A distinguished Polish philosopher and historian of ideas, known for his incisive critical analysis of Marxist thought and his later focus on religious questions. His work emphasizes learning history to understand who we are, rather than how to behave or succeed. In Poland, he is revered not only as an intellectual but also as an icon of opposition to communism. He has been described as a "thinker for our time," whose arguments, though critical, were presented in a way that respected intellectual opponents.
Features essays about communism and socialism, the problem of evil, Erasmus and the reform of the Church, reason and truth, and whether God is happy. This book deals with some of the eternal problems of philosophy and the most vital questions of our age.
There are questions that have intrigued the world's great thinkers over the ages. They are questions that can teach us about the way we live, relate to each other and see the world. This work explores the essence of these ideas, introducing figures from Socrates to Thomas Aquinas, and concentrates on one philosophical question from each of them.
Known in the English-speaking world mainly as the author of Main Currents of Marxism (1976), and in France as the author of the monumental study Chrétiens sans Eglise (1966), in his Two Eyes of Spinoza and Other Essays on Philosophers Leszek Kolakowski offers the English-speaking reader for the first time a significant selection of his early writings. Originally written in Polish, German, and French, this collection is his first book ever in English on seventeenth-century thought, which subject he has been writing on since "Individual and Infinity: Freedom and Antinomies of Freedom in the Philosophy of Spinoza" was published in 1957. Included in Two Eyes of Spinoza are essays on "The Philosophical Role of the Reformation" and the "Mystical Heresy," on Uriel da Costa, Spinoza, Gassendi, and Pierre Bayle, but also on Freud, Marx, Avenarius, and Heidegger. Also included is Kolakowski's well-known essay "The Priest and the Jester," in which he considers the question of the theological heritage in contemporary thought
Leszek Kolakowski discusses, in a highly original way, the arguments for and against the existence of God as they have been conducted through the ages. He examines the critiques of religious belief, from the Epicureans through Nietzsche to contemporary anthropological inquiry, the assumptions that underlie them, and the counter-arguments of such apologists as Descartes, Leibniz, and Pascal.His exploration of the philosophy of religion covers the historical discussions of the nature and existence of evil, the importance of the concepts of failure and eternity to the religious impulse, the relationship between skepticism and mysticism, and the place of reason, understanding, and in models of religious thought. He examines why people, throughout known history, have cherished the idea of eternity and existence after death, and why this hope has been dependent on the worship of an eternal reality. He confronts the problems of meaning in religious language.
Kołakowski shows how Henri Bergson sought to reconcile Darwin's theory with his own beliefs about the nature of the universe. Bergson believed that time could be thought of in two different ways: as an abstract measuring device used for practical purposes, or as durée, the "real" time we actually experience. He also held that all matter is propelled by an internal élan vital, or life-drive, and that the life of the universe is constantly creative and unpredictable. On the basis of these ideas he constructed a system of thought that embraced his views on memory, matter, consciousness, movement, religious morality, and the nature of laughter. His pantheistic and dynamic vision of the universe, which emerged at a time of crisis in Western intellectual life, was symptomatic of the struggle between a rigid scientific determinism and the Christian tradition of a divine creation.
This text reflects on the centuries-old debate in Christianity: how do we reconcile the existence of evil in the world with the goodness of an omnipotent God, and how does God's omnipotence relate to people's responsibility for their own salvation or damnation?
In this collection of essays, Leszek Kolakowski delves into some of the most intellectually vigorous questions of our time.