WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.480 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. I want to start 00:00:02.480 --> 00:00:05.299 today with a mental image. Picture a demolition 00:00:05.299 --> 00:00:07.440 expert. Okay. When we think of that, we probably 00:00:07.440 --> 00:00:10.240 think of, you know, a guy in a hard hat wiring 00:00:10.240 --> 00:00:12.980 up a building with explosives to bring it down 00:00:12.980 --> 00:00:15.800 in a controlled implosion. Right. Dust, noise, 00:00:16.039 --> 00:00:18.600 crumbling concrete, the whole nine yards. Exactly. 00:00:18.780 --> 00:00:21.300 But today we are talking about a very different 00:00:21.300 --> 00:00:23.899 kind of demolition expert. We're looking at a 00:00:23.899 --> 00:00:26.980 man who walked up to one of the biggest, most, 00:00:27.160 --> 00:00:31.000 uh... terrifying structures in human history, 00:00:31.100 --> 00:00:33.619 the Soviet Union. And he didn't use dynamite. 00:00:33.640 --> 00:00:36.079 He didn't use a tank. He used a pen. He used 00:00:36.079 --> 00:00:38.679 a pen. And not just a pen, but a, well, a very 00:00:38.679 --> 00:00:42.439 dense, very academic philosophy book, which is, 00:00:42.460 --> 00:00:44.539 I think, the wildest part of this whole story. 00:00:44.700 --> 00:00:47.060 It's an incredible thought, isn't it? That ideas 00:00:47.060 --> 00:00:49.659 can have that kind of force. The man we're talking 00:00:49.659 --> 00:00:52.740 about is Leszek Kowalkowski. A man who started 00:00:52.740 --> 00:00:55.359 his life as a diehard, card -carrying, true believer 00:00:55.359 --> 00:00:57.979 communist and ended up writing the definitive 00:00:57.979 --> 00:01:00.219 work that intellectually dismantled the entire 00:01:00.219 --> 00:01:03.159 system he once worshipped. It is a fascinating, 00:01:03.399 --> 00:01:06.159 almost unbelievable trajectory. And you're not 00:01:06.159 --> 00:01:08.280 exaggerating about the power of his work. I mean, 00:01:08.299 --> 00:01:10.299 there are serious historians, serious political 00:01:10.299 --> 00:01:14.319 scientists who credit Kuzhokovsky with helping 00:01:14.319 --> 00:01:16.040 to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Empire. 00:01:16.420 --> 00:01:21.260 Wow. the Polish historian and politician, he 00:01:21.260 --> 00:01:24.079 famously called him the awakener of human hopes. 00:01:24.260 --> 00:01:26.620 That's a heavy title, the awakener. It sounds 00:01:26.620 --> 00:01:29.180 almost biblical. It does, and I think it's appropriate 00:01:29.180 --> 00:01:32.239 to understand why he earned that title. We have 00:01:32.239 --> 00:01:34.519 to treat this deep dive not just as a biography. 00:01:34.579 --> 00:01:36.340 This isn't just about where he was born and where 00:01:36.340 --> 00:01:38.599 he went to school. This is really a case study 00:01:38.599 --> 00:01:41.560 on the power of ideas. It's about the danger 00:01:41.560 --> 00:01:44.239 of ideology, the seductive nature of certainty, 00:01:44.540 --> 00:01:47.180 and, you know, the supreme importance of critical 00:01:47.180 --> 00:01:49.140 thinking. Yeah, because Chris Schakowsky isn't 00:01:49.140 --> 00:01:51.540 just a figure for the history books. As I was 00:01:51.540 --> 00:01:52.980 reading through the research, I kept thinking, 00:01:53.140 --> 00:01:55.540 man, this guy is a guide for how to think right 00:01:55.540 --> 00:01:58.000 now. Absolutely. When the world is sort of demanding 00:01:58.000 --> 00:02:01.159 you just pick a side, pick a team and obey, Krzykowski 00:02:01.159 --> 00:02:03.599 is that voice in your ear telling you to ask 00:02:03.599 --> 00:02:06.640 questions, to be skeptical. He helps you spot 00:02:06.640 --> 00:02:09.199 the traps in your own thinking, which is maybe 00:02:09.199 --> 00:02:11.539 the hardest thing to do. So our mission today 00:02:11.539 --> 00:02:15.800 is to track this incredible journey. We need 00:02:15.800 --> 00:02:19.060 to understand how one man goes from being a Stalinist 00:02:19.060 --> 00:02:21.759 youth in Poland. and let's be clear, he was arguably 00:02:21.759 --> 00:02:24.919 a fanatic, to an exiled philosopher at Oxford 00:02:24.919 --> 00:02:27.500 who becomes the intellectual godfather of the 00:02:27.500 --> 00:02:29.379 solidarity movement. And we're going to unpack 00:02:29.379 --> 00:02:32.139 some concepts with just fantastic names along 00:02:32.139 --> 00:02:34.780 the way. Oh, the names are brilliant. My favorite 00:02:34.780 --> 00:02:37.560 has to be The Law of the Infinite Cornucopia. 00:02:38.000 --> 00:02:40.680 Chuckles. It sounds like something out of a fantasy 00:02:40.680 --> 00:02:43.819 novel, doesn't it? But it's actually a profound 00:02:43.819 --> 00:02:46.900 and slightly terrifying epistemological warning. 00:02:47.199 --> 00:02:49.819 And then there's the idolatry of politics, which... 00:02:50.270 --> 00:02:52.250 Honestly, if we have time, I really want to try 00:02:52.250 --> 00:02:54.009 and apply it to our current moment because it 00:02:54.009 --> 00:02:56.490 feels painfully relevant. It is incredibly relevant, 00:02:56.629 --> 00:02:58.669 maybe more than ever. And, of course, the jester, 00:02:58.729 --> 00:03:01.150 the jester in philosophy. I just love that image. 00:03:01.430 --> 00:03:03.629 But before we get to all that, the high -level 00:03:03.629 --> 00:03:05.909 philosophy, we have to start in the rubble. We 00:03:05.909 --> 00:03:07.969 have to go back to the beginning. So section 00:03:07.969 --> 00:03:11.750 one, the zealot. Aliszyk Kuszakowski was born 00:03:11.750 --> 00:03:15.409 in Radom, Poland, in 1927. And to understand 00:03:15.409 --> 00:03:17.469 the man, you absolutely have to understand the 00:03:17.469 --> 00:03:20.550 environment that forged him. His education wasn't 00:03:20.550 --> 00:03:23.030 normal by any stretch. The official records say 00:03:23.030 --> 00:03:25.789 it was truncated by the German occupation during 00:03:25.789 --> 00:03:28.110 World War II. That is such a polite academic 00:03:28.110 --> 00:03:30.409 way of putting it. Truncated. It sounds like 00:03:30.409 --> 00:03:32.469 he just missed a semester because of a bad flu. 00:03:32.729 --> 00:03:34.789 Right. That's not what happened at all. When 00:03:34.789 --> 00:03:36.990 the Nazis occupied Poland, their goal wasn't 00:03:36.990 --> 00:03:40.110 just military control. It was cultural eradication. 00:03:40.599 --> 00:03:42.740 They closed the high schools. They shut down 00:03:42.740 --> 00:03:45.360 the universities. I read that the explicit Nazi 00:03:45.360 --> 00:03:47.699 policy was that Poles only needed to know how 00:03:47.699 --> 00:03:50.379 to count to 500 and write their own names. That's 00:03:50.379 --> 00:03:52.340 it. Anything beyond that was considered dangerous. 00:03:52.419 --> 00:03:54.680 The goal was to turn an entire nation into a 00:03:54.680 --> 00:03:57.199 slave class. So you have to put yourself in his 00:03:57.199 --> 00:03:59.759 shoes. So if you're a teenager in Poland in, 00:03:59.860 --> 00:04:04.210 say, 1940, just going to school is a crime. It's 00:04:04.210 --> 00:04:05.990 a subversive act. It's an act of resistance. 00:04:06.370 --> 00:04:08.030 And this is where you see the first real spark 00:04:08.030 --> 00:04:10.210 of Kuchikovsky's character. He didn't just accept 00:04:10.210 --> 00:04:12.610 this. He didn't just stop learning. He entered 00:04:12.610 --> 00:04:15.370 the completey. The completey. I saw this term 00:04:15.370 --> 00:04:17.699 in the notes. It translates to something like 00:04:17.699 --> 00:04:21.040 completes. Roughly, yes. It refers to the underground 00:04:21.040 --> 00:04:23.439 school system. And I really want to pause on 00:04:23.439 --> 00:04:25.339 this for a second because it sounds romantic 00:04:25.339 --> 00:04:28.399 like something out of a movie. But it was terrifying. 