Agnieszka Kołakowska

(b. 1960) – a classical philologist, philosopher, translator and journalist. The daughter of Leszek Kołakowski.

‘Wojny kultur i inne wojny’ (The Cultures Wars and Other Wars, 2010) is her debut book of essays. It is made up of texts from 2000–10, originally published in Rzeczpospolita, Teologia Polityczna, Przegląd Polityczny, Znak, Życie, Wprost and Zeszyty Karmelitańskie.

Agnieszka Kołakowska was among the nine authors in the ‘9 Wigilii’ (9 Christmas Eves, 2007) anthology. She contributed a novella, ‘Czwarty, który nie zdążył’ (The Fourth, Who Didn’t Make It), based on a legendary Christmas motif – apart from the Three Wise Men who, according to the Bible, paid tribute to the newborn God, there was meant to be a fourth, who so cared for people that he helped others on the road to Bethlehem; as he was late, he only arrived in time for Golgotha. The Fourth, Who Didn’t Make It thus joins the finest tradition of novellas that contain a metaphysical riddle.

Yet Kołakowska is best known for her essays that go beyond the standard journalistic views. Unlike her purely literary work, her philosophical/political sketches contain opinions formed with emphasis on the certainty of her judgements. She appeals to intellectual honesty, clarity of statement, and her preferred values include classical liberalism and rationality. Some of her pieces are polemical, marking a position she has taken in public debates. The statements against which she discusses thus become the immediate context of her essays.

Kołakowska addresses today’s pressing issues: political correctness, European integration, immigration, the secular state. Her journalistic and essay style is very precise, clarity of thought is elevated to an ethical imperative. The contemporary thinkers she admires and quotes include American conservative Gertrude Himmelfarb. An influence this rationalist essayist, who is critical of leftist thought, and Marxism in particular, came from studying Leszek Kołakowski’s Main Currents of Marxism. She edited another one of his books – Metaphysical Horror (2001).

She has been honoured with the Andrzej Kijowski Award for The Cultures Wars and Other Wars (2012) and the Feniks Catholic Publishers’ Association Award for ‘Plaga słowików’ (A Plague of Nightingales, 2017).