. by Tom Rønnow, Gyldendal Norsk, Oslo 1966 (=Fakkel-Bok. 92); – Danish: Mennesket uden Alternativ, transl. by Johannes Landbo, publishing Fremads Fokusbøger, Københarn 1967 (=Fokusbog); – Japanese: Sekinin to rekishi. Chisshikijin to marx shugi, transl. by Komori Ki-yoshi, Furuta Kosaku, Keisô shobô, Tôkyô 1967; – English: Toward a Marxist Humanism. Essays on the Left today, transl. by Jane Zielonko Peel, Grove Press, New York 1968; Marxism and Beyond: On Historical Understanding and Individual Responsibility, transl. by Jane Zielonko Peel, Pall Mall Press, London 1969; Marxism and Beyond, transl. by Jane Zielonko Peel, Paladin, London 1971; – Dutch: De mens zonder alternatief. Essays, transl. by Johan Winkler, Moussault, Amsterdam 1968; – Spanish: El hombre sin alternativa. Sobre la posibilidad e imposibilidad de ser marxista, transl. by Andrés Pedro Sánchez Pascual, Alianza Editorial, Madrid 1970 (=Sección Humanidades); – Russian: Pochvala neposledovatel’nosti (Filosofskie i publicisticeskie stati), Aurora, Firenze 1974. 9. ‘Al ha-reshut ha-netunah: Minbar masot (“On the Possibility of Choice: A Collection of Essays”), transl. by Mordecai Dekel et al., publishing Sifriyat Po ‘alim, Merhavya [Izrael] 1964. 10. Klucz niebieski albo Opowieści budujące z historii świętej zebrane ku pouczeniu i przestrodze (The Key to Heaven), PIW, Warszawa 1964; 2 ed. PIW, Warszawa 1965. Klucz niebieski albo Opowieści budujące z historii świętej zebrane ku pouczeniu i przestrodze, Rozmowy z diabłem, 1 ed. in Czytelnik, Warszawa 1996. Klucz niebieski albo Opowieści biblijne zebrane ku pouczeniu i przestrodze, Prószyński i Ska, Warszawa [2005]. In German: Der Himmelsschlüssel. Erbauliche Geschichten. Dreizehn Fabel aus dem Königreich Lailonien für gross und klein, transl. [from Polish] by Wanda Bronska-Pampuch and Mikołaj Dutsch, Piper, München 1961, 1964, 1965, 1966; new ed.: Der Himmelsschlüssel. Erbauliche Geschichten, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M. 1968 (=Bibliothek Suhrkamp 207); München, Zürich 1981; new ed. with Der Himmels-schlüssel. Erbauliche Geschichten, transl. [from Polish] by Wanda Bronska-Pampuch and Mikołaj Dutsch, new textes transl. [from Polish] Alexander Drozdzynski and Friedrich Griese, München, Zürich 1992 (=Serie Piper 1680); Der Himmelsschlüssel [oder Erbauliche Geschichten nach der Heiligen Schrift zur Belehrung und Warnung], transl. by [from Polish] Wanda Bronska-Pampuch and Mikołaj Dutsch, Patmos Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Düsseldorf 2007; – Dutch: De hemelsleutel of stichtende verhalen uit de Heilige Schrift ter lering en ter waarschuwing, waarin opgenomen. ‘Dertien fabels voor groot en klein uit het koninkrijk Lailonië‘, transl. by L. van Vlijmen, Moussault, Amsterdam 1968. – Spanish: Las Claves del Cielo. Historias edificantes, transl. by Norberto Silvetti, part 2: Las Fábulas del Reino de Lailonia, Monte Avila, Caracas 1969; La clave celeste. Relatos edificantes de la historia sagrada recogidos para aleccionamiento y advertencia del lector. Conversationes con el diablo, transl. by Jerzy Slawomirski and Anna Rubió Rodon, Editorial Melusina, Barcelona 2006; – Czech: Nebeklič. Rozhovory s d’ablem, transl. by Gabriel Laub, Odeon, Praha 1969; Index, Köln 1982; Nebeklíč aneb dějepravné příběhy z historie svaté sepsané ku poučení a výstraze, transl. [from Polish] by Gabriel Laub (and Roman Joura), Artes, Praha 1987, 1992; 1 ed. without censorship: 1996; 2004;

Bibliography of Leszek Kolakowski’s Writings

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12.

13.

