Józef Tischner’s question about Leszek Kołakowski’s “basic conviction”

In the present research paper I focus on the issues concerned with the perspective adopted by Rev. Józef Tischner in his review of Leszek Kołakowski’s life and philosophical work. I demonstrate – which is the main purpose of the paper – that this perspective is determined by the Tischnerian discovery of the so-called “basic conviction” in Kołakowski’s writings. Such a conviction was of crucial significance for his philosophical apologetics of Marxism as well as his radical criticism of the Church, and communism founded on Marxism. As Józef Tischner poses the question about the “basic conviction,” he proves that in Kołakowski’s philosophy from the beginning it centres around ethical issues, and in particular the idea of human rights. It is in these that Tischner discerns the central theme in Leszek Kołakowski’s philosophy. In this way Tischner paints a picture of Kołakowski as a philosopher of actually one thought which matures in his work at various levels, but above all at the level of understanding of man, religion and the Church.