Religious Theory And Reflection On The Modernity Of Leszek Kolakowski

During the socialist reform in East Europe from 1950s to 1960s, a series of theorists, showcasing Marxist tradition of Humanistic theory, radically opposed to Stalinism and dogmatism, emerged and took on themselves as their duty to reconstruct humanist Marxism and humanist, democratic Socialism. They were historically called East European Neo-Marxists, among which, Leszek Kolakowski is undoubtedly at a position of a leader. But by the latter half of his theoretical life, huge changes occurred to his thoughts. Faced with historical bottlenecks of western society and culture, he designed a very different way out based on religion, i.e. to achieve salvation of the crisis along with the disappear of transcendence appeal and the fall of spirit during the process of modernization through a regression to traditional Christian religious beliefs featured by unconditional trust and loyalty in individual morality. To prove his theory, Leszek Kolakowski placed the emergence, growth, decline, rejuvenation, historical mission and current mission of Christianity into the grand background of western culture and modern vision. On the one hand, this unique theory structure, for modern theory and religious philosophy themselves, was indeed an innovation and development; on the other hand, considering the background of East European Marxism, Leszek Kolakowski’s religious theory can be seen as his finding of a replacement after his misreading of Marxism, then disappointment, to final abandonment. Therefore, this theory, besides its shared shortages with other religious philosophy, exhibis a contradictory feature on the whole, which is, the conflict between the critical perspective of Marxist dialectics plus East European Neo-Marxist humanism and the religious standpoint.