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– English: The key to heaven, transl. by Salvator Attanasio & Celina Wieniewska, Grove Press, New York 1972; The key to heaven, in: The devil and scripture, transl. [from the Polish] by Nicholas Bethell and Celina Wieniewska, Oxford University Press, London 1973; Tales from the Kingdom of Lailonia and The key to heaven, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, London 1989; – Italian: La chiave del cielo. Conversazioni con il diavolo. Racconti edificanti tratti dalla sacra Scrittura a nostro insegnamento e avvertimento e Conversazioni con il diavolo, transl. [from English] by Arturo Lorini, Queriniana, Brescia 1982; – Yugoslavian: Ključ nebeski; Razgovor s davlom, transl. by Slobodanka Poštić, Grafički Zavod Hrvatske, Zagreb 1983; – Belgian: La clef des cieux: récits éditiants tirés de l’histoire sainte, transl. [from Polish] by Erica Abrams, Complexe, Bruxelles 1986 [Paris, diffusion PUF]; – Serbian: Ključ nebeski. Razgovori sa đavolom (1964-1965), transl. by Petar Vujičić, Izdavaćko – Grafički Zavod, Beograd 1990; – Swedish: Den himmelska nyckeln eller Uppbyggliga berättelser ur den heliga historien samlade till råd och varnagel, transl. by Lennart Larsson, Bokförlaget A, Stockholm 1991; – Hebrew: Sikot ’im ha-satan; àl ha-tsad ha-‘afel shel ha-tov, transl. by Mikha’el Handelzalts, Mapah: Hosta’ah le-‘ or Universitat, Tel ‘Aviv 2004; – French: La clef céleste ou Récits édifiants de l’histoire sainte réunis pour l’instruction et l’avertissement, transl. by Jean-Yves Erhel, Bayard, Paris 2004. Filozofia egzystencjalna. Wybrane teksty z historii filozofii (“Existencial Philosophy. Selected Textes”), edited and prefaced by Leszek Kołakowski and Krzysztof Pomian, PWN, Warszawa 1965. Świadomość religijna i więź kościelna. Studia nad chrześcijaństwem bezwyznaniowym siedemnastego wieku, PWN, Warszawa 1965; 2 ed.: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, Warszawa 1997. In French: Chrétiens sans Eglise: La conscience religieuse et le lien confessionnel au XVIIe siècle, transl. by Anna Posner, Gallimard, Paris 1969 (=Bibliothèque de Philosophie); Gallimard, Paris 1987; – Spanish: Cristianos sin iglesia. La conciencia religiosa y el vínculo confessional en il siglo XVII, transl. by Francisco Perez Gutierrez, Taurus, Madrid 1983; – German: Christen ohne Kirche. Studien über das nichtkonfessionelle Christentum des 17. Jahrhunderts, transl. by Friedrich Griese, R. Piper GmbH & Co. Verlag, München 1987 (manuscript). Rozmowy z diabłem (Conversations with the devil), PIW, Warszawa 1965. Prószyński i S-ka, Warszawa 1998, [2005]; Bajki różne, Opowieści biblijne, Rozmowy z diabłem, Aneks, London 1987; “Iskry”, Warszawa 1990. In German: Gespräche mit dem Teufel. Acht Diskurse über das Böse und zwei Stücke, transl. by Janusz von Pilecki, R. Piper & Co., München 1968; new ed. 1975 (=Serie Piper 109); 1977; 1986; – Dutch: Gesprekken met de duivel. Acht verhandelingen over het kwaad en twee stukken, transl. by L. van Vlijmen, Moussault, Amsterdam 1969; – Czech: Rozhovory s d’ablem, transl. by G. Laub, in: Nebeklíč, Odeon, Praha 1969; – English: Conversations with the devil, transl. by Nicholas Bethell & Celina Wieniewska, in: The key to heaven, Grove Press, New York 1972; The devil and scriptura [The key to heaven. Talk of the devil], Oxford University Press, London 1973; – Spanish: Conversationes con el diablo. Ocho discursos sobre el mal y dos piezas, transl. by Willy Kemp, Monte Avila, Caracas 1977; 2 ed.: Conversaciones con el diablo: ocho discursos sobre el mal y dos piezas, transl. [from German] by Willy Kemp, Monte Avila Editores, Caracas 1992; – Italian: Conversazioni con il diavolo, Editore Queriniana, Brescia 1978;

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22.