00:04:28.819 --> 00:04:31.279 This isn't dead poet society. Not at all. These 00:04:31.279 --> 00:04:33.759 were small groups of students, maybe five or 00:04:33.759 --> 00:04:37.060 six at a time, meeting in secret in private apartments, 00:04:37.360 --> 00:04:40.620 in kitchens, in freezing basements. The teachers, 00:04:40.939 --> 00:04:43.420 many of them university professors who had been 00:04:43.420 --> 00:04:46.519 stripped of their jobs, were risking deportation 00:04:46.519 --> 00:04:49.620 to concentration camps just to teach Latin or 00:04:49.620 --> 00:04:51.939 history or mathematics. It's high stakes algebra. 00:04:52.160 --> 00:04:54.600 The risk is immense. Immense. You have to try 00:04:54.600 --> 00:04:56.660 and picture the scene. The curtains are drawn. 00:04:56.839 --> 00:04:59.319 Maybe one student is posted by the window watching 00:04:59.319 --> 00:05:01.740 the street for German patrols. And they're inside 00:05:01.740 --> 00:05:04.579 whispering about Plato or geometry while you 00:05:04.579 --> 00:05:06.819 can hear boots marching on the cobblestones outside. 00:05:07.439 --> 00:05:10.180 That creates such a vivid picture for me. The 00:05:10.180 --> 00:05:12.600 world is literally burning, society is collapsing, 00:05:12.740 --> 00:05:15.639 and here's this kid so hungry for knowledge that 00:05:15.639 --> 00:05:18.509 he's sneaking around to get it. it speaks to 00:05:18.509 --> 00:05:21.850 a serious intellectual drive. It absolutely does. 00:05:21.970 --> 00:05:24.649 He passed his final school -leaving examinations 00:05:24.649 --> 00:05:27.110 as an external student in this underground system. 00:05:27.329 --> 00:05:29.670 He was reading incessantly. He taught himself 00:05:29.670 --> 00:05:32.569 languages. He was building this incredible mind 00:05:32.569 --> 00:05:35.410 under the most dangerous circumstances imaginable. 00:05:35.529 --> 00:05:37.329 But here's the paradox, and this is the hard 00:05:37.329 --> 00:05:39.509 part for us to wrap our heads around today. This 00:05:39.509 --> 00:05:43.069 brilliant, book -hungry kid who risks his life 00:05:43.069 --> 00:05:46.529 for what is essentially a liberal education. 00:05:47.139 --> 00:05:50.420 As soon as the war ends, he walks right into 00:05:50.420 --> 00:05:52.720 the arms of Stalinism. Yeah, this is the uncomfortable 00:05:52.720 --> 00:05:54.819 part of the biography, isn't it? The source material 00:05:54.819 --> 00:05:56.920 is very blunt about this. It says he wasn't just 00:05:56.920 --> 00:05:59.680 a casual member. He was a Stalinist. He joined 00:05:59.680 --> 00:06:02.420 the Association of Fighting Youth in 1945 and 00:06:02.420 --> 00:06:05.339 then the Polish United Workers Party in 1947. 00:06:06.019 --> 00:06:07.939 A true believer. A true believer. And we have 00:06:07.939 --> 00:06:11.759 to ask, why? Why does a smart person, someone 00:06:11.759 --> 00:06:14.339 who values knowledge so much, become a fanatic 00:06:14.339 --> 00:06:16.779 for a system that would eventually crush that 00:06:16.779 --> 00:06:18.879 very freedom he sought? I have to assume it has 00:06:18.879 --> 00:06:20.680 something to do with the trauma and chaos of 00:06:20.680 --> 00:06:23.759 the war. Precisely. You have to look at the psychology 00:06:23.759 --> 00:06:26.019 of that moment. The world had just been burned 00:06:26.019 --> 00:06:28.560 to the ground by fascism. The political right, 00:06:28.680 --> 00:06:32.000 in his eyes, had produced Auschwitz. It had produced 00:06:32.000 --> 00:06:34.300 the utter destruction of his country. So anything 00:06:34.300 --> 00:06:35.959 that stood against that must have looked like 00:06:35.959 --> 00:06:38.540 the answer. Exactly. And then the Red Army comes 00:06:38.540 --> 00:06:41.339 in, promising order, promising science, promising 00:06:41.339 --> 00:06:43.620 a rational future where everyone is equal and 00:06:43.620 --> 00:06:46.180 superstition is banished. To a 20 -year -old 00:06:46.180 --> 00:06:48.079 intellectual standing in the ruins of Warsaw, 00:06:48.420 --> 00:06:51.339 that looked like salvation. It's the clean slate 00:06:51.339 --> 00:06:54.430 appeal. Everything that came before was a disaster. 00:06:54.610 --> 00:06:56.610 We are going to build the perfect world from 00:06:56.610 --> 00:06:59.790 scratch. Yes. He saw communism not as a tyranny, 00:06:59.810 --> 00:07:02.949 but as the triumph of reason over chaos. But 00:07:02.949 --> 00:07:05.889 his commitment went very deep. There's a specific 00:07:05.889 --> 00:07:09.149 incident in the files that really, it really 00:07:09.149 --> 00:07:11.389 stops you in your tracks. It's hard to reconcile 00:07:11.389 --> 00:07:13.389 with the man he became later. What was that? 00:07:13.769 --> 00:07:15.829 He signed a denunciation of his own professor, 00:07:16.209 --> 00:07:19.889 a man named Władysław Tatarkiewicz. Oof, that's 00:07:19.889 --> 00:07:22.949 intense. Denouncing your own mentor, the guy 00:07:22.949 --> 00:07:25.449 who taught you philosophy? It shows the depth 00:07:25.449 --> 00:07:29.329 of his ideological possession at the time. Tatarkiewicz 00:07:29.329 --> 00:07:31.910 was a brilliant philosopher, a historian of aesthetics, 00:07:32.230 --> 00:07:35.839 but he was considered bourgeois. He wasn't Marxist 00:07:35.839 --> 00:07:38.079 enough for the new regime. And Koushikovsky, 00:07:38.220 --> 00:07:40.899 in his zeal, believed that protecting the purity 00:07:40.899 --> 00:07:43.399 of the ideology was more important than personal 00:07:43.399 --> 00:07:46.939 loyalty or gratitude or even truth. That is cold. 00:07:47.079 --> 00:07:49.220 It creates a very specific image of him at that 00:07:49.220 --> 00:07:51.980 time. He wasn't just a follower. He was an enforcer. 00:07:52.040 --> 00:07:54.720 He was an inquisitor for the new faith. He was. 00:07:55.449 --> 00:07:57.589 That fact is absolutely crucial for the rest 00:07:57.589 --> 00:07:59.750 of the story because nobody knows the flaws of 00:07:59.750 --> 00:08:02.250 a religion better than the ex -high priest. Right. 00:08:02.410 --> 00:08:04.910 When he eventually turns on the system, he isn't 00:08:04.910 --> 00:08:06.870 attacking it from the outside like a Western 00:08:06.870 --> 00:08:09.209 capitalist might. He knows where all the logical 00:08:09.209 --> 00:08:11.110 fallacies are. He knows where the bodies are 00:08:11.110 --> 00:08:13.470 buried because, metaphorically speaking, he helped 00:08:13.470 --> 00:08:15.490 dig some of the graves. So he's deep in the paint. 00:08:15.569 --> 00:08:17.550 He's a party member from 1947 all the way up 00:08:17.550 --> 00:08:21.629 to 1966. That's nearly two decades. Obviously, 00:08:21.629 --> 00:08:24.029 something had to change. You don't go from signing 00:08:24.029 --> 00:08:26.550 denunciations to becoming the awakener of hopes 00:08:26.550 --> 00:08:28.930 overnight. What was the catalyst? Well, there 00:08:28.930 --> 00:08:31.170 wasn't one single road to Damascus moment, but 00:08:31.170 --> 00:08:33.049 there was a specific turning point that started 00:08:33.049 --> 00:08:36.889 the slide. In 1950, the party recognized his 00:08:36.889 --> 00:08:39.429 intellectual promise. I mean, he was clearly 00:08:39.429 --> 00:08:43.129 a brilliant young mind, a rising star. So as 00:08:43.129 --> 00:08:45.450 a reward, they sent him on a trip. To Moscow. 