Press Releases 2003
Library of Congress Awards Philosopher Leszek Kołakowski First $1 Million Kluge Prize for the Humanities
6 November 2003 |
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The Librarian of Congress, Dr. James H. Billington, announced on
November 5 the award of the first John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime
Achievement in the Human Sciences to Leszek Kołakowski. Professor
Kołakowski, who now resides in Oxford, England, was born in Radom,
Poland, in 1927, is a philosopher focused on important questions, an
historian of human thought, an essayist of enormous range, and an
outstanding spokesman for, and exemplar of, European culture.
The
Kluge Prize of one million dollars is given for lifetime achievement in
the humanities and social sciences -- areas of scholarship for which
there are no Nobel Prizes. These disciplines include philosophy,
history, political science, anthropology, sociology, religion,
linguistics and criticism in the arts and literature. Nominators for
the prize were asked to recommend preeminent scholars in any of these
or other closely related fields whose work was recognized as
outstanding by their peers.
Professor Kołakowski is the author
of more than 30 books and 400 other writings in a wide variety of
formats and in four languages: primarily in Polish, but also in French,
English and German. His principal lines of inquiry have been in the
history of philosophy and the philosophy of religion.
In
announcing the award, Dr. Billington commented: "Very rarely can one
identify a deep, reflective thinker who has had such a wide range of
inquiry and demonstrable importance to major political events in his
own time. Out of deep scholarship and relentless inquiry, Leszek
Kołakowski made clear from within the Soviet system the intellectual
bankruptcy of the Marxist ideology, and the necessity of freedom,
tolerance of diversity and the search for transcendence for
reestablishing individual dignity. His voice was fundamental for the
fate of Poland, and influential in Europe as a whole. In addition to
his sustained anti-dogmatic philosophical inquiries, he writes essays
that are readable, provocative, and sometimes ironic and humorous. With
charm, resourcefulness and gentle self-mockery, he raises questions
about the sometimes mindless modernity of contemporary Europe and North
America. He is a true humanist: philosopher, intellectual historian and
cultural critic. Throughout his creative life he has asked big
questions with the kind of intellectual honesty and depth that we have
sought to honor with the John W. Kluge Prize."
