This spring, Claremont McKenna College hosted one of the eminent figures in the world of ideas, Leszek Kolakowski. Philosopher, historian, theologian, political scientist, literary critic, and playwright, Kolakowski has been a professor at the University of Chicago and a senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. He is renowned worldwide for the depth and breadth of his interests, which include the impact of the Enlightenment, his critical examination of Marxism, and his exploration of the questions of religion and myth.

As a young chair of Warsaw University’s philosophy department, Kolakowski became one of revisionist communism’s harshest critics, arguing that democratic communism would be like “fried snowballs.” Expelled from Poland, Kolakowski taught in Berkeley and Chicago while writing his magisterial three-volume study, Main Currents of Marxism.

In his writings, Kolakowski argued that self-organized social groups could gradually and peacefully expand the spheres of civil society in a totalitarian state, and his thinking helped inspire the dissident movements of the 1970s that led to Solidarity and, eventually, to the collapse of communism in Europe in 1989. He is author of more than 30 books, including The Alienation of Reason, The Presence of Myth, Modernity on Endless Trial, and God Owes You Nothing, a study of philosopher Blaise Pascal.

During his two-month stay at CMC as a Podlich Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Professor Kolakowski gave two public lectures, On Natural Law and The Future of Truth. He also met individually with students and faculty and taught a seminar, Science and Faith in Modern Literature, during which students examined writings by Pascal, Dostoevsky, Melville, Frost, and Milosz, among others. These are excerpts from an interview with Professor Kolakowksi conducted by CMC literature professor Robert Faggen.

Faggen: What do you believe are the important questions of philosophy?

Kolakowski: One may say in general that many traditional questions in philosophy still persist: By what criteria do we decide what is real and what is not? What is justice? Is there a concept of justice that does not depend on human decisions? Does the world as it is produce such qualities as good and evil, or are such terms, as many have argued since the ancient Sophists, just arbitrary concoctions? Can we imagine a world in which common logical rules wouldn’t work? What do we do with theological concepts that theologians say are often untranslatable into common parlance, so that whatever we say about God can never be literal? If God is a reality that is hidden, can it be approached despite our consciousness that it is hidden? Such questions are within the horizons of ordinary readers. As questions, they are not “professional,” if the word should be used at all when speaking about philosophy.

Faggen: Is there a distinction between philosophy and academic philosophy?

Kolakowski: If there is one, it is not important. There are some aspects of philosophical thinking that require certain training or education—knowledge of tradition, classical languages, formal logic. But I think that what is truly important in philosophy can be explained without it. Philosophers have long written not for philosophers, but for the larger, educated public. So Descartes, Spinoza, and even Kant hoped to convey their thinking to the greater public and play a role in persuading people to think in new ways.

Faggen: Is there ever anything new in philosophy?

Kolakowski: I think we are all epigones, and we shouldn’t worry about it. What was really important in philosophy was probably phrased by the Greeks, but obviously we have to invent a new language adapted to changing culture and the habits of various civilizations to express the same or very similar concerns.

Faggen: In your more recent work, you continue to address many questions about religion. Do you find philosophers dismissive or skeptical of a philosophy of religion?

Kolakowski: Of course, the greatest skeptics remain unknown because they never write anything. But there are many who believe that in the matter of religion there is nothing to discuss, because nothing can be said. Ayer once said that theological questions or statements are not false, but meaningless. It is a point of view common among contemporary analytical philosophers but, of course, has a much older.

"Unlike animals, and unlike angels, we are able to choose between good and evil," Leszek Kolakowski says.