00:08:45.899 --> 00:08:48.440 A reward trip to the mothership. Exactly. It 00:08:48.440 --> 00:08:50.940 was intended to cement his loyalty. The idea 00:08:50.940 --> 00:08:53.820 was he'll go there, he'll be awed by the Soviet 00:08:53.820 --> 00:08:56.320 paradise, and he'll come back an even more fervent 00:08:56.320 --> 00:08:58.440 believer. But that's not what happened. It backfired. 00:08:58.460 --> 00:09:00.840 The reality of a Soviet center shocked him. The 00:09:00.840 --> 00:09:03.269 classic never meet your heroes moment. but on 00:09:03.269 --> 00:09:05.309 a geopolitical scale. It was worse than that, 00:09:05.350 --> 00:09:07.970 I think. He saw the poverty. He saw the fear 00:09:07.970 --> 00:09:12.070 in people's eyes. He saw the cultural stagnation, 00:09:12.070 --> 00:09:14.529 the intellectual emptiness. Seeing the system 00:09:14.529 --> 00:09:17.070 up close in its capital didn't inspire him. It 00:09:17.070 --> 00:09:19.929 horrified him. He realized that the rational 00:09:19.929 --> 00:09:22.350 utopia he was reading about in books in Warsaw 00:09:22.350 --> 00:09:25.230 just didn't exist. So he comes back to Poland 00:09:25.230 --> 00:09:27.720 with doubts, the first cracks in the faith. He 00:09:27.720 --> 00:09:31.399 does. He finishes his PhD in 1953, which, interestingly 00:09:31.399 --> 00:09:34.279 enough, was on the philosopher Spinoza, written 00:09:34.279 --> 00:09:36.620 from a Marxist viewpoint, of course. He was still 00:09:36.620 --> 00:09:39.200 in the system. But the seeds of doubt were planted. 00:09:39.759 --> 00:09:41.919 And then history gives them a chance to grow. 00:09:42.100 --> 00:09:46.120 1956, the Polish October. Yes. Stalin dies in 00:09:46.120 --> 00:09:49.960 1953. Khrushchev gives his secret speech denouncing 00:09:49.960 --> 00:09:53.840 Stalin's crimes. And by 1956, the grip of terror 00:09:53.840 --> 00:09:56.360 loosens just a little bit across the Eastern 00:09:56.360 --> 00:09:59.659 Bloc. There's a wave of liberalization in Poland, 00:09:59.840 --> 00:10:02.620 a thaw. And Kujikowski seizes this moment. He 00:10:02.620 --> 00:10:05.539 does. He breaks publicly with Stalinism. Now, 00:10:05.580 --> 00:10:07.720 we have to be careful here. He didn't abandon 00:10:07.720 --> 00:10:10.570 Marxism entirely. Not yet. Right. The notes say 00:10:10.570 --> 00:10:12.730 he became what are called a revisionist Marxist. 00:10:12.789 --> 00:10:15.049 Exactly. He started advocating for a humanist 00:10:15.049 --> 00:10:17.610 interpretation of Karl Marx. He was digging back 00:10:17.610 --> 00:10:19.909 into Marx's early writings, trying to find a 00:10:19.909 --> 00:10:21.970 version of socialism that wasn't totalitarian. 00:10:22.250 --> 00:10:24.009 OK, let me try to translate that. He's basically 00:10:24.009 --> 00:10:26.309 saying the original theory is good. The idea 00:10:26.309 --> 00:10:29.049 is pure. We just implemented it all wrong. He's 00:10:29.049 --> 00:10:31.590 tried to save the baby from the very, very bloody 00:10:31.590 --> 00:10:33.710 bathwater. That's a perfect way to put it. At 00:10:33.710 --> 00:10:36.250 first, yes, he wanted a socialism with a human 00:10:36.250 --> 00:10:38.950 face. And this brings us to his next phase, his 00:10:38.950 --> 00:10:42.009 time as the heretic. This is where the conflict 00:10:42.009 --> 00:10:44.490 with the state really begins to heat up. He starts 00:10:44.490 --> 00:10:47.470 critiquing from within. One year after that Polish 00:10:47.470 --> 00:10:51.269 October in 1957, he publishes a four -part critique 00:10:51.269 --> 00:10:54.710 in a periodical called Noah Kultura. And he goes 00:10:54.710 --> 00:10:57.740 right for the jugular. He attacks Soviet Marxist 00:10:57.740 --> 00:11:00.519 dogmas, specifically historical determinism. 00:11:00.559 --> 00:11:02.919 And this is such a key moment. We need to define 00:11:02.919 --> 00:11:05.220 historical determinism because it sounds dry 00:11:05.220 --> 00:11:08.100 and academic, but it was the engine of the entire 00:11:08.100 --> 00:11:11.039 Soviet state. It's the core beliefs. It is. It's 00:11:11.039 --> 00:11:13.539 the idea that history follows a set predictable 00:11:13.539 --> 00:11:16.559 path like a train on a set of tracks and that 00:11:16.559 --> 00:11:19.220 communism is the inevitable scientifically guaranteed 00:11:19.220 --> 00:11:22.059 final station. So it's not a choice. It's destiny. 00:11:22.159 --> 00:11:24.759 It's not politics. It's physics. It's science. 00:11:25.389 --> 00:11:27.769 The party claimed that they weren't just politicians 00:11:27.769 --> 00:11:30.789 making choices. They were scientists enacting 00:11:30.789 --> 00:11:33.529 the immutable laws of history. And if you attack 00:11:33.529 --> 00:11:36.710 historical... You're not just disagreeing with 00:11:36.710 --> 00:11:39.149 the policy. You're saying the train might not 00:11:39.149 --> 00:11:41.490 be going to the station after all. You're attacking 00:11:41.490 --> 00:11:44.389 the party's claim to infallibility. And he was 00:11:44.389 --> 00:11:46.789 using their own language, their own texts against 00:11:46.789 --> 00:11:49.289 them. It was. And that made him so much more 00:11:49.289 --> 00:11:51.809 dangerous than an outsider. He knew the material 00:11:51.809 --> 00:11:54.889 better than the censors did. He could quote Marx 00:11:54.889 --> 00:11:56.830 and Engels to prove that the party was wrong. 00:11:57.029 --> 00:12:00.610 He was a heretic, not an infidel. But the real 00:12:00.610 --> 00:12:03.570 break, the point of no return, came a bit later 00:12:03.570 --> 00:12:07.370 in 1966. The 10th anniversary lecture. Yes. He 00:12:07.370 --> 00:12:09.370 was invited to give a public lecture at Warsaw 00:12:09.370 --> 00:12:12.149 University on the 10th anniversary of the 1956 00:12:12.149 --> 00:12:15.490 Polish October. Now, usually these official anniversaries 00:12:15.490 --> 00:12:17.570 are for self -congratulations. Look how great 00:12:17.570 --> 00:12:20.110 we're doing, comrades. Ten years of glorious 00:12:20.110 --> 00:12:23.519 progress. Exactly. Kuchikovsky got up there and 00:12:23.519 --> 00:12:26.139 did the precise opposite. He gave a speech where 00:12:26.139 --> 00:12:28.580 he systematically listed all the promises of 00:12:28.580 --> 00:12:31.200 1956 that have been broken. He pointed out the 00:12:31.200 --> 00:12:33.360 lack of freedom, the continued censorship, the 00:12:33.360 --> 00:12:35.720 repression. He basically said, we celebrated 00:12:35.720 --> 00:12:37.779 10 years ago, but we have absolutely nothing 00:12:37.779 --> 00:12:40.440 to celebrate today. That takes some serious nerve. 00:12:40.970 --> 00:12:42.950 That's not just an academic critique anymore. 00:12:43.049 --> 00:12:45.570 That's standing up in the lion's den and poking 00:12:45.570 --> 00:12:48.169 the lion directly in the eye. It was explosive. 00:12:48.389 --> 00:12:51.350 The content of that lecture led directly to his 00:12:51.350 --> 00:12:53.509 expulsion from the Polish United Workers Party. 00:12:53.669 --> 00:12:55.889 He had finally crossed a line they couldn't ignore. 00:12:56.070 --> 00:12:58.830 And things went downhill very fast for him personally 00:12:58.830 --> 00:13:02.570 after that. We get to 1968. The 1968 political 00:13:02.570 --> 00:13:05.690 crisis in Poland. It was a nasty time. Student 00:13:05.690 --> 00:13:08.789 protests, government crackdowns, anti -Semitic 00:13:08.789 --> 00:13:11.090 purges disguised as anti -Zionist campaigns. 