Leszek Kolakowski: The importance of keep on thinking the irresoluble

Abstract

After the presentation and the biographical outline, a few core aspects of Kolakowski’s work are taken into consideration: the criticism of Marxism, the interest in religion and the metaphysical questioning. His connoisseurship of classical sources and of the leading trends in present-day philosophy, together with his follow-up of the controversies of our time, account for Kolakowski’s philosophical cosmopolitanism, notwithstanding the independence of his thinking, nourished by tensions whose upholding —rather than the unilateral positioning by one stance or the other— is of the essence. Even when a social order and a system of thought cannot be called upon to solve our questions, the thinking that takes them into account, instead of endeavouring in waiving them, has the advantage of showing us why, even if we cannot unravel them painstakingly, it is important for us to keep posing them.