Bibliography of Leszek Kolakowski’s Writings

– Swedish: Samtal med. Djävulen, transl. [from Polish] by Martin von Zweigbergk, Bromberg, Uppsala 1982, 1983; – Romanian: Convorbiri cu diavolul, transl. by Natalia Cantemir, Cronica: Univers Cultural, Iaşi 2003; – Hebrew: Sikot ’im ha-satan; àl ha-tsad ha-‘afel shel ha-tov, transl. by Mikha’el Handelzalts, Mapah: Hosta’ah le-‘ or Universitat, Tel ‘Aviv 2004. Ihminen ilman vaihtoehta (a collection of essays; in Finnish), transl. by J. Blomstedtin, Kirjayhtyma, Helsinki 1966. Filozofia pozytywistyczna. Od Hume’a do Koła Wiedeńskiego (Positivist Philosophy. From Hume to the Vienna Circle), PWN, Warszawa 1966 (=Współczesna Biblioteka Naukowa Omega 50). 2 ed. Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, Warszawa 2003; 3 ed. 2004. In English: The Alienation of Reason: A History of Positivist Thought, transl. by Norbert Guterman, Garden City, New York: Doubleday 1968; 2 ed. (=Anchor Book A 661) 1969; Positivist Philosophy. From Hume to the Vienna Circle, transl. by Norbert Hume, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1972 (=Pelican Book); – German: Die Philosophie des Positivismus, transl. [from Polish] by Peter Lachmann, München 1971 (=Serie Piper 18); 2 ed. 1977; – Serbo-Croatian: Filozofija pozitivizma, transl. by Risto Tubic, Prosveta, Beograd 1972 (=Biblioteka Današnji Svet. 11); – Italian: La Filosofia del Positivismo, Laterza, transl. by Nicola Paoli, Laterza & Figli, Roma-Bari 1974 (=Biblioteca di Cultura Moderna 767); – French: La philosophie positiviste, transl. by Claire Brendel, Denoël/Gonthier, Paris 1976 (=Bibliothèque médiations, 139); – Spanish: La filosofía positivista. Ciencia y filosofía, transl. [from German] by Genoveva Ruiz-Ramón, Ediciones Cátedra, Madrid 1979, 2 ed. 1981 (=Colección Teorema). Kultura i fetysze. Zbiór rozpraw (“Culture and Fetishes. A Collection of Essays”), PWN, Warszawa 1967. 2 ed. Kultura i fetysze. Eseje, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, Warszawa 2000. Traktat über die Sterblichkeit der Vernunft. Philosophische Essays, transl. [from Polish] by Peter Lachmann, Piper, München 1967 (=Piper Paperback). In Dutch: Over de sterfelijkheid van de rede. Filosofische Essays, transl. by Johan Winkler, Moussault, Amsterdam 1969; – Spanish: Tratado sobre la mortalidad de la razón. Ensayos filosóficos, transl. by Miguel Mascialino, Monte Avila Latinoamericana, Caracas 1969; 2 ed. 1993. Sekinin to rekischi (“A Collection of Essays”), Tokyo 1967. El rationalism como ideologia y ética sin Código, transl. by Jacobo Muñoz, Ariel, Barcelona 1970 (=Ariel quincenal, 34). A Leszek Kolakowski Reader. A Collection of essays publisher in a special issue of TriQuarterly, Fall 1971, No. 22. Geist und Ungeist christlicher Traditionen, transl. by Wanda Bronska-Pampuch, Bernhard Nieradzik, Gerhard M. Martin, Karol Sauerland and Irmtraud Zimmermann-Goellheim, Stuttgart/Berlin/Köln/Mainz 1971 (=T-Reihe); Kohlhammer, 1978. In Spanish: Vigencia y caducidad de las tradiciones cristianas, transl. by Ramón Bilbao, Amorrortu editores, Buenos Aires 1973 (=Biblioteca de filosofia, antropología y religión); – Italian: Senso e nonsenso della tradizione cristiana, transl. by Filippo Gentiloni Silveri, Citadella Editrice – Assisi 1975 (=“Orizzonte filosofico”). O duchu rewolucyjnym (1970, manuscript). Der revolutionäre Geist, Verlag W. Kohlhammer – Stuttgart, Berlin, Köln, Mainz 1972 (=Urban-Taschenbücher, Reihe 80, 833); 2 ed. 1977. In Polnish: Aneks 1974, No. 4.

Bibliography of Leszek Kolakowski’s Writings

135

– French: L’esprit révolutionnaire suivi de Marxisme – utopie et antiutopie, transl. [from English and German] by Jacques Dewitte, Editions Complexe, Bruxelles 1978, 1979; Denoël, Paris 1985; – Italian: Filosofía marxista y realidad nacional, transl. by Ida Vitale, in: Vuelta 1981, No. 50, Vol. 5; Lo spirito rivoluzionario, preface by Paolo Flores d’Arcais, SugarCo Edizioni, Milano 1982; – Spanish: O espírito revolucionário, in: O Espírito Revolucionário. Marxismo – Utopie e Antiutopia, transl. by Alda Baltar and Maria José Braga Ribeiro, Editora Universidade de Brasília, Brasilia 1985, pp. 7-87. 23.

24. 25.

26.

27.

