"The Origins of Dialectic" by Leszek Kołakowski (Pre-Read)

Leszek Kołakowski started his academic career as a Marxist and a convinced communist in post-war Poland. Later in life he became one of the major critics of communism and he got exiled from Poland. His two main areas of expertise were Marxism and Metaphysics (among others Spinoza and Pascal).

As an adviser and supporter of the Solidarity trade union, which challenged the communist regime in Poland, Kolakowski played a practical as well as theoretical part in the collapse of the Soviet empire in the late 1980s.

Please read the first chapter of Kołakowski's book Main Currents of Marxism: Its Rise, Growth, and Dissolution (page 7 to 70 of the book pagination) in advance.

Kołakowski's most influential work, it describes the principal currents of Marxist thought and chronicled the origins, rise, and decline of Marxist communism.

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This group examines the history of Metaphysics by looking primarily at European thinkers in chronological order. Great effort is made to include lesser known thinkers whose thought has historical significance. We will occasionally examine non-European metaphysics too to provide context and comparison.

After concluding our historical overview of Western Metaphysics, we focus on oral and pre-Modern societies.

Other meetings in the History of Metaphysics series:

November 1, Aztec Metaphysics
November 8, Feminism and Metaphysics
November 15, Zhuangzi
November 22, Emerson
November 29, Pyrrho and Buddhism
December 6; African Cosmology
December 13, The Greeks and The Irrational