00:13:11.450 --> 00:13:14.289 And in that turmoil, Kusiakowski lost his job 00:13:14.289 --> 00:13:16.669 at Warsaw University. And it wasn't just you're 00:13:16.669 --> 00:13:19.590 fired. No, he was prevented from obtaining any 00:13:19.590 --> 00:13:22.090 other academic posts in the entire country. They 00:13:22.090 --> 00:13:24.669 blacklisted him. They tried to starve his mind 00:13:24.669 --> 00:13:27.350 to silence him by taking away his platform. Yes. 00:13:27.590 --> 00:13:30.740 And this is what forced him into exile. It was 00:13:30.740 --> 00:13:33.759 a major life -altering pivot. He had to leave 00:13:33.759 --> 00:13:36.559 his country, his language, his culture behind. 00:13:37.000 --> 00:13:39.179 But before we get to his life in the West, we 00:13:39.179 --> 00:13:41.340 absolutely have to talk about that concept you 00:13:41.340 --> 00:13:44.659 mentioned in the intro, the jester. Yes, the 00:13:44.659 --> 00:13:48.159 jester in philosophy. This feels like the key 00:13:48.159 --> 00:13:50.840 to his whole intellectual personality. It's the 00:13:50.840 --> 00:13:52.980 role he carves out for himself. Can you unpack 00:13:52.980 --> 00:13:56.100 that for us? So Kushikowski wrote a famous essay 00:13:56.100 --> 00:13:58.970 called The Priest and the Jester. He used these 00:13:58.970 --> 00:14:01.590 two figures as metaphors for two fundamental 00:14:01.590 --> 00:14:04.230 ways of thinking, two philosophical stances toward 00:14:04.230 --> 00:14:05.950 the world. Okay, so let's start with the priest. 00:14:06.110 --> 00:14:08.429 Who is the priest? The priest isn't necessarily 00:14:08.429 --> 00:14:10.950 a religious figure. The priest is the guardian 00:14:10.950 --> 00:14:13.700 of the absolute, the guardian of the dogma. The 00:14:13.700 --> 00:14:15.940 priest says, this is the truth. It is final. 00:14:16.039 --> 00:14:18.279 It is sacred. And your job is to bow down to 00:14:18.279 --> 00:14:20.600 it. So in his context, the Communist Party officials 00:14:20.600 --> 00:14:22.899 were the priests. They were the ultimate priests. 00:14:23.100 --> 00:14:25.259 They maintain the solemnity of the cult. They 00:14:25.259 --> 00:14:27.879 tell you what to believe. But really, any ideology 00:14:27.879 --> 00:14:30.580 has its priests. Right. Now contrast that with 00:14:30.580 --> 00:14:32.879 the jester. OK, think about a medieval royal 00:14:32.879 --> 00:14:36.340 court. Everyone has to follow protocol. Everyone 00:14:36.340 --> 00:14:38.799 has to bow and scrape and agree with the king. 00:14:38.919 --> 00:14:40.860 If the king makes a terrible joke, everyone has 00:14:40.860 --> 00:14:43.799 to laugh. Except one person. The jester. The 00:14:43.799 --> 00:14:45.860 court fool. He's the only one who can get away 00:14:45.860 --> 00:14:48.580 with mocking the king. Right. The jester moves 00:14:48.580 --> 00:14:52.080 in high society, but he is not of it. He maintains 00:14:52.080 --> 00:14:54.419 a critical distance. He's the one who's allowed 00:14:54.419 --> 00:14:56.259 to point out the absurdities. He's the one who 00:14:56.259 --> 00:14:58.940 says, hey, why is the king naked? I love that. 00:14:59.220 --> 00:15:02.360 And Kukoski argued that in a totalitarian system, 00:15:02.440 --> 00:15:05.840 or only in any system that demands total belief, 00:15:06.139 --> 00:15:09.139 the philosopher's duty is to be the jester. To 00:15:09.139 --> 00:15:11.230 question the theology of the state. To be the 00:15:11.230 --> 00:15:14.149 professional skeptic. Precisely. The jester asks 00:15:14.149 --> 00:15:16.629 the banal questions that can make the whole house 00:15:16.629 --> 00:15:19.809 of cards tumble down. The jester mistrusts anything 00:15:19.809 --> 00:15:22.970 that claims to be absolute, final, or unquestionable. 00:15:23.169 --> 00:15:24.990 It's not about being a contrarian just to be 00:15:24.990 --> 00:15:26.789 annoying. It's about testing the foundations. 00:15:27.210 --> 00:15:29.549 It's about poking the walls to see if they're 00:15:29.549 --> 00:15:31.289 actually made of stone or if they're just painted 00:15:31.289 --> 00:15:34.059 cardboard. And Kukowski realized that if you 00:15:34.059 --> 00:15:36.779 want to be intellectually free, you have to adopt 00:15:36.779 --> 00:15:39.120 the attitude of the Duster. You have to be willing 00:15:39.120 --> 00:15:41.820 to laugh at the most sacred truths of your time 00:15:41.820 --> 00:15:44.899 and especially your own. So carrying this gesture 00:15:44.899 --> 00:15:48.860 energy, he leaves Poland. He is in exile. And 00:15:48.860 --> 00:15:50.919 you would think, OK, he's out. He's safe. Maybe 00:15:50.919 --> 00:15:52.720 he'll just teach some quiet classes at a Western 00:15:52.720 --> 00:15:55.419 university and relax. But he didn't do that. 00:15:55.539 --> 00:15:58.580 Not at all. He decided to build a bomb. An intellectual 00:15:58.580 --> 00:16:01.860 bomb. This brings us to section three. The Magnum 00:16:01.860 --> 00:16:04.460 Opus, Main Currents of Marxism. This book is 00:16:04.460 --> 00:16:06.399 legendary. It was published in three volumes 00:16:06.399 --> 00:16:09.360 between 1976 and 1978. It's well over 1 ,200 00:16:09.360 --> 00:16:11.460 pages. It's a doorstop. It's a doorstop that 00:16:11.460 --> 00:16:13.700 creates an earthquake. It is considered one of 00:16:13.700 --> 00:16:15.379 the most important books of the 20th century. 00:16:15.580 --> 00:16:18.620 And here's the thing. On the surface, it just 00:16:18.620 --> 00:16:22.620 looks like a dry academic history book. It analyzes 00:16:22.620 --> 00:16:25.460 the genealogy of Marxism, going all the way back 00:16:25.460 --> 00:16:27.879 to Platonism through Hegel to Marx himself. Right. 00:16:27.980 --> 00:16:30.659 The full title is Main Currents of Marxism. It's 00:16:30.659 --> 00:16:34.019 Rise, Growth and Dissolution. So, again, I have 00:16:34.019 --> 00:16:36.620 to ask the big question. How does a history book 00:16:36.620 --> 00:16:39.860 demolish a superpower? Usually you need economic 00:16:39.860 --> 00:16:42.720 sanctions or an army for that. How does a history 00:16:42.720 --> 00:16:44.840 book do that kind of damage? That is the million 00:16:44.840 --> 00:16:47.399 dollar question. And to understand the damage, 00:16:47.419 --> 00:16:49.899 you have to understand the key intellectual defense 00:16:49.899 --> 00:16:52.620 the Soviets and their Western sympathizers always 00:16:52.620 --> 00:16:56.559 relied on. Up until the 1970s, many people on 00:16:56.559 --> 00:16:58.659 the left, especially the new left in the West, 00:16:58.879 --> 00:17:01.639 argued that Stalinism was a tragic accident. 00:17:02.059 --> 00:17:04.500 Right. That that wasn't real communism argument. 00:17:04.599 --> 00:17:06.799 We still hear versions of this today. Exactly. 