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A Conversation With Leszek Kolakowski
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13152 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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11 / 1987 |
2,409 Words |
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Mihajlo Mihajlov
Mihajlo Mihajlov is a special analyst for Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty covering ideological and intellectual
affairs in Eastern Europe. He is the author of Underground
Notes and other works. |
Recently Leszek Kolakowski's essay "Idolatry of Politics" has been published in several languages. In fact, the essay is Kolakowski's Thomas Jefferson lecture, delivered in 1986 when he was chosen as the recipient of the annual National Endowment for the Humanities Jefferson Award.
Leszek Kolakowski has lived in the West for many years, teaching philosophy at Oxford and at the University of Chicago. In his youth, Kolakowski was a Marxist and taught at Warsaw University until 1968. Wide fame came to him as far back as 1956, when he published a compelling analysis of the Stalinist system under the "What is not Socialism."
In the West, he graduated from the criticism of Stalinism to the negation of Marxism itself. His three-volume History of Marxism is widely regarded as a classic of post-Marxist thought. Leszek Kolakowski was interviewed on the subject of his essay "Idolatry of Politics" by the Yugoslav author Mihajlo Mihajlov.
Mihajlov: Your essay brought to mind a principle fashioned by Lev Shestov that sounded rather weird at the turn of the century but tallies with your essay beautifully. Shestov said: "People of genius usually beget idiots. Thus alchemists gave rise to chemists." His main idea was that the loss of nonpolitical, spiritual links among individuals, the loss of the sense of the eternal, the loss of roots brought about the replacement of alchemy which sought the stone of wisdom and eternal life by means of a crass chemistry looking for such things as fabric dyes. So reading your essay, I kept coming back to Shestov's saying, because, as I understand it, your principal idea is that the idol of politics universally worshiped
... (1998 of 14674 Characters)
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