Kolakowski accepts congratulations from the Kluges. - John Harrington
Leszek Kolakowski, 76, a scholar, philosopher, historian and gifted writer whose works informed and inspired the anti-totalitarian youth movement inside his native Poland, has been awarded the first John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Human Sciences.
The $1 million Kluge Prize is given by the Library of Congress for lifetime achievement in the humanities and social sciences—areas of scholarship for which there are no Nobel Prizes. These disciplines include philosophy, history, political science, anthropology, sociology, religion, linguistics and criticism in the arts and literature.
"This is the first award of an international prize at the level, in terms of exhaustive inquiry and study as well as financial remuneration, of the Nobel Awards, in an area in which there are no Nobel-type level international prizes for the human sciences," said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington in announcing the award at a packed news conference on Nov. 5 in the Library's Whittall Pavilion.
The Librarian said he thought it appropriate for this prize to be awarded in America, because American universities "have made a great effort and great investment" in studies of the humanities during the 20th century.
Inaugural Kluge Prize winner Leszek Kolakowski, left, meets with John Kluge at the Nov. 5 news conference announcing the award. Librarian of Congress James Billington, whose original conception of such an award dates back to the 1970s, looks on. - John Harrington
He said it was appropriate to award the prize in Washington, where there is "interaction between the world of ideas"—represented by the international collections of the Library and the work of the Kluge Center scholars—and those who serve in the U.S. Congress, which created the Library and sustains it.
Billington also said it was appropriate to award the prize, "a crown jewel set in a very rich setting," at the Library, which is the home of the Kluge Center. Billington said the center is a tribute to John W. Kluge, the benefactor of both the prize and the center. Kluge and his wife, Maria, were present for the announcement.
Introducing the prizewinner, Billington said, "Leszek Kolakowski … is a historian of human thought … an essayist of enormous range. When it was finally possible to mention his name in Poland, as freedom was beginning to come to that country, they called him 'the theoretician of European culture.'"
The Librarian noted that the prizewinner is the author of more than 30 books and some 400 articles "on all kinds of subjects" in a wide variety of formats and in four languages—primarily in Polish but also in French, English and German. His principal lines of inquiry have been in the history of philosophy and the philosophy of religion.
"He has made clear, from within the Soviet system, the intellectual bankruptcy of the ideology that lay behind it, the necessity of freedom, tolerance of diversity, and man's ineradicable search for transcendence," the Librarian said. "This is a man who has written about almost everything but always focused on problems of fundamental importance for the human condition."
"He was the most important single thinker behind the most important event of the late 20th century—the implosion and the peaceful, nonviolent end of the communist Soviet system," the Librarian continued. "The Polish Solidarity movement looked to him; he was enormously influential in instilling hope against hopelessness, substituting hope for fear. His great essay in 1971 on hope was a decisive beginning of the Polish youth movement, which flowed into Solidarity."
The Librarian, Deputy Librarian Donald Scott, the Kolakowskis, the Kluges and Director of Scholarly Programs Prosser Gifford meet prior to the announcement. - John Harrington
"He is a humanist, a philosopher, a cultural critic, an intellectual historian who has asked these big questions with the kind of intellectual honesty and depth that we sought to honor with the Kluge Prize and that we seek to welcome here at the Kluge Center in the nation's oldest federal cultural institution," the Librarian said.
Briefly discussing the nomination process, Billington said prize nominators from around the globe were asked to recommend preeminent scholars, whose work in the humanities or closely related fields was recognized as outstanding by their peers and which also spoke to people in other fields and in public life. The Librarian noted that prize sponsor Kluge had no hand in the selection and specifically asked that he not know who the first recipient was to be.
Kolakowski thanked Billington and all those responsible for his selection as the first winner of the Kluge Prize, and he greeted Kluge warmly: "He is a 'kluge' man, a wise man," he said.
The professor, who resides in Oxford, England, said he first learned about the Kluge Prize six or eight months ago, when he received a letter asking him to nominate a recipient. "So, that's what I did, but alas, I didn't succeed; this person didn't get the prize," he said, laughing.
Kolakowski said he also had learned recently about the Kluge Center mission to bring scholars together with one another and with legislators—"a new, really marvelous idea, not repeated in other institutions, which among other things, is really supposed to bring together not just scholars, but scholars and politicians, active politicians, and be a most fruitful project to have both discussing the most important issues of our world."
"Politicians, usually, are too busy; they have no time for … study. Scholars are, on the other hand, maybe too immersed in their intellectual activity so they can easily make conclusions that are well-intentioned in the ideal world but cannot, unfortunately, be implemented in the real world," he said.
Kolakowski and Billington share a moment after the press conference. - John Harrington
Kolakowski praised Billington for bringing young Russian scholars to America to study. "It is one of the most important things that we ought to do, to not let the gap between East and West widen. So, I am most grateful for your effort and of course, to Mr. Kluge, who made this entire project feasible by his generosity," he said.
Asked if he had plans for use of the million-dollar prize, he replied: "As for the use of the money, I can only say that I have never had in my life any special problems of what to do with money." He added he could not be more specific because "it is too early for this grandiose project to be revealed." He said he is working on Catholic modernism in the early 20th century and on a Polish television series framing one question for each of the great philosophers.
Kolakowski delivered a formal address Wednesday night, when he accepted the Kluge Prize at a Coolidge Auditorium ceremony attended by Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, home of the Nobel Prize, among other luminaries. The full text of his remarks can be found on here.
Selection Process
The process that led to the selection of Leszek Kolakowski for the Kluge Prize began more than two years ago with a solicitation of nominations from more than 2,000 individuals worldwide: presidents or directors of universities, colleges and institutions of advanced research, and a wide variety of eminent scholars who were in a position to assess outstanding work in the humanities and social sciences. These nominations and others were reviewed by a number of other scholars. Curatorial specialists in the Library provided bibliographies and materials by and about nominees, and, in September 2002, the Library's Council of Scholars conducted its review. Outside reviewers versed in particular fields, disciplines, cultures and languages were consulted and wrote evaluations throughout the process.
The final stage in the process was the convening in September 2003 of a special outside panel to review the selected group of 14 candidates for the prize. Five distinguished scholars experienced in a variety of high-quality scholarly selection procedures made up the final review panel. They were:
David Alexander, president emeritus of Pomona College in California, vice president of the Phi Beta Kappa Fellows, and former American secretary to the Rhodes Trust, whose doctorate from Oxford is in religion and philosophy;
Leszek Kolakowski speaks at the press conference in the Library's Whittall Pavilion. - John Harrington
Timothy Breen, professor of American history at Northwestern University, who after a doctorate