to shape the opinions of the Polish intellectual opposition. His essay "Theses on Hope and Hopelessness," in the Paris Polish-language journal Kultura (1971) proposed an evolutionary strategy designed to weaken the system. His concept inspired the activities of the Committee for the Defense of Workers and of the "Flying University," of which Kolakowski was a foreign member.

The relationships between freedom and belief, examined in many different contexts, have been lifelong themes of his scholarly work, and are displayed fully in a wide range of essays written in a non-technical language and accessible to a wide range of readers. In his, "The Death of Utopia Reconsidered" (1983), he explains his view of philosophy:

The cultural role of philosophy is not to deliver the truth but to build the spirit ofYale, and from 1981 to 1994 was a professor part-time in the Committee on Social Thought and the department of philosophy at the University of Chicago. He has been a fellow of scholarly societies in many countries and has received numerous academic honors and awards.

What Kolakowski exemplifies and defends is the treatment of every individual as a rational and freely acting subject, aware that there is a spiritual side of life, able to have faith, yet eschewing absolute certainty of either an empirical or transcendental sort. It is the essence of a vibrant human culture to honor the universality of human rights while welcoming conflict of values, and repeated self- questioning, with what he calls "an inconsistent scepticism:"

I do not believe that human culture can ever reach a