Kolakowski Leszek - Dialogue with Kolakowski.pdf - EBOOK - antonif

Dialogue between Leszek Kolakowski

& Danny Postel

On exile, philosophy & tottering insecurely

on the edge of an unknown abyss

danny postel : You’ve been living

outside of Poland since 1968. Two de-

cades ago you wrote an essay titled “In

Praise of Exile,” though in it you don’t

discuss your own exile. Do you feel that

your exile has shaped the way you think

about and relate to the world?

leszek kolakowski : Yes. Yes, I think

so. I love the British, of course. But I

don’t feel British. I’m not an Oxonian.

Britain is an island. Oxford is an island

in Britain. All Souls is an island in Ox-

ford. And I am an island in All Souls.

I’m a quadruple island. But I don’t com-

plain. Only I don’t feel that I belong to it.

In fact, when I go to Paris, I feel more at

home than in London, even though I’ve

never lived there for more than six

months at one time.

A Fellow of the American Academy since 1970,

Leszek Kolakowski is Senior Research Fellow

Emeritus at All Souls College, Oxford. In 2003,

the Library of Congress awarded him the ½rst

John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in

the Human Sciences. His books include “The In-

dividual and In½nity” (1958), “The Philosophy

of Existence, the Defeat of Existence” (1965),

“Husserl and the Search for Certitude” (1975),

“‘If There is no God’” (1982), “Metaphysical

Horror” (1988), “The Two Eyes of Spinoza and

Other Essays on Philosophers” (2004), and “My

Correct Views on Everything” (2005). In Octo-

ber, W. W. Norton will publish his celebrated

three-volume “Main Currents of Marxism”

(1976–1978) in a single-volume edition.

dp : Why do you think that is?

lk : Well, probably because I know

French literature and poetry better. I

learned French early. I would say French

is my best second language. And I think

that you really feel another culture when

you read its poetry, in the original. The

languages in which I could read poetry

in the original when I was young were

French and German and Russian–not

to speak of Polish. But not English, of

which I was ignorant.

Danny Postel is contributing editor of

openDemocracy.net and a member of the editori-

al board of “The Common Review.” His work

has appeared in “Philosophy and Social Criti-

cism,” “The Chronicle of Higher Education,”

“The Washington Post Book World,” “The Na-

tion,” “The American Prospect,” and “Logos: A

Journal of Modern Society and Culture.”

dp : Speaking of poetry, do you have any

thoughts on the death of your country-

man Czeslaw Milosz?

& Sciences

Dædalus Summer 2005

lk : I met him on my ½rst trip to Paris, at

the end of 1956. Later on, I saw him on

various occasions here and there. I have

a very, very high opinion of his poetry.

He was a great writer. He was over-

whelmed by sadness, sadness about the

world around him. Not political, but cul-

tural. He had no feeling of belonging.

Although he was Polish, he had no

motherland. He was homeless in some

way. Perhaps it was the memory of his

young days in Vilnius, where he was

brought up, which had been Polish be-

tween the wars but then became Lithu-

anian. And I liked his book The Captive

Mind very, very much. He speaks about

people whom I knew–but without men-

tioning their names. He was, during his

lifetime, strongly attacked from various

sides. He had worked for some years in

Polish diplomacy, in Paris and in Wash-

ington. He knew what Communism was

about. At a certain point, he decided to

defect. He stayed in Paris. Then he was

terribly attacked by Polish journalists

and the Polish government–writers and

apparatchiks. But he was never accepted

by Polish exiles–½rst of all, because he

had been in Polish diplomacy, so they

regarded him as an agent of the Commu-

nists. But also because he was very criti-

cal of prewar Poland.

lk : Yes, except that we weren’t quite

from the same generation. He was a

young writer before the war, whereas I

was a boy, not even twelve. But yes, I had

this feeling. I strongly disliked a certain

current in Polish culture–the national-

ism, bigotry, anti-Semitism. And yet I’ve

always been Polish.

Exile,

philosophy

& tottering

insecurely

on the

edge of an

unknown

abyss

dp : Your less than euphoric feelings

about the Western Left were strongly

colored by your year in Berkeley in 1969

–1970. Tzvetan Todorov describes a sim-

ilar experience, of fleeing a Communist

country–in his case, Bulgaria–only to

½nd himself in a heavily Communist

intellectual milieu in Paris. What was

Berkeley like for you?

lk : I found the so-called student move-

ment simply barbaric. There are of

course ignorant young people at all times

and in all places. But in Berkeley their ig-

norance was elevated to the level of the

highest wisdom. They wanted to ‘revo-

lutionize’ the university in such a way

that they wouldn’t have to learn any-

thing. They had all sorts of silly propos-

als. For instance, they wanted professors

to be appointed by students, and stu-

dents to be examined by other students.