00:17:06.880 --> 00:17:09.579 They would say Marxism is a beautiful scientific 00:17:09.579 --> 00:17:12.579 theory of human liberation. It just got corrupted 00:17:12.579 --> 00:17:15.140 by, you know, Russian backwardness or by Stalin's 00:17:15.140 --> 00:17:17.940 personal paranoia. They tried to separate the 00:17:17.940 --> 00:17:20.200 dream from the terrible reality. They argued 00:17:20.200 --> 00:17:22.740 that the Gulag was a mistake, an aberration, 00:17:22.859 --> 00:17:25.339 a deviation from the true path. And Koushikovsky 00:17:25.339 --> 00:17:27.400 just wasn't buying that. Koushikovsky went back 00:17:27.400 --> 00:17:30.440 to the source code. He meticulously traced the 00:17:30.440 --> 00:17:33.500 idea from its. very roots through every mutation 00:17:33.500 --> 00:17:37.740 and he proved step by step logic gate by logic 00:17:37.740 --> 00:17:40.660 jade that stalinism was not an aberration he 00:17:40.660 --> 00:17:43.940 argued it was the logical predictable even inevitable 00:17:43.940 --> 00:17:46.880 outcome of marxism itself that is an absolutely 00:17:46.880 --> 00:17:49.240 devastating conclusion he's not saying the bug 00:17:49.240 --> 00:17:51.359 is in the implementation he said the bugs in 00:17:51.359 --> 00:17:53.960 the core operating system that's it exactly and 00:17:53.960 --> 00:17:56.440 he did this by deconstructing the core concepts 00:17:56.440 --> 00:18:00.009 like dialectical materialism okay hold on Dialectical 00:18:00.009 --> 00:18:02.410 materialism. Yeah. That is a mouthful. Give me 00:18:02.410 --> 00:18:05.049 the explain. Like I'm five on that because I 00:18:05.049 --> 00:18:06.970 know it's central to this whole thing. All right. 00:18:06.970 --> 00:18:09.829 I'll try. In short, Marxists believed that history 00:18:09.829 --> 00:18:12.069 isn't random. They believed it moves according 00:18:12.069 --> 00:18:15.009 to scientific laws, specifically the laws of 00:18:15.009 --> 00:18:17.069 class conflict. That's the materialism part. 00:18:17.150 --> 00:18:20.549 Matter, the economy drives everything. The dialectical 00:18:20.549 --> 00:18:22.849 part is the idea that history moves forward through 00:18:22.849 --> 00:18:25.009 a clash of opposites like thesis, antithesis, 00:18:25.049 --> 00:18:28.450 synthesis. But the key takeaway is this. They 00:18:28.450 --> 00:18:30.690 believed that just like gravity makes an apple 00:18:30.690 --> 00:18:33.910 fall, these historical laws guarantee that capitalism 00:18:33.910 --> 00:18:37.150 will collapse and communism will rise. It's not 00:18:37.150 --> 00:18:39.509 a guess. It's science. And if it's science, you 00:18:39.509 --> 00:18:41.170 can't argue with it. You don't argue with the 00:18:41.170 --> 00:18:44.029 law of gravity. Exactly. This was the source 00:18:44.029 --> 00:18:47.089 of their political and moral power. If the party 00:18:47.089 --> 00:18:49.210 is the keeper of that science, then the party 00:18:49.210 --> 00:18:52.009 is never wrong. If the party says you have to 00:18:52.009 --> 00:18:54.950 liquidate the kulaks or build a gulag, it's not 00:18:54.950 --> 00:18:57.470 an atrocity. It's a scientific necessity. It 00:18:57.470 --> 00:19:00.329 justifies anything because science says it's 00:19:00.329 --> 00:19:02.990 required for the glorious future. And Kukowski 00:19:02.990 --> 00:19:05.869 took a sledgehammer. to this foundation. He took 00:19:05.869 --> 00:19:08.750 a scalpel to it. He was a surgeon. He analyzed 00:19:08.750 --> 00:19:11.309 these so -called laws one by one and showed they 00:19:11.309 --> 00:19:13.349 were mostly gibberish. He concluded that some 00:19:13.349 --> 00:19:16.250 of them were just truisms with no specific Marxist 00:19:16.250 --> 00:19:18.509 content, meaning they were just obvious statements 00:19:18.509 --> 00:19:20.910 like people need to eat to survive dressed up 00:19:20.910 --> 00:19:23.750 in fancy language. And the others, he said, were 00:19:23.750 --> 00:19:26.230 philosophical dogmas that cannot be proved by 00:19:26.230 --> 00:19:29.210 scientific means. He even dismissed some parts 00:19:29.210 --> 00:19:33.089 of the ideology as just plain nonsense. So he 00:19:33.089 --> 00:19:36.309 exposed the science as a mythology. He showed 00:19:36.309 --> 00:19:38.450 that the emperor of ideology had no clothes. 00:19:39.259 --> 00:19:42.279 Precisely. And once you prove that Marxism isn't 00:19:42.279 --> 00:19:44.920 a science, the party loses its divine right to 00:19:44.920 --> 00:19:47.079 rule. They aren't scientists anymore. They're 00:19:47.079 --> 00:19:50.400 just dictators with a bad and very dangerous 00:19:50.400 --> 00:19:53.400 theory. And again, this was so devastating because 00:19:53.400 --> 00:19:56.059 Kujikowski knew the material better than the 00:19:56.059 --> 00:19:58.839 ideologues themselves. He wasn't some capitalist 00:19:58.839 --> 00:20:01.480 attacking from the outside. He was dismantling 00:20:01.480 --> 00:20:03.400 it from the inside, showing that the internal 00:20:03.400 --> 00:20:06.640 logic ultimately led not to freedom, but to totalitarian 00:20:06.640 --> 00:20:09.430 slavery. He stripped away the intellectual legitimacy 00:20:09.430 --> 00:20:12.200 of the Soviet Union. After Kosciukowski published 00:20:12.200 --> 00:20:14.960 this book, you couldn't really be a serious intellectual 00:20:14.960 --> 00:20:17.920 and defend the Soviet system as scientific with 00:20:17.920 --> 00:20:20.099 a straight face anymore. He changed the entire 00:20:20.099 --> 00:20:23.680 debate. So he is in exile writing this massive 00:20:23.680 --> 00:20:26.380 system crushing book. Where was he physically 00:20:26.380 --> 00:20:28.099 during all of this? Where did he land? Well, 00:20:28.119 --> 00:20:30.420 after leaving Poland in 68, he became a bit of 00:20:30.420 --> 00:20:32.240 a global roamer for a while. He was a visiting 00:20:32.240 --> 00:20:34.559 professor at McGill in Montreal. Then he went 00:20:34.559 --> 00:20:36.140 to the University of California, Berkeley in 00:20:36.140 --> 00:20:41.019 1969. 1969, Berkeley. I mean. Wow. That must 00:20:41.019 --> 00:20:42.980 have been a massive culture shock for a guy who 00:20:42.980 --> 00:20:46.240 just fled a communist dictatorship. It was. And 00:20:46.240 --> 00:20:48.119 it was another pivotal experience for him. He 00:20:48.119 --> 00:20:50.339 got there and he saw the student protests in 00:20:50.339 --> 00:20:52.819 the West. He saw the new left in America chanting 00:20:52.819 --> 00:20:56.440 Marxist slogans, carrying posters of Mao and 00:20:56.440 --> 00:20:59.200 Ho Chi Minh. Praising the very ideologies he 00:20:59.200 --> 00:21:01.440 had just risked his life to escape from. That 00:21:01.440 --> 00:21:03.359 must have been infuriating. It was more than 00:21:03.359 --> 00:21:05.819 infuriating. It was disillusioning. He saw these, 00:21:05.940 --> 00:21:08.039 you know, privileged students in a free and prosperous 00:21:08.039 --> 00:21:11.119 society advocating for the exact system that 00:21:11.119 --> 00:21:12.680 had destroyed his country and forced him into 00:21:12.680 --> 00:21:15.119 exile. He realized they didn't understand the 00:21:15.119 --> 00:21:17.259 reality of what they were cheering for. He didn't 00:21:17.259 --> 00:21:19.240 have much patience for what you might call recreational 00:21:19.240 --> 00:21:22.519 revolutionaries. No, he didn't. He famously called 00:21:22.519 --> 00:21:25.660 them out for their conceptual sloppiness. That 00:21:25.660 --> 00:21:28.119 experience caused him to abandon any lingering 00:21:28.119 --> 00:21:31.309 sympathies for the new left entirely. After that, 00:21:31.509 --> 00:21:33.970 he finally settled in a more permanent role at 00:21:33.970 --> 00:21:36.369 Oxford, becoming a fellow at All Souls College. 00:21:36.849 --> 00:21:39.029 He also spent time as a visiting professor at 00:21:39.029 --> 00:21:41.470 Yale and the University of Chicago, but Oxford 00:21:41.470 --> 00:21:43.730 really became his intellectual home. But even 00:21:43.730 --> 00:21:46.289 from the quiet house of Oxford, he wasn't done 00:21:46.289 --> 00:21:48.829 with Poland. He wasn't just an academic historian. 