I am remiss for not noting the passing of Leszek Kołakowski back in July. Kolakowski was truly one of the most incisive philosophical and political minds of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Writing in The Weekly Standard, Roger Kimball points out that Kolakowski understood "that human freedom is inextricably tied to a recognition of limits, which in the end involves a recognition of the sacred. In an interview from 1991, he argued that ‘mankind can never get rid of the need for religious self-identification: who am I, where did I come from, where do I fit in, why am I responsible, what does my life mean, how will I face death? Religion is a paramount aspect of human culture. Religious need cannot be ex-communicated from culture by rationalist incantation. Man does not live by reason alone'."If he had done nothing else, writing his three volume The Main Currents of Marxism would have been enough. It remains the definitive philosophical refutation of Marx and does Marx' voluminous work justice. Of course, his contribution was far greater than that singular achievement. In addition to being eulogized in print by Roger Kimball, Christopher Hitchens also wrote a great tribute to this great man in Salon. Hitchens remembered that Kolakowski "was one of the most engagingly witty people it was possible to meet. And his wit was deployed to puncture every kind of intellectual fraud or imposture. I remember his comment when he heard that Hungarian philosopher Georg Lukacs had said that even the worst socialism was preferable to the best capitalism: 'Ah yes, the advantages of Albania over Sweden are self-evident.'"
To be so generously lauded by distinguished men of very different philosophical, not to mention politial, persuasions, gives one insight into the greatness of this man.