This volume is devoted to the person and work of Leszek Kolakowski who died in July 2009. At
the turn of the 1940s and 1950s Leszek Kolakowski belonged to a group of young intellectuals
actively supporting on the ideological front and in the University of Warsaw the new political
agendas of Marxist provenance introduced in Poland. But already in 1955-56 he came to the fore
of a movement of philosophical revisionists radically questioning the validity of these Marxist
prescriptions. This resulted in his expulsion from the Communist Party in the early 1960s then
from the University and finally from Poland after the March events in 1968. Presented in this
volume are on the one hand texts drawing up a historical balance sheet of theoretical
achievements of Leszek Kolakowski (articles by Andrzej Walicki and Andrew Targowski) and on
the other essays devoted to certain aspects of his philosophical position (articles by Marcin
Król Zofia Rosinska Janusz Dobieszewski Witold Mackiewicz and Janusz Kuczynski). Also
presented in this volume are some occasional essays sketching a portrait of Leszek Kolakowski
(by Marek J. Siemek Karol Toeplitz and Jerzy Szacki). The book is closed with an extensive
bibliography.