00:21:49.549 --> 00:21:52.950 This brings us to section four, the strategist, 00:21:52.950 --> 00:21:55.569 because he didn't just criticize the past. He 00:21:55.569 --> 00:21:57.670 offered a practical path forward for the future. 00:21:58.000 --> 00:22:00.480 This is where we really see him become the awakener 00:22:00.480 --> 00:22:03.799 of human hopes. In 1971, he published an incredibly 00:22:03.799 --> 00:22:07.299 influential essay. Its title was Theses on Hope 00:22:07.299 --> 00:22:10.180 and Hopelessness. And what was the core idea 00:22:10.180 --> 00:22:12.660 there? What was so hopeful about it? To understand 00:22:12.660 --> 00:22:14.579 the importance of this essay, you have to understand 00:22:14.579 --> 00:22:16.920 the mood in the Eastern Bloc in the early 70s. 00:22:16.940 --> 00:22:19.259 It was one of pure despair. People believed the 00:22:19.259 --> 00:22:21.660 Soviet system was permanent, unchangeable. It 00:22:21.660 --> 00:22:24.380 was a monolith. It had tanks. It had the secret 00:22:24.380 --> 00:22:26.619 police. It had nuclear weapons. The feeling was, 00:22:26.680 --> 00:22:28.900 you can't fight it, so just keep your head down 00:22:28.900 --> 00:22:32.019 and try to survive. Exactly. The old joke. They 00:22:32.019 --> 00:22:35.079 pretend to pay us and we pretend to work. There 00:22:35.079 --> 00:22:38.839 was this sense of total paralysis. And Kushikovsky's 00:22:38.839 --> 00:22:41.910 essay challenged that head on. He argued that 00:22:41.910 --> 00:22:44.789 the system was rigid, yes, but it was not invincible. 00:22:45.430 --> 00:22:49.289 He proposed a strategy of sustained social pressure. 00:22:49.470 --> 00:22:51.289 What does that look like in practice? What is 00:22:51.289 --> 00:22:53.609 social pressure against a tank? He argued that 00:22:53.609 --> 00:22:56.069 you don't have to plan for some grand, bloody 00:22:56.069 --> 00:22:58.230 revolution to overthrow the government tomorrow. 00:22:58.410 --> 00:23:01.990 That was a fantasy. Instead, he said, self -organized 00:23:01.990 --> 00:23:05.069 social groups could gradually extend civil society, 00:23:05.250 --> 00:23:08.349 even within the confines of a totalitarian state. 00:23:08.730 --> 00:23:10.789 So you carve out spaces where government doesn't 00:23:10.789 --> 00:23:13.049 rule. You create your own little pockets of freedom. 00:23:13.190 --> 00:23:14.930 That's it. You create your own independent trade 00:23:14.930 --> 00:23:17.470 unions, your own underground newspapers, the 00:23:17.470 --> 00:23:20.029 Samizdat culture, your own discussion clubs, 00:23:20.230 --> 00:23:22.869 your own flying universities. It's like salami 00:23:22.869 --> 00:23:25.029 tactics, but in reverse. Instead of the state 00:23:25.029 --> 00:23:27.269 taking freedom away slice by slice, the people 00:23:27.269 --> 00:23:29.890 start taking it back slice by slice. Precisely. 00:23:29.890 --> 00:23:32.670 And this essay, Theses on Hope and Hopelessness, 00:23:32.849 --> 00:23:35.750 provided the intellectual blueprint for the dissident 00:23:35.750 --> 00:23:39.289 movements of the 1970s in Poland. It directly 00:23:39.289 --> 00:23:41.369 inspired the formation of groups like the Workers' 00:23:41.470 --> 00:23:44.890 Defense Committee or KOR and eventually the massive 00:23:44.890 --> 00:23:48.130 Solidarity movement. So Solidarity, this huge 00:23:48.130 --> 00:23:50.950 trade union movement led by Lech Walesa that 00:23:50.950 --> 00:23:53.230 eventually brought down the government, was basically 00:23:53.230 --> 00:23:55.450 running on Kwiatkowski's intellectual operating 00:23:55.450 --> 00:23:58.700 system. To a very large extent, yes. historian 00:23:58.700 --> 00:24:01.619 Timothy Garten Ash noted that another of Koushikoski's 00:24:01.619 --> 00:24:05.339 essays, a 1978 manifesto called How to Be a Conservative 00:24:05.339 --> 00:24:09.059 Liberal Socialist, perfectly prefigured the strange 00:24:09.059 --> 00:24:11.960 ideological mix of solidarity. Wait, hold on. 00:24:11.980 --> 00:24:14.039 Pause on that title. How to Be a Conservative 00:24:14.039 --> 00:24:16.170 Liberal Socialist. That sounds like a complete 00:24:16.170 --> 00:24:18.470 contradiction in terms. In modern politics, those 00:24:18.470 --> 00:24:20.210 are three different teams that spend all their 00:24:20.210 --> 00:24:22.230 time fighting each other. It does, doesn't it? 00:24:22.390 --> 00:24:26.250 But Kusakowski, in his genius, saw that to effectively 00:24:26.250 --> 00:24:29.269 fight totalitarianism, you needed elements of 00:24:29.269 --> 00:24:31.309 all three. OK, you have to break that down for 00:24:31.309 --> 00:24:33.220 me. How does that work? Well, he said you need 00:24:33.220 --> 00:24:35.420 to be a conservative because you need to value 00:24:35.420 --> 00:24:38.140 things the communists tried to erase, tradition, 00:24:38.500 --> 00:24:42.140 national history, and especially in Poland, religion 00:24:42.140 --> 00:24:44.400 and the Catholic Church. OK, that makes sense. 00:24:44.579 --> 00:24:46.680 You need to be a liberal because you need to 00:24:46.680 --> 00:24:49.019 value the individual against the state. You need 00:24:49.019 --> 00:24:52.299 to fight for human rights, free speech and the 00:24:52.299 --> 00:24:54.240 rule of law. And a socialist. And you need to 00:24:54.240 --> 00:24:56.059 be a socialist because you need to care about 00:24:56.059 --> 00:24:59.420 social justice, solidarity and the dignity and 00:24:59.420 --> 00:25:01.660 welfare of the workers who are being excluded. 00:25:01.640 --> 00:25:04.619 exploited by the party elite. That is fascinating. 00:25:04.940 --> 00:25:07.599 He was synthesizing all these seemingly opposing 00:25:07.599 --> 00:25:11.000 views into a coherent weapon against the state. 00:25:11.119 --> 00:25:13.319 And that is exactly what the solidarity movement 00:25:13.319 --> 00:25:15.640 was. It was a trade union. That's the socialist 00:25:15.640 --> 00:25:17.940 part. Fighting for human rights and democracy, 00:25:18.299 --> 00:25:20.440 the liberal part. And it was all done with the 00:25:20.440 --> 00:25:22.619 strong backing and symbolism of the Catholic 00:25:22.619 --> 00:25:25.500 Church, the conservative part. And he didn't 00:25:25.500 --> 00:25:27.359 just write about it from his armchair in Oxford. 00:25:27.769 --> 00:25:31.890 In 1975, he was a signatory of the Letter of 00:25:31.890 --> 00:25:34.970 59, protesting changes to the Polish Constitution. 00:25:35.710 --> 00:25:38.490 And in the 80s, he was constantly giving interviews, 00:25:38.750 --> 00:25:41.890 raising funds and writing tirelessly to support 00:25:41.890 --> 00:25:44.569 solidarity from abroad. There's a fantastic quote 00:25:44.569 --> 00:25:47.109 here from him analyzing the revolution of 1980 00:25:47.109 --> 00:25:50.650 -81. It just perfectly highlights the deep irony 00:25:50.650 --> 00:25:53.309 of the whole situation. In his article, What 00:25:53.309 --> 00:25:55.470 is Left of Socialism? He wrote that the events 00:25:55.470 --> 00:25:58.049 in Poland were the closest thing to a genuine 00:25:58.049 --> 00:26:01.049 working class revolution that the 20th century 00:26:01.049 --> 00:26:03.690 ever saw. Which is exactly what Karl Marx predicted 00:26:03.690 --> 00:26:06.180 would happen. But. And here's the jester's twist. 