Leszek Kolakowski

It takes great courage to write what you truly believe. It takes an extraordinary writer to inspire others to believe. Leszek Kolakowski, polish writer, carrying the torch of freedom, has been gifted with both courage and inspiring prose.

"Kolakowski's copious works include The Priest and the Jester (1959), a collection of essays that criticize all orthodoxy and dogmatism, and Towards a Marxist Humanism (1970), in which he stresses human freedom of thought and choice as essential to life." - The Jerusalem Post

Leszek Kolakowski ( born 23 October 1927 in Radom, Poland ) is a Polish philosopher and historian of ideas. Kolakowski on religion and the meaning of life, "A hypothetical world from which the sacred had been swept away would admit of only two possibilities: vain fantasy that recognizes itself as such, or immediate satisfaction which exhausts itself. It would leave only the choice proposed by Baudelaire, between lovers of prostitutes and lovers of clouds: those who know only the satisfactions of the moment and are therefore contemptible, and those who lose themselves in otiose imaginings, and are therefore contemptible. Everything is then contemptible, and there is no more to be said" - Wikipedia

Tells you that he's more of a philosopher than a writer or social activist. That is what lies at the core of his strength and character. He's got his sticky fingers on one hand dipping deep into the abstract, from which flow his conviction, his faith and his love of the individual and freedom. And all this while the fingers on his other hand are busy noting down the flow of history and the surrounding reality.

The result is a writer whose work is a fine blend of real-world problems, with a bedrock of unshakable faith and respect for the individual. Which is why Leszek Kolakowski was awarded The Jerusalem Prize. He is also the winner of the first John W. Kluge Prize from The Library of Congress for 'Lifetime Achievement in the Human Sciences'.