Polish Philosopher Wins $1M Kluge Prize
By CARL HARTMAN Associated Press Writer
November 5, 2003, 12:18 AM EST
WASHINGTON -- Leszek Kolakowski, an anti-communist Polish philosopher at Oxford University in England, will receive the first $1 million John W. Kluge prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities.
"Out of deep scholarship and relentless inquiry, Leszek Kolakowski made clear from within the Soviet system the intellectual bankruptcy of the Marxist ideology and the necessity of freedom, tolerance and diversity and the search for transcendence for re-establishing individual dignity," said James H. Billington, the librarian of Congress, in announcing the award.
The prize was established by Kluge, founding chairman of the library's private sector advisory body, the James Madison Council, to reward achievement in subjects such as anthropology, history, philosophy and religion for which no Nobel prizes are given.
Born in 1927 in Radom, Poland, Kolakowski grew up under German occupation and the communist government that succeeded it after Soviet forces pushed out the Germans. He began his career as an orthodox Marxist and was sent by the Polish Communist Party from Warsaw University to Moscow for advanced study.
After he returned, he wrote a critique of Stalinism called "What is Socialism?" The Polish government banned it, and the Communist Party expelled him in 1966, first from the party, then from his professorship at Warsaw University where he had chaired the section on the history of philosophy.
Kolakowski has written more than 30 books in Polish, French, English and German, including a three-volume "Main Currents of Marxism: Its Rise, Growth and Dissolution."
He became an active adviser and supporter of the Solidarity movement in Poland, which played a seminal role in undermining Communism in Eastern Europe. After going into exile he taught philosophy at McGill University in Montreal; the University of California, Berkeley; Yale University; and the University of Chicago. He is now a senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.
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