00:26:06.400 --> 00:26:08.980 It was a revolution of industrial workers directed 00:26:08.980 --> 00:26:11.240 against the socialist state, and it was carried 00:26:11.240 --> 00:26:13.559 out under the sign of the cross with the blessing 00:26:13.559 --> 00:26:16.940 of a Polish pope. The ultimate jester move. The 00:26:16.940 --> 00:26:18.859 workers of the world united, but they united 00:26:18.859 --> 00:26:21.880 against the communists holding crucifixes. Marx 00:26:21.880 --> 00:26:24.180 must have been spinning in his grave. It completely 00:26:24.180 --> 00:26:27.000 shattered the entire Marxist narrative. The workers 00:26:27.000 --> 00:26:29.000 didn't want a communist state to save them. They 00:26:29.000 --> 00:26:31.500 wanted freedom from it. Let's move on then to 00:26:31.500 --> 00:26:36.139 Section 5, The Philosopher of Modernity. Because 00:26:36.139 --> 00:26:38.640 Kujikowski wasn't just a political thinker, not 00:26:38.640 --> 00:26:41.059 just an anti -communist. In his later years, 00:26:41.180 --> 00:26:43.460 he went much deeper into the human condition 00:26:43.460 --> 00:26:46.059 itself. And I want to jump to one of his later 00:26:46.059 --> 00:26:48.299 concepts because, honestly, this one kept me 00:26:48.299 --> 00:26:51.400 up last night. It feels less like 1970s philosophy 00:26:51.400 --> 00:26:54.339 and more like a direct commentary on my Twitter 00:26:54.339 --> 00:26:56.160 feed. Chuckles. I think I know exactly which 00:26:56.160 --> 00:26:58.539 one you mean. The law of the infinite cornucopia. 00:26:58.680 --> 00:27:01.359 It is my absolute favorite Kujikowski concept. 00:27:01.480 --> 00:27:04.410 It's so powerful. Cornucopia means a horn of 00:27:04.410 --> 00:27:07.089 plenty, right? An endless supply of stuff. Right. 00:27:07.309 --> 00:27:09.650 So the law of the infinite cornucopia states, 00:27:09.869 --> 00:27:12.329 for any given doctrine, there is an infinite 00:27:12.329 --> 00:27:15.250 supply of supportive arguments. Okay, let's really 00:27:15.250 --> 00:27:17.670 unpack that. Because normally we think that if 00:27:17.670 --> 00:27:19.509 we have evidence for our beliefs, then we're 00:27:19.509 --> 00:27:22.170 right. If I can list 50 reasons why my political 00:27:22.170 --> 00:27:24.529 party is the best, doesn't that prove my point? 00:27:24.829 --> 00:27:28.009 Kowakowski says absolutely not. And this is the 00:27:28.009 --> 00:27:31.049 deep trap of ideology. He realized that once 00:27:31.049 --> 00:27:33.049 you are truly committed to a worldview, whether 00:27:33.049 --> 00:27:36.089 it's Marxism or a specific religion or a modern 00:27:36.089 --> 00:27:39.089 conspiracy theory, your mind acts like a magnet 00:27:39.089 --> 00:27:42.490 for confirmation. You will naturally find, select 00:27:42.490 --> 00:27:45.650 and interpret everything as proof of your belief. 00:27:45.849 --> 00:27:48.490 It's confirmation bias on steroids. It's deeper 00:27:48.490 --> 00:27:51.569 than just bias. It's about the infinite malleability 00:27:51.569 --> 00:27:54.680 of logic itself. Let's take a simple non -political 00:27:54.680 --> 00:27:56.960 example. Let's say you believe that the number 00:27:56.960 --> 00:27:59.680 13 is unlucky. Okay. If you trip on the sidewalk 00:27:59.680 --> 00:28:02.079 on Friday the 13th, uh -huh, proof, the number 00:28:02.079 --> 00:28:04.180 is cursed. But what if you win a small prize 00:28:04.180 --> 00:28:07.099 on the 13th? Uh -huh. The evil forces of the 00:28:07.099 --> 00:28:09.099 number tried to trick me with a small victory 00:28:09.099 --> 00:28:11.259 to make me lower my guard for the big disaster 00:28:11.259 --> 00:28:13.700 that's coming. You can't lose. Any of it can 00:28:13.700 --> 00:28:15.619 be twisted to fit the theory. You can never, 00:28:15.640 --> 00:28:18.380 ever lose. The cornucopia never runs empty. There's 00:28:18.380 --> 00:28:20.559 always another argument you can invent, another 00:28:20.559 --> 00:28:23.000 dot you can connect. Kukowski was warning us 00:28:23.000 --> 00:28:25.259 that consistency is not the same thing as truth. 00:28:25.480 --> 00:28:28.400 You can have a perfectly consistent, logically 00:28:28.400 --> 00:28:31.099 coherent system that is completely detached from 00:28:31.099 --> 00:28:33.900 reality. That is terrifyingly relevant to the 00:28:33.900 --> 00:28:36.819 Internet age. We all live inside our own personalized 00:28:36.819 --> 00:28:39.740 infinite cornucopias now. You can go online and 00:28:39.740 --> 00:28:42.740 find 10 ,000 articles and 100 YouTube videos 00:28:42.740 --> 00:28:44.900 supporting literally any viewpoint you want to 00:28:44.900 --> 00:28:47.720 hold. Precisely. And that's why Koushikovsky 00:28:47.720 --> 00:28:50.640 is so vital for the modern listener. He teaches 00:28:50.640 --> 00:28:53.039 us that just having an argument or even a lot 00:28:53.039 --> 00:28:55.740 of arguments isn't enough. The real intellectual 00:28:55.740 --> 00:28:58.220 virtue is the ability to step outside your own 00:28:58.220 --> 00:29:01.579 cornucopia and ask, Could I be wrong? How would 00:29:01.579 --> 00:29:03.799 I know if I was? Which brings us right back to 00:29:03.799 --> 00:29:06.500 the jester. The jester is the only one who knows 00:29:06.500 --> 00:29:09.000 that the cornucopia is a magic trick. That's 00:29:09.000 --> 00:29:11.660 it. Exactly. This deep skepticism also ties into 00:29:11.660 --> 00:29:14.440 another major work of his later life, his 1986 00:29:14.440 --> 00:29:17.839 Jefferson lecture, which was titled The Idolatry 00:29:17.839 --> 00:29:20.759 of Politics. Yes, this is another crucial concept 00:29:20.759 --> 00:29:23.099 for our times. He warned against the profound 00:29:23.099 --> 00:29:25.779 danger of thinking that politics can solve everything. 00:29:26.160 --> 00:29:28.440 The idolatry is when we turn a political ideology 00:29:28.440 --> 00:29:31.039 or the state itself into a religion, when we 00:29:31.039 --> 00:29:32.960 expect government to provide not just roads and 00:29:32.960 --> 00:29:35.299 schools, but ultimate meaning, purpose and total 00:29:35.299 --> 00:29:37.980 happiness. We want our politicians to be our 00:29:38.059 --> 00:29:40.180 saviors. We want the state to be our church. 00:29:40.400 --> 00:29:42.900 And Kuchikovsky said that is a direct path to 00:29:42.900 --> 00:29:45.819 disaster because the state is just a tool. It's 00:29:45.819 --> 00:29:48.220 a human mechanism. It cannot provide spiritual 00:29:48.220 --> 00:29:51.680 salvation. When it tries, it becomes monstrous. 00:29:51.839 --> 00:29:55.380 He asserted, and this is a fantastic quote, we 00:29:55.380 --> 00:29:58.019 learn history not in order to know how to behave, 00:29:58.259 --> 00:30:01.000 but to know who we are. That's a subtle but really 00:30:01.000 --> 00:30:03.359 important distinction. History isn't a manual 00:30:03.359 --> 00:30:06.400 for success. It's a mirror for identity. And 00:30:06.400 --> 00:30:08.140 as he got older, he turned more and more towards 00:30:08.140 --> 00:30:10.599 questions of religion and transcendence, not 00:30:10.599 --> 00:30:13.140 necessarily in a dogmatic way. He wasn't a traditional 00:30:13.140 --> 00:30:15.559 Catholic in the strict sense, but he became very 00:30:15.559 --> 00:30:17.519 interested in the theological assumptions that 00:30:17.519 --> 00:30:20.279 underpin Western culture. The source material 00:30:20.279 --> 00:30:22.960 mentions he defended freedom of will and the 00:30:22.960 --> 00:30:26.160 human quest for the transcendent. He did. He 00:30:26.160 --> 00:30:28.000 came to believe that the pursuit of truth and 00:30:28.000 --> 00:30:30.400 goodness with capital letters was what ennobled 00:30:30.400 --> 00:30:33.480 human life. Even if we humans are frail, even 00:30:33.480 --> 00:30:35.920 if we can never be infallible or perfect, the 00:30:35.920 --> 00:30:38.799 striving itself matters. He moved from the arrogant 00:30:38.799 --> 00:30:41.039 certainty of his Stalinist youth where he thought 00:30:41.039 --> 00:30:43.519 he had all the answers to a kind of faithful 00:30:43.519 --> 00:30:46.720 skepticism in his old age. He learned to embrace 00:30:46.720 --> 00:30:49.500 the mystery. It's a beautiful and humbling intellectual 00:30:49.500 --> 00:30:52.059 arc. From the young man who thinks he can build 00:30:52.059 --> 00:30:54.420 heaven on earth with a gun and a manifesto to 00:30:54.420 --> 00:30:57.019 the old man who understands that the unending 00:30:57.019 --> 00:30:59.779 quest for the answer is what truly makes us human. 