Obecność mitu (The Presence of Myth), published by the Polish émigré publishing house KULTURA, Instytut Literacki, Paryż 1972 (written in 1966; Biblioteka “Kultury” 224). Wydawnictwo Dolnośląskie, Wrocław 1994; Prószyński i S-ka, Warszawa 2003, [2005]. In Hebrew: Nokhekhuto shel ha-mitos, transl. by Elieser Hakohen, Sifriat Poalim Press, Tel Aviv 1971; – German: Die Gegenwärtigkeit des Mythos, transl. [from Polish] by Peter Lachmann, R. Piper & Co. Verlag, München/Zürich 1973 (=Serie Piper 49); 2 ed. Piper, revised edition, 1974, 3 ed. 1984; – Spanish: La presencia del mito, transl. by Cristóbal Piechocki, Amorrortu, Buenos Aires 1975 (=Biblioteca de filosofia); La presencia del mito, transl. by Gerardo Bolado, Cátedra, Madrid 1999; – Portuguese: A presença do mito, transl. by José Viegas Filho, Editora Universidade de Brasília, Brasília 1981; – English: The Presence of Myth, Chicago, London 1989; – Serbian: Prisutnos mita, transl. by P. Vujićić, Beograd 1989; – Italian: Presenza del mito, transl. [from German] by Pietro Kobau, Il Mulino, Bologna 1992 (=Intersezioni 102). Kołakowski (Essays), Joseba Arregi (ed.), transl. [in Basque] by Joxe Azurmendi – Arantzazu Oinati, Jakin, Guipuzcoa 1972 (=Jakin liburu sorta 5). Marxismus – Utopie und Anti-Utopie, transl. [from French, English and Polnish] by Harriet Hasenclever, Edda Werfel and Gerd Lenga, Verlag W. Kohlhammer GmbH, Stuttgart, Berlin, Köln, Mainz 1974 (=Urban-Taschenbücher, Reihe 80, 865). In French: Anti-Utopie Utopique de Marx, in: Tijdschrift voor de Studie van de Verlichting” 1974, No. 1 (Editions Complexe, Bruxelles) – Discussie by G. Schurmans-Swillen [in Franch], L. Kolakowski [in French and German], G. Goriely [in French], L. Flam [in French], S. Moravia [in French], H. Ley [in German], N. Palma [in French], B. Baczko [in French], E. Lojacono [in French], G. Desolre [in French], O. Maduro [in French]. – Spanish: Marxismo – Utopie e Antiutopia, in: O Espírito Revolucionário. Marxismo – Utopie e Antiutopia, transl. [from German] by Alda Baltar and Maria José Braga Ribeiro, Editora Universidade de Brasília, Brasilia 1985, pp. 73-186. The socialist idea. A Reappraisal [except by Richard Lowenthal, Steven Lukes and Gilles Martinet], ed. by Leszek Kolakowski and Stuart Hampshire, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1974. In Spanish: El mito de la autoidentidad humana. La unidad de la sociedad civil y la sociedad política (with Stuart Hampshire), transl. [version castellana] by Juan Álvarez, “Fac. Filosofia y Letras”, Valencia 1976 (=Cuadernos Teorema). Husserl and the Search for Certitude, Lectures, Yale University Press, New Haven and London 1975; St Augustine’s Press, South Bend, Indiana 2001. In Polnish: Husserl i poszukiwanie pewności, transl. [from English] by P. M. [Piotr Marciszuk], In Plus, Warszawa 1987 (Społeczny Komitet Nauki, =Biblioteka Aletheia 2); 2 ed., Warszawa 1990 (=Biblioteka Aletheia); Znak, Kraków 2003.