I remember one leaflet issued by the

black student movement asserting that

the libraries contained nothing but “ir-

relevant white knowledge.”

dp : You mean the right-wing culture of

prewar Poland?

lk : Yes, the right-wing culture of Polish

Catholicism–a special kind of Catholi-

cism, full of bigotry, anti-Semitism, na-

tionalism. Of course, not everything in

Polish Catholicism was like that. But the

general atmosphere in the Church was

very distasteful to him, as was Polish po-

litical culture in general in those years.

dp : What about the student move-

ment’s opposition to the Vietnam War?

lk : I believed there were several good

reasons for America to withdraw from

Vietnam. But one reason which was

nonsense was the claim of many oppo-

nents of the war that once America with-

drew, South Vietnam would be liberated.

Everybody even minimally acquainted

with Communist politics knew that

dp : This is an outlook you shared with

Milosz.

Dædalus Summer 2005

Dialogue

between

Leszek

Kolakowski

& Danny

Postel

when the Viet Cong took over South

Vietnam it would be a disaster–oppres-

sion, despotism, massacres–as it was, of

course. It was bound to be. Everybody

should have expected that.

lk : Very gratifying, of course. I was in

Poland at the end of 1988, on a British

passport. This was my ½rst visit after

twenty years. But I knew what was go-

ing on inside the country, since I was a

member of this committee which was

formed in the 1970s, after the riots–

the Committee in Defense of Workers.

I gave many interviews in support of

this movement.

dp : As you know, Theodor Adorno’s en-

counter with the New Left was similar to

yours. He was horri½ed by the behavior

of the radical students in Frankfurt. Did

you ever meet him?

dp : Were they published in Poland?

lk : Once. It was 1958. I was allowed to

go for one year to Holland and to France,

and I was also in Germany for a short

time. So I met Adorno. I didn’t know his

work then. I remember him taking a

manuscript from his desk and waving it

furiously–a Lukács manuscript, as it

happened.

lk : No, no. It was forbidden to mention

my name in the Polish press, unless it

was to attack me. I couldn’t publish. I

was an ‘unperson.’

dp : When you went to Poland in 1988,

why did the Polish authorities let you

in?

dp : Why were you expelled from the

Polish Communist Party in 1966?

lk : Because the regime was crumbling.

It was very weak. But I was still interro-

gated by the secret police.

lk : For many years my Party member-

ship had been a joke really. But I be-

lieved, and so did many friends–prob-

ably wrongly–that there were reasons

to stay in the Party, as it gave us more

opportunity to express unorthodox

views. A number of my friends, most

of them writers, left the Party in protest

against my expulsion. But even then I

could teach whatever I wanted at the

university. Nobody interfered with my

teaching. But in 1968, I was expelled

from the university, as were a few of my

friends. There was a slander campaign

against us in the press and so on. Noth-

ing pleasant. Nevertheless, I should al-

ways remember it could have been much

worse.

dp : On what grounds?

lk : Because on the visa application for

myself and my wife, I wrote that I was

going for private reasons. And then I

took part in a meeting in which the Citi-

zens Committee was formed, with Lech

Walesa. And I had lectured at a philo-

sophical society in the university as well.

There were many people in attendance.

And so I was accused of lying by an of½-

cer who interrogated me: I had said I

was in the country for private reasons,

but then my interrogator said, referring

to the meeting with the Citizens Com-

mittee, “You participated in a secret

meeting.” I said, “What secret meeting?

Everybody heard about it. Nothing was

secret.” My meeting with Walesa was

discussed in the press. In Poland during

that period, the distinction between le-

dp : What was it like to watch one Com-

munist regime after another come tum-

bling down in 1989 and after?

Dædalus Summer 2005

gal and illegal was unclear. I asked him,

“Why do you have people follow me all

the time? Wherever I go, they follow me

in a car.” I went to the cemetery, for in-

stance, to the graves of relatives. And

then I went to visit my very old aunt, and

everywhere they followed me. But why?

He said, “They’re protecting you.” Pro-

tecting me from whom? It was ridicu-

lous.

sionally, people brought it in from

abroad. But people were afraid to pub-

lish. There were people arrested for pub-

lishing in such journals. But later on, at

the very end of the 1960s, some people

published books in Paris under their

own names.