00:31:00.200 --> 00:31:02.460 And the world eventually recognized this monumental 00:31:02.460 --> 00:31:05.779 contribution. This brings us to Section 6, his 00:31:05.779 --> 00:31:09.059 legacy and honors. Kuchikowsky was, in many ways, 00:31:09.119 --> 00:31:11.140 the king of philosophy by the end of his life. 00:31:11.380 --> 00:31:13.940 He was the first ever winner of the John W. Kooge 00:31:13.940 --> 00:31:16.720 Prize in 2003. That's a prize given by the U 00:31:16.720 --> 00:31:19.119 .S. Library of Congress. It's basically the Nobel 00:31:19.119 --> 00:31:21.259 Prize for fields that the Nobel doesn't cover, 00:31:21.359 --> 00:31:24.200 like history and philosophy. And it came with 00:31:24.200 --> 00:31:27.759 a $1 million award. When they announced it, James 00:31:27.759 --> 00:31:29.799 Dillington, the librarian of Congress at the 00:31:29.799 --> 00:31:33.220 time, said Kukowski's voice was fundamental for 00:31:33.220 --> 00:31:35.440 the fate of Poland and influential in Europe 00:31:35.440 --> 00:31:38.039 as a whole. You also win a MacArthur Fellowship, 00:31:38.079 --> 00:31:40.980 the so -called Genius Grant, the Erasmus Prize, 00:31:41.220 --> 00:31:43.799 the Jerusalem Prize, the Order of the White Eagle, 00:31:43.880 --> 00:31:46.299 which is Poland's highest honor. The list just 00:31:46.299 --> 00:31:48.599 goes on and on. It really does. But I think the 00:31:48.599 --> 00:31:50.759 most telling tribute, the one that really captures 00:31:50.759 --> 00:31:52.900 the spirit of the man, came from the British 00:31:52.900 --> 00:31:55.900 philosopher Roger Scruton after Kukowski died 00:31:55.900 --> 00:31:59.039 in 2009. What did he say? Scruton wrote that 00:31:59.039 --> 00:32:01.660 even Krakowski's opponents, people whose ideas 00:32:01.660 --> 00:32:04.640 he had completely dismantled, didn't feel damaged 00:32:04.640 --> 00:32:07.059 in their ego by his arguments. That is a rare 00:32:07.059 --> 00:32:09.799 and incredible skill. Usually when someone demolishes 00:32:09.799 --> 00:32:12.220 your entire worldview, you feel attacked. You 00:32:12.220 --> 00:32:14.779 feel stupid. You get defensive. But Krakowski 00:32:14.779 --> 00:32:17.740 had a way of dissecting the idea without destroying 00:32:17.740 --> 00:32:20.960 the person. It speaks to that jester spirit again. 00:32:21.480 --> 00:32:23.660 It was never about malice or showing off how 00:32:23.660 --> 00:32:26.160 smart he was. It was always about the pursuit 00:32:26.160 --> 00:32:29.259 of truth. He was gentle with people, but absolutely 00:32:29.259 --> 00:32:32.259 ruthless with bad ideas. He died in Oxford in 00:32:32.259 --> 00:32:35.039 2009 at the age of 81, but he was buried back 00:32:35.039 --> 00:32:38.140 in Warsaw at the Pulaski Military Cemetery. You 00:32:38.140 --> 00:32:40.460 came home in the end. Adam Michnik, another legendary 00:32:40.460 --> 00:32:42.779 Polish dissident and writer, called him one of 00:32:42.779 --> 00:32:45.019 the most prominent creators of contemporary Polish 00:32:45.019 --> 00:32:47.200 culture. And when you look at the source material, 00:32:47.460 --> 00:32:49.380 you see this incredible bibliography that spans 00:32:49.380 --> 00:32:53.039 decades. Over 30 books, main currents of Marxism, 00:32:53.079 --> 00:32:55.859 modernity on endless trial. God owes us nothing. 00:32:56.000 --> 00:32:58.380 He was just relentlessly prolific. So let's try 00:32:58.380 --> 00:33:00.660 to synthesize this whole incredible story. We 00:33:00.660 --> 00:33:03.019 have a boy who learned in secret basements during 00:33:03.019 --> 00:33:05.819 the Nazi occupation. A young man who fell for 00:33:05.819 --> 00:33:08.430 the false promise of Stalinism. because he desperately 00:33:08.430 --> 00:33:11.369 wanted a rational, ordered world. A scholar who 00:33:11.369 --> 00:33:12.950 then went to the heart of the beast in Moscow 00:33:12.950 --> 00:33:15.930 and saw the ugly truth. And then an exile who 00:33:15.930 --> 00:33:19.190 used his pen, his mind, and his integrity to 00:33:19.190 --> 00:33:21.470 give intellectual ammunition and a strategic 00:33:21.470 --> 00:33:24.089 blueprint to one of the most important freedom 00:33:24.089 --> 00:33:26.970 movements of the entire 20th century. It really 00:33:26.970 --> 00:33:29.759 is a testament to the power of the mind. Kowakowski 00:33:29.759 --> 00:33:32.519 showed that totalitarianism is ultimately built 00:33:32.519 --> 00:33:35.559 on lies. It relies on people accepting the official 00:33:35.559 --> 00:33:38.720 infinite cornucopia of propaganda. And if you 00:33:38.720 --> 00:33:41.160 can expose those lies methodically, historically, 00:33:41.440 --> 00:33:44.180 philosophically, you weaken the chains. He didn't 00:33:44.180 --> 00:33:46.920 just stand up and shout communism is bad. He 00:33:46.920 --> 00:33:50.099 showed with immense erudition why it was philosophically 00:33:50.099 --> 00:33:52.759 bankrupt from its very foundations. And he did 00:33:52.759 --> 00:33:55.079 it all with that jester spirit, that willingness 00:33:55.079 --> 00:33:57.720 to challenge the high priests of dogma. And that, 00:33:57.799 --> 00:33:59.920 I think, is the lasting lesson for us. We all 00:33:59.920 --> 00:34:01.940 have our dogmas. We all have our priests, whether 00:34:01.940 --> 00:34:04.099 they're in politics or in our culture or just 00:34:04.099 --> 00:34:06.440 in our own social circles. Kukakowski challenges 00:34:06.440 --> 00:34:09.119 us to be the jester in the room, to ask the awkward 00:34:09.119 --> 00:34:11.519 question, to maintain that healthy, critical 00:34:11.519 --> 00:34:14.659 distance. And to be deeply, deeply wary of our 00:34:14.659 --> 00:34:17.889 own infinite cornucopia. Just because you have 00:34:17.889 --> 00:34:19.889 a thousand arguments for your side doesn't mean 00:34:19.889 --> 00:34:22.489 you have the truth. Exactly. The strength of 00:34:22.489 --> 00:34:25.190 your belief is not evidence of its truth. So 00:34:25.190 --> 00:34:27.210 here is a provocative thought to leave you with 00:34:27.210 --> 00:34:29.969 then, reflecting on that law of the infinite 00:34:29.969 --> 00:34:33.510 cornucopia. If any doctrine, no matter how crazy, 00:34:33.710 --> 00:34:36.630 can find an infinite supply of arguments to support 00:34:36.630 --> 00:34:40.250 itself, how do we ever know for sure? when we 00:34:40.250 --> 00:34:42.650 are wrong? That is the question, isn't it? And 00:34:42.650 --> 00:34:45.230 perhaps the answer isn't in finding more arguments 00:34:45.230 --> 00:34:47.730 for our own side, but in having the courage and 00:34:47.730 --> 00:34:50.929 the humility to laugh at our uncertainty. Find 00:34:50.929 --> 00:34:52.650 your inner jester, everyone. Thanks for listening 00:34:52.650 --> 00:34:54.590 to this deep dive into the life and thought of 00:34:54.590 --> 00:34:56.949 Lechek Kuyakowsky. We will see you next time.