Leszek Kolakowski, 1927-2009

News has reached us that the great anti-Marxist philosopher and intellectual Leszek Kolakowski has died , in England at the age of eighty-one. A First Things contributor, he will be missed by all us.

His essays in First Things include:

• Visions of Eternity , and
• What Is Left of Socialism ,

while Robert Royal examined Kolakowski’s work in Modernity on Endless Trial and Zbigniew Janowski in Main Currents of Kolakowski .

I imagine the earth when I am no more , as Czeslaw Milosz once wrote.

Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a strange pageant,
Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the valley.
Yet the books will be there on the shelves.