Exile,

philosophy

& tottering

insecurely

on the

edge of an

unknown

abyss

dp : The opening line of Metaphysical

Horror reads: “A modern philosopher

who has never once suspected himself

of being a charlatan must be such a shal-

low mind that his work is probably not

worth reading.” Have you ever suspected

yourself of being a charlatan?

dp : You’ve made the point that liberal-

ization and openness are not necessarily

an effective way of preserving a totalitar-

ian regime; on the contrary, they often

lead to revolutionary upheaval and the

complete dismantling of regimes.

lk : Certainly. Many times.

lk : Think of Gorbachev’s glasnost –it

was supposed to make Communism bet-

ter but instead it ruined it.

dp : Did you see Roman Polanski’s ½lm

The Pianist ?

lk : Yes. It was very well done. I was in

Poland [when the ½lm is set, during

World War II], though not in the ghetto,

of course. But I lived among people who

helped the Jews and who lived with the

Jews in hiding. I remember Warsaw dur-

ing the ghetto uprising. I lived for some

time in a flat which was a hiding place

for Jews who were saved from the ghet-

to. Not long ago I learned that once the

Gestapo came to search all the flats, one

after another. There were two groups of

Gestapo people searching. And they

failed to visit this very flat where I was

because one group believed that it was

already searched by another group, and

vice versa. So my flat was spared. Had it

not been, we wouldn’t be talking today;

I would be a crumbling skeleton. A

friend of mine, Marek Edelman, was

one of the very few survivors of the

ghetto uprising, and one of the leaders,

actually, of the uprising. He’s still in

Poland. He saw the ½lm and said that it

was true.

dp : Do you think that having to resort to

a certain kind of Delphic or esoteric idi-

om of writing under Stalinist rule added

a dimension to the style of writers like

yourself that might never have been de-

veloped in a free society?

lk : When I was in Poland, all of us who

were intellectuals were compelled to use

a certain code language, a language that

would be acceptable in the established

framework. So we had an acute sense of

the limits of what could be said, of cen-

sorship. Of course. Occasionally our

works were con½scated. But we tried to

be intelligible without being transpar-

ent. In this period there were only a few

cases of people publishing in émigré

journals. There was a journal in Paris,

Kultura– a very good and very important

journal; obviously it was prohibited in

Poland. Nevertheless, a few copies al-

ways circulated. The members of the

Writers’ Association were even able to

read it in the library, legally. And occa-

Dædalus Summer 2005

Dialogue

between

Leszek

Kolakowski

& Danny

Postel

dp : Do you think that the experience

you were just describing–living as a

young man amongst Jews in hiding, peo-

ple fearing for their lives–do you think

that influenced you and your world-

view?

is a feeling that we lack something im-

portant. I had many discussions with

American students who had this feeling,

even if they were not brought up in a

religious tradition. They were attracted

to this tradition quite independently of

their upbringing. They felt they lacked

something in life. Not necessarily the

Church. But the need for something

spiritual goes beyond our consumerist

society. I think it’s widespread, all over

the world. So I don’t expect, as many

people did expect in the eighteenth cen-

tury and beyond, that religion will van-

ish. I don’t believe it will vanish. And I

hope it will not.

lk : Probably, but I cannot say exactly in

what way. It was, as you can imagine, a

very bad experience. I was this young

boy. I knew many people, of course, of

various persuasions. My strong feeling

was that the most dedicated and the

most courageous were on the left.

dp : Is this what attracted you to the Left

as a young man?

dp : You also wrote, in that same essay,

that “[t]here is something alarmingly

desperate in intellectuals who have no

religious attachment, faith or loyalty

proper and who insist on the irreplace-

able educational and moral role of reli-

gion in our world and deplore its fragili-

ty, to which they themselves eminently

bear witness . . . . I do not blame them . . . .

either for being irreligious or for assert-

ing the crucial value of religious experi-

ence; I simply cannot persuade myself

that their work might produce changes

they believe desirable, because to spread

faith, faith is needed and not an intellec-

tual assertion of the social utility of

faith.” I suppose we can surmise from

this that you yourself are a man of faith.

lk : Among other things, yes. And as I

said, my strong negative feelings against

a certain current in Polish culture–the

chauvinism, nationalism, anti-Semitism,

clericalism. I disliked it very strongly.

dp : In the title essay of your collection

Modernity on Endless Trial, you describe

the orthodoxy of our age as a kind of

“patching up.” “We try to assert our mo-

dernity,” you write, “but escape from its

effects by various intellectual devices, in

order to convince ourselves that mean-

ing can be restored or recovered apart

from the traditional legacy of mankind

and in spite of the destruction brought

about by modernity.” Do you view the

revival of humanism going on today–

I’m thinking of Todorov’s recent work,

for example–as an attempt at this kind

of patchwork?

lk : This I don’t want to discuss.

dp : May I ask why?

lk : I think so. There are attempts to

restore humanism very simply through

intellectual efforts. You can always re-

peat some old slogans, but I don’t expect

them to have a big impact. At the same

time, there is a revival of religious senti-

ments and ideas going on as well. There

lk : I could say why I do not want to

answer this question only by actually

answering it.

dp : You’ve long defended European

civilization and the European “project”

against its anti-imperialist and Third

Dædalus Summer 2005

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