Böcker av Leszek Kolakowski

With this text, Leszek Kolakowski demonstrates that no matter how hard man strives for purely rational thought, there has always been - and always will be - a resevoir of mythical images that lend "being" and "consciousness" a specifically human meaning.

Can nature make us happy? How can we know anything? What is justice? Why is there evil in the world? What is the source of truth? Is it possible for God not to exist? Can we really believe what we see? There are questions that have intrigued the world s great thinkers over the ages, which still touch a cord in all of us today. They are questions that can teach us about the way we live, work, relate to each other and see the world. Here, one of the world s greatest living philosophers, Leszek Kolakowski, explores the essence of these ideas, introducing figures from Socrates to Thomas Aquinas, Descartes to Nietzsche and concentrating on one single important philosophical question from each of them. Whether reflecting on good and evil, truth and beauty, faith and the soul, or free will and consciousness, Kolakowski shows that these timeless ideas remain at the very core of our existence.

This text reflects on the centuries-old debate in Christianity: how do we reconcile the existence of evil in the world with the goodness of an omnipotent God, and how does God's omnipotence relate to people's responsibility for their own salvation or damnation?

In this collection of essays, Leszek Kolakowski delves into some of the most intellectually vigorous questions of our time.

Kolakowski shows how Henri Bergson sought to reconcile Darwin's theory with his own beliefs about the nature of the universe. Bergson believed that time could be thought of in two different ways: as an abstract measuring device used for practical purposes, or as duree, the "real" time we actually experience. He also held that all matter is propelled by an internal elan vital, or life-drive, and that the life of the universe is constantly creative and unpredictable. On the basis of these ideas he constructed a system of thought that embraced his views on memory, matter, consciousness, movement, religious morality, and the nature of laughter. His pantheistic and dynamic vision of the universe, which emerged at a time of crisis in Western intellectual life, was symptomatic of the struggle between a rigid scientific determinism and the Christian tradition of a divine creation.

'The most esteemed philosopher to have produced a general introduction to his discipline since Bertrand Russell' Independent In these essays, one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century writes about communism and socialism, the problem of evil, Erasmus and the reform of the Church, reason and truth, and whether God is happy. Accessible and absorbing, the essays in Is God Happy? deal with some of the eternal problems of philosophy and the most vital questions of our age. Leszek Kolakowski has also written on religion, Spinoza, Bergson, Pascal and seventeenth-century thought. He left communist Poland after his expulsion from Warsaw University for anti-communist activities. From 1970 he was a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.'His distinctive mix of irony and moral seriousness, religious sensibility and epistemological scepticism, social engagement and political doubt was truly rare ... a true Central European intellectual-perhaps the last' Tony Judt, The New York Times Review of Books

Leszek Kolakowski's masterpiece, one of the twentieth century's most important books-for the first time in a one-volume paperback.