Leszek Kolakowski: Jester at the Court of Marxism

The name of Leszek Kolakowski is famous outside the borders of his native Poland and far beyond the circle of professional philosophers, not because his doctrines are exciting like Sartre’s or his discoveries pioneering like Galileo’s, but because his much more modest achievements aroused the displeasure of the authorities. Deprived of his university chair and expelled from the Polish Communist party, he now lives in his homeland as an exile. These seem poor reasons to read a philosopher —as though one were to study cogito ergo sum because Descartes caught pneumonia in Queen Christina’s chambers. One might enjoy Spinoza’s philosophy without the knowledge of his excommunication. But in Kolakowski’s case, the philosophy is so intimately interwoven with the fight against orthodoxy that one could describe it as a primer on how to be a heretic. He did not, like Galileo, just accidentally and unsuspectingly clash with the authorities; rather, the form and content of his philosophy are the strategy and tactics of nonconformist thought, particularly in countries where “The Office” provides “The Truth” for everyone.

Kolakowski’s fight with “The Office” is reflected in his impish tactics, a few examples of which will lead us right into the center of his thinking. Some of these little stratagems are merely verbal hedges, permitting the author to shoot from behind a cover. Thus he complains about “r...