Free Republic

July 24, 2009, 0:00 p.m. Leszek Kolakowski, 1927–2009Remembering the great philosophical pathologist of Marxism. By George Weigel Cracow, Poland — Leszek Kolakowski, who died at 82 on July 17, will be remembered by the world of letters as one of the leading philosophers of the late 20th century, a man whose magisterial Main Currents of Marxism will be read centuries from now by anyone interested in getting at the intellectual roots of one of modernity’s most consequential — and lethal — bodies of thought. His native Poland will remember Kolakowski as one of a small group of intellectuals who,...

"Utopians are people who dream about ensuring for mankind the position of pensioner and who are convinced that this position is so splendid that no sacrifices... are too great to achieve it," he writes. But the communist fantasy can be realized only through ruthlessness, and this is always so: There is no "reason to expect that it can ever come true, except in the cruel form of despotism," he explains, adding, as somone with firsthand knowledge of communism at work, "and despotism is a desparate simulation of paradise." "Evil, I contend, is... a stubborn and unredeemable fact," he avers. Why...

Press Release (http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/031105/lnw015_1.html) Source: Library of Congress Library of Congress Announces Winner of First John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities and Social Sciences Wednesday November 5, 11:13 am ET WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- The Librarian of Congress, Dr. James H. Billington, announced today the award of the first John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Human Sciences to Leszek Kolakowski. Professor Kolakowski, who now resides in Oxford, England, was born in Radom, Poland in 1927, is a philosopher focused on important questions, an historian of human thought, an essayist of enormous range, and...