Leszek Kolakowski

Leszek Kolakowski was one of those figures of the dissident world of the Communist era who began as an ardent Marxist and then, without in any sense becoming a religious believer, became disillusioned with Marxism. He then became a leading figure in the opposition to Marxism in Poland, before travelling to the West. He was a fierce critic of those in the West who defended Communist ideology. Kolakowski's obituary in the Daily Telegraph gives quite a good account of his life and writings.

I was particularly struck by the following paragraph from the obituary:

The relationship between freedom and political or religious beliefs, examined in many different contexts, was one of the main themes of Kolakowski's scholarship. The centre of his post-Marxist conceptual universe was the individual – a rational and freely acting subject, aware that there is a spiritual side of life, yet eschewing absolute certainty of either an empirical or transcendental sort: "I do not believe that human culture can ever reach a perfect synthesis of its diversified and incompatible components", he said. "Its very richness is supported by this very incompatibility of its ingredients. And it is the conflict of values, rather than their harmony, that keeps our culture alive."

The notion of a "rational and freely acting subject" has a recognisable echo in the way in which human action is taken as the starting point of the analysis of John Paul II's The Acting Person. The destination of John Paul II's thought, however, will be very different. And, in the context of contemporary Western culture - with its "dictatorship of relativism" - the relationship of individual freedom to political/ideological and religious beliefs gains a new relevance.

The reference in the Daily Telegraph obituary to an essay entitled Theses on Hope and Hopelessness suggests that Kolakowski also has something to offer to the discussion of an idea of "civil society" which exists in a space of freedom between the individual and the state - there must be an influence here of Kolakowski on the writings of Vaclav Havel on a similar theme. This thinking was developed to describe the dissident movements in Communist controlled countries of the time - but it would apply now in a completely different context in countries such as Britain.