Ideology and Inconsistency

In a recent essay (“In Defense of Inconsistency” DISSENT Spring 1964), the Polish writer Leszek Kolakowski characterizes the consistent man of action as one who is ready to impose his views “by war, by aggression, by provocation, by blackmail, by murder, by intimidation, by terror, by massacre, and by torture.” This portrait is calculated to shock us morally and Kolakowski, taking a humanist stance, opts for inconsistency. He praises “the breed of the hesitant and the weak, the breed of the inconsistent.”

The problem Kolakowski raises is a familiar one. Those who are bent on socially desirable aims may be forced by circumstance to employ methods that punish the innocent and pinion the helpless...