136

Bibliography of Leszek Kolakowski’s Writings

– German: Die Suche nach der verlorenen Gewißheit. Denk-Wege mit Edmund Husserl, transl. [from English] by Jürgen Söring, Stuttgart, Berlin, Köln, Mainz 1977; Piper, München, Zürich 1986 (=Serie Piper 535); – Spanish: Husserl y la búsqueda de la certeza, transl. by Adolfo Murguia Zuriarrain, Alianza Editorial, Madrid 1977 (=Sección Humanidades, 658); 1983, 1993; – Italian: La ricerca della certezza, transl. by Giovanni Ferrara, Laterza & Figli, Roma-Bari 1978; – French: Husserl et la recherche de la certitude, transl. by Philibert Secretan, L’Âge d’homme, Paris 1991. 28. Główne nurty marksizmu (Main Currents of Marxism): Vol. I: Powstanie, Instytut Literacki, Paryż 1976 (Biblioteka “Kultury” 262); Vol. II: Rozwój, Instytut Literacki, Paryż 1977; Vol. III: Rozkład, Instytut Literacki, Paryż 1978 (Biblioteka “Kultury”). 2 (revised) ed. Aneks, Londyn 1988; Zysk i S-ka 2000-2001. In German: Die Hauptströmungen des Marxismus, transl. [from Polish] Eberhard Kozlowski (Vol. I) and Friedrich Griese (Vol. II and III); Vol. I: Entstehung, Piper, München 1977; Vol. II: Entwicklung, Piper, München 1978; Vol. III: Zerfall, Piper, München 1979; 2 (revised) ed. München-Zürich 1981, 3 vols.; – English: Main currents of Marxism. It’s rise, growth and dissolution, transl. [from Polish] by P.S. Falla, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1978 [Vol. I-III]; paperback 1981, reprints: 1982, 1985, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1992; and Oxford, New York 1985; 1997; Main currents of Marxism. The founders, The golden age, The breakdown, transl. by P.S. Falla, W.W. Norton & Company, New York-London 2008; – Italian: Nascita sviluppo dissoluzione del marxismo, Vol. I: I fondatori, transl. [from Polish] by Riccardo Landau, SugarCo Edizioni, Milano 1980 (=Argomenti 77); Vol. II: Il periodo aureo, transl. [from Polish] by Riccardo Landau, SugarCo Edizioni, Milano 1983; Vol. III: La crisi, transl. [from Polish] by Paola Belmi, SugarCo Edizioni, Milano 1985 (=Argomenti 104); – Croatian: Glavni tokovi marksizma, Vol. I, transl. by Risto Tubić, Beogradski IzdavačkoGrafički Zavod, Beograd 1980 (=Biblioteka marksizam); Vol. II: transl. by Risto Tubić, Beogradski Izdavačko-Grafički Zavod, Beograd 1983 (=Biblioteka marksizam); Vol. III: transl. by Risto Tubić, Beogradski Izdavačko-Grafički Zavod, Beograd 1985 (=Biblioteka marksizam); – Dutch: Geschiedenis van het marxisme, 3 vols., Uitgeverij Het Spectrum, Utrecht/Antwerpen 1980-1981: Vol. I: transl. by S. Bielak, 1980; Vol. II: transl. by S. Tol, 1980; Vol. III: transl. by Karol Lesman, Gerard Rasch, 1981; – Spanish: Las principales corrientes del marxismo, I: Los fundadores, transl. by Jorge Vigil, Alianza Editorial, Madrid 1980; II: La edad de oro, transl. by Jorge Vigil, Alianza Editorial, Madrid 1982; III: La crisis, transl. by Jorge Vigil Rubio, Alianza Editorial, Madrid 1983 (=Alianza Universidad); 2 ed. 1985 (Vol. I); – French: Histoire du marxisme, Vol. I: Les fondateurs, Marx, Engels et leurs prédécesseurs, transl. [from German] by Olivier Masson, Fayard, Paris 1987; Vol. II: L’âge d’or de Kautsky à Lénine, transl. [from German] by Françoise Laroche, Fayard, Paris 1987 [“tome III à paraître”; the third volume has never appeared in French]; – Bulgarian: Osnowni naprawlenia na marksizma. Wyznikwane, transl. by Prawda Spasowa, SONM, Sofia 2006. – Persian: transl. by Abbās Milāni, Āgah Publishing House, Tehran 2006. 29. Leben trotz Geschichte: Lesebuch (a collection of essays; ed. by Leonhard Reinisch), Piper, München – Zürich 1977. 30. Leszek Kolakowski: Ansprachen anläßlich der Verleihung des Friedenspreises, Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels E.V., Frankfurt am Main 1977. 31. Trzy bajki o identyczności (“Three Tales on Identity”; written in 1970).

Bibliography of Leszek Kolakowski’s Writings

32. 33.

34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40.

137

Trzy bajki o identyczności, in: Zapis 1978, No. 8; Wolni i Solidarni, [Wrocław/Warszawa] 1986. In German: Drei Fabeln von der Identität [Die syrische Fabel vom Spatzen und vom Wiesel; Die koptische Fabel von der Schlange, die ein Logiker war; Die persische Fabel vom Eselverkäufer], transl. [from Polish] by Alexander Drozdzyński, in: Merkur, Ernst Klett Verlag, Stuttgart, 1979, XXXIII, No. 8. Czy diabeł może być zbawiony i 27 innych kazań (“Can the Devil be Saved and 27 other Sermons”; a collection of essays), Aneks, Londyn 1982. Religion. If there is no God... On God, the Devil, Sin and other Worries of the so called Philosophy of Religion, Oxford University Press, Fontana Paperback, London, New York 1982, 2 ed. New York 1983; St Augustine Press 2001. In Polnish: Jeśli Boga nie ma... O Bogu, Diable, Grzechu i innych zmartwieniach tak zwanej filozofii religii, transl. [from English] by Tadeusz Baszniak and Maciej Panufnik, Aneks, Londyn 1987; Znak, Kraków 1988; Brama, Warszawa 1990. – French: Philosophie de la religion, transl. [from English] by Jean-Paul Landais, “Bibliothèques 10/18” dirigé par Jean-Claude Zylberstein, Fayard, Paris 1985; – German: Falls es keinen Gott gibt, transl. [from English] by Friedrich Griese, München, Zürich 1982; – Italian: Le religioni. Su dio, il demonio, il male e altri problemi della cosiddetta filosofia della religione, transl. [from English] by Bruno Oddera, SugarCo Edizioni, Milano 1983; Se non esiste Dio, transl. by Bruno Oddera, il Mulino, Bologna 1997 (=Intersezioni 179); – Spanish: 1 ed. 1985; Si Dios no existe… Sobre Dios, el diablo, el pecado y otras preocupaciones de la llamada filosofía de la religión, transl. by Marta Sansigre Vidal, 4 ed.: 1999, 2 reimpresión, Tecnos, Madrid 2002, 5 ed. 2007; – Dutch: Religie: stel: ‘Er is geen God’… Over God, de duivel, zonde en andere perikelen van een zogenaamde filosofie van de religie, transl. [from English] by Hans Wagemans, Gooi & Sticht, Hilversum 1987; – Serbo-Croatian: Religija. Ako nema Boga… O Bogu, đavolu, grehu i ostalim brigama takozvane filosofije religije, transl. by Vladan Perišić, Beogradski Izdavačko-Grafički Zavod, Beograd 1987; – Romanian: Religia: dača nu exist Dumnezeu... Despre Dumnezu, Diavol Pacat si alte necazuri ale asanumitei filozofii a religiei, transl. by Sorin Mrculescu, Humanitas, Bucureşti 1993. Elogio dell’ incoerenza (a collection of essays), Vita e Pensiero, Milano 1982, 1989, 1990. Essays van Leszek Kołakowski, transl. by J. Minkiewicz, Wijnegem: Het Spectrum, Utrecht/Antwerpen 1983. Bergson, Oxford University Press, London, New York 1985; St. Augustine’s Press, South Bend, Indiana 2001. In German: Henri Bergson. Ein Dichterphilosoph, transl. [from English] by Ursula Ludz, München, Zürich 1985 (=Serie Piper); – Polnish: transl. [from English] by author, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, Warszawa 1997; – Hebrew: Tel-Aviv 1988; – Dutch: Bergson. Een inleiding in zijn werk, Klement-Pelckmans, Kampen-Kapellen 2003; – Italian: Bergson, transl. by Leo Lestingi, Palomar, Bari 2005; Palomar di Alternative 2007. The General Theory of Not-Gardening / Ogólna teoria nie-uprawiania ogrodu, book of Andrzej Marian Bartczak, “Poprzeczna Oficyna Press”, Łódź 1992. O Espírito Revolucionário. Marxismo – Utopie e Antiutopia, transl. by Alda Baltar and Maria José Braga Ribeiro, Editora Universidade de Brasília, Brasilia 1985. Le Village introuvable (a collection of essays), transl. [from English and German] by Jacques Dewitte, Editions Complexe, Bruxelles 1986. Intelectuales contra el intelecto (essays), Tusquets Editores, Barcelona 1986.

138

Bibliography of Leszek Kolakowski’s Writings

41. Narr und Priester. Ein philosophisches Lesebuch, Gesine Schwan (ed.), transl. by Heinz Abusch, Wanda Bronska-Pampuch, Alexander Drozdzynski, Mikołaj Dutsch, Friedrich Griese, Eberhard Kozlowski, Peter Lachmann, Edith Marko-Stöckl, Christa Storck und Edda Werfel, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1987; 2 ed. 1995. 42. Metaphysical Horror, Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1988 (revised edition, ed. Agnieszka Kołakowska, Penguin Books, London, 129 pp.; University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2001. In Polnish: Horror metaphysicus, transl. by Maciej Panufnik, Res Publica, Warszawa 1990; – German: Horror methaphysicus: Das Sein und das Nichts, München-Zürich 1989 and Der metaphysische Horror, transl. [from English] by Friedrich Griese, C.H. Beck, München 2002; – French: Horreur métaphysique, transl. [from English] by Michel Barat, Payot, Paris 1989; – Dutch: Horror methaphysicus, transl. by Maarten van der Marel, Kok Agora Press, Kampen 1989; – Italian: Orrore metafisico, transl. by Bruno Morcavallo, Il Mulino, Bologna 1990, 2007; – Portuguese: Horror metafísico, transl. by Aglaia D. Perosso Coutinho Castro, Papirus, Campinas 1990; – Romanian: Horror methaphysicus, transl. by Germina Chiroiu, Bucureşti 1997; – Estonian: Horror methaphysicus, Valgus, Tallin 2000; – Serbian: Užas metafizike, transl. [from English] by Risto Tubić, Beogradski IzdavačkoGrafički Zavod, Beograd 1992 (=Filozofska biblioteka. Savremena filozofija); – Lithuanian: Metafizinis siaubas, transl. [from English] by Alvydas Jokubaitis, Amžius, Vilnius 1993; – Hungarian: Metafizikai horror, transl. by Orosz István, Tarnóczi Gabriella, OsirisSzázadvég K., Budapest 1994; – Czech: Metafyzický horror, transl. by Josef Mlejnek i Allan Plzák, Mladá fronta, Praha 1999. 43. Pochwała niekonsekwencji. Pisma rozproszone z lat 1955-1968 (“In Priase of Inconsistency. Collected Essays Written Between 1955-1968”; in Polish only), Zbigniew Mentzel (ed.), Puls, Londyn 1989: 3 vols. 44. Davo u istoriji, transl. by R. Tubić, B. Rajćić, F. Rehlicky; Banjaluka 1989. 45. Cywilizacja na ławie oskarżonych (Modernity on Endless Trial), selection of essays: Paweł Kłoczowski, Res Publica, Warszawa 1990; Chicago 1990. In English: Modernity on Endless Trial (Essays originally written between 1973 and 1986), transl. by Stefan Czerniawski, Wolfgang Kreis and Agnieszka Kolakowska, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1990; 1997. – German: Die Moderne auf der Anklagebank, transl. [from English and Franch] by Friedrich Griese and Klaus Nellen, Manesse Verlag, Zürich 1991. 46. Bóg nam nic nie jest dłużny. Krótka uwaga o religii Pascala i o duchu jansenizmu [transl. from the typescript in English: God owes us nothing: a brief remark on Pascal’s religion and the spirit of Jansenism], transl. by Ireneusz Kania, Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków 1994; 2 ed. 2001. 47. Politikata i diawolt. Eseta (“Politics and the Devil. Essays”), selection of essays: Katia Mitowa-Janowski, Zbigniew Janowski, ed. by Błagowiesta Lingorska, Klimient Trienkow, Panorama, Sofia 1994. 48. God owes us nothing: a brief remark on Pascal’s religion and the spirit of Jansenism, Chicago: University of Chicago, London 1995 and The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, London 1998. In Spanish: Dios no nos debe nada. Un breve comentario sobre la religión de Pascal y el espíritu del jansenismo, transl. [versión castellana] by Susana Mactley Marín, Herder, Barcelona 1996; – French: Dieu ne nous doit rien: breve remarque sur la religion de Pascal et l’esprit du jansenisme, transl. [from English] by Marie-Anne Lescourret, Albin Michel Press, Paris 1997;

Bibliography of Leszek Kolakowski’s Writings

49.

50.

51.

52.

53.

139

– Serbian: Bog ništa nije dužan, transl. [from English] by Rist Tubić, Petar J’evremović, Plato, Beograd 1998 (=Biblioteka “Na Tragu”); – Hungarian: Isten nem adósunk semmivel: néhány megjegyzés Pascal hitéröl és a janzenizmusról, transl. by Liska Endre, Európa, Budapest 2000. Mini-wykłady o maxi-sprawach (Essays on Everyday Life; a collection of mini-lectures delivered for the Polish Television; Series I-III). Series I: Znak, Kraków 1997. Series II: Miniwykłady o maxi-sprawach. Seria druga, Znak, Kraków 1999. Series III: Mini-wykłady o maxisprawach. Seria trzecia, Znak, Kraków 2000. Series I-III: Mini-wykłady o maxi-sprawach. Trzy serie, Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków 2003; 2 ed. 2007. In German: 1 ed. Mini-Traktate über Maxi-Themen, transl. by Dietrich Scholze, Reclam, Leipzig 1997 [Series I], 2000; Neue Mini-Traktate über Maxi-Themen, transl. by Nina Kozlowski, Reclam, Leipzig 2002; – Hungarian: Kis elöadások nagy Kérdésekröl, transl. by Pályi András, Európa, Budapest 1998 and Újabb kis elöadások nagy Kérdésekröl, transl. by Pályi András, Európa, Budapest 2000; – Italian: Breviario minimo. Piccole lezioni per grandi problemi, transl. by Vera Verdiani, il Mulino, Bologna 2000 (=Intersezioni 204) [Series I and II]; – English: Freedom, Fame, Lying, and Betrayal: Essays on Everyday Life, transl. by Agnieszka Kołakowska, Westview Press, Boulder 1999; – French: Petite philosophie de la vie quotidienne, transl. [from Polish] by Laurence Dyèvre, Éditions du Rocher, Monaco 2001 (=Collection Anatolia) [Series I and II]; – Serbian: Mini predavana o maksi stvarima, transl. by Biserka Rajčić, Plato, Beograd 2001; – Romanian: Conferinţe mici pe teme mari, transl. by Constantin Geambaşu, Paideia, Bucureşti 2003; – Czech: Malé úvahy o velkých vĕcech, transl. by Jiří Červenka, Academia, Praha 2004; – Slovene: Mini predavanja o maksi zadevah. Trije zvezki, transl. by Jana Unuk, Claritas, Lublana 2004 [Series I-III]; – Spanish: Pequenas palestras sobre grandes temas. Ensaios sobre a vida cotidiana. Três séries, transl. by Bogna Pierzynski, Editora UNESP, São Paulo 2009; Libertad, fortuna, mentira y traición. Ensayos sobre la vida cotidiana, transl. by Víctor Pozanco Villalba, Paidós, Barcelona 2001 (=Biblioteca del Presente, 15). Moje słuszne poglądy na wszystko (My Correct Views on Everything), Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków 1999. In English: My Correct Views on Everything, ed. by Zbigniew Janowski, St. Augustines Press 2005; – Ukrainian: Mo pravil’ni poglâdy na vse, transl. [from Polish] by Sergiâ Akovenka, Vidav ičij Dim “Kivo-Mogilâns’ka akademia”, Kiv 2005; – Spanish: Por qué tengo razón en todo, transl. by Anna Rubió Rodon and Jerzy Slawomirski, Melusina, Barcelona 2007. Wśród znajomych. O różnych ludziach mądrych, zacnych, interesujących i o tym, jak czasy swoje urabiali (“Between Friends”; a collection of essays), ed. by Zbigniew Mentzel, Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków 2004; 2005. The Two Eyes of Spinoza and Other Essays on Philosophers, transl. by Agnieszka Kołakowska and others, ed. by Zbigniew Jankowski, South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press 2004. O co nas pytają wielcy filozofowie (Questions from Great Philosophers; Series I-III). Series I: O co nas pytają wielcy filozofowie. Seria I, Znak, Kraków 2004. Series II: O co nas pytają wielcy filozofowie. Seria II, Znak, Kraków 2005. Series III: O co nas pytają wielcy filozofowie. Seria III, Znak, Kraków 2006. Series I-III: O co nas pytają wielcy filozofowie. Trzy serie, Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków 2008.

