I'm on a Kolakowski binge. I've re-read Metaphysical Horror (Basil Blackwell, 1988) and Husserl and the Search for Certitude (U. of Chicago, 1975). I purchased the first at Dillon's Bookstore, Bloomsbury, London, near Russell's Square in late August, 1988. Auspicious, eh? I was in the U. K. to read a paper at the World Congress of Philosophy in Brighton. Both of the aforementioned books are outstanding even if the translations are inadequate. But knowing the ideas, I can figure out how the translation should have gone.
Kolakowsi is erudition on stilts. The man's range is stunning. While some of his essays are sketchy, he can be scholarly when he wants to be, as witness his magisterial three-volumed Main Currents of Marxism.
Kolakowski began as a communist but soon saw through the destructive ideology. For the great sin of speaking the truth, he was stripped of his academic post and prohibited from teaching in Poland. He found refuge in Canada, The U. S. A. and the U.K. When the Left takes over the West, where will dissident truth-tellers go? Here is what Kirkus has to say about the exciting book I am now reading:
GOD OWES US NOTHING: A BRIEF REMARK ON PASCAL'S RELIGION AND ON THE SPIRIT OF JANSENISM
A provocative critique of the Jansenist movement and of its celebrated proponent Blaise Pascal, from internationally renowned scholar Kolakowski (The Alienation of Reason, 1968, etc.; Committee on Social Thought/Univ. of Chicago). Jansenism, the powerful 17th-century heresy condemned by Rome, has often been called the Catholic form of Calvinism. Inspired by the writings of Bishop Cornelius Jansen of Utrecht, the Jansenists claimed to be orthodox disciples of St. Augustine and taught that salvation was gratuitous in a way that ruled out any human cooperation. Since those whom God had freely predestined would inevitably be saved, Jesus Christ died only for the elect; all others would be justly condemned to eternal torments, irrespective of whether they were good or bad, including unbaptized babies. Human nature was totally corrupted by sin, especially original sin. Kolakowski gives us a detailed account, with copious quotations, both of St. Augustine and of the positions of Jansen and his followers, and he guides us through the central questions of the debate. He devotes the second half of his study to the writings of Pascal, whose profound pessimism he sees as embodying the Jansenists' world-denying ideals. The arts, free intellectual inquiry, and even hugging one's children had no place in what Kolakowski calls Pascal's religion of unhappiness. The author rarely refers to other studies of this great controversy. He is surely being malicious when he holds that Rome's rejection of Jansenism was a compromise with the world and a de facto abandonment of the Church's tradition, since he presents the latter in an overly Augustinian form, choosing to ignore, for example, the Eastern Fathers, Aquinas, and the basic doctrine that the human person, endowed with free will, is made in the image of God. Brilliantly cynical presentation of an unpopular but still influential religious outlook.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-226-45051-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995
Categories: PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION
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