140

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55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

Bibliography of Leszek Kolakowski’s Writings

In Spanish: Las preguntas de los grandes filósofos, transl. by Anna Rubió and Jerzy Slawomirski, Arcadia, Barcelona 2008; Sobre o que nos perguntam os grandes filósofos, Vol. I, transl. by Tomasz Lychowski, Civilização Brasileira, Rio de Janeiro 2009. Sobre o que nos perguntam os grandes filósofos, Vol. II, transl. by Tomasz Lychowski, Civilização Brasileira, Rio de Janeiro 2009. Sobre o que nos perguntam os grandes filósofos, Vol. III, transl. by Henryk Siewierski, Civilização Brasileira, Rio de Janeiro 2009; – English: Why is there something rather than nothing? 23 Questions from great philosophers, transl. by Agnieszka Kołakowski, Allen Lane 2007; Basic Books, New York 2007; Penguin Books 2008; – Dutch: Waarom is er iets en niet niets?, transl. by Sabine Gilleman, Klement/Pelckmans 2009; – Italian: Piccole lezioni su grandi filosofi, transl. by Viviana Nosilia, Angelo Colla Editore, Costabissara (Vicenza) 2010; – German: Was fragen uns die grossen Philosophen, transl. by Nina Kozlowski, Reclam Verlag, Leipzig 2006. Czas ciekawy, czas niespokojny. Z Leszkiem Kołakowskim rozmawia Zbigniew Mentzel [conversations with Professor Leszek Kołakowski], Vol. I, Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków 2007; Vol II: 2008. In Serbian: Zanimliba wriemiena, niemirna wriemiena, Vol. I, transl. by Wiserka Rajćuh, Głasnik, Belgrad 2009. Ułamki filozofii. Najbardziej wysłużone i najczęściej cytowane zdania filozofów z komentarzem (“Philosophical Fragments”), Prószyński i S-ka, Warszawa 2008. Czy Pan Bóg jest szczęśliwy i inne pytania (a collection of essays), ed. by Zbigniew Mentzel, Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków 2009. Debata filozoficzna Królika z Dudkiem o Sprawiedliwości (“The Philosophical Debate on Justice”; Polish only), Muchomor, Warszawa 2009. Nasza wesoła Apokalipsa. Wybór najważniejszych esejów (a collection of essays), ed. by Zbigniew Mentzel, Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków 2010. Herezja (“Heresy”; Polish only), Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków 2010. Kościół w krainie wolności. O Janie Pawle II, Kościele i chrześcijaństwie (a collection of essays about John Paul II, Church and Christianity), ed. by Zbigniew Mentzel, Wydawnictwo Znak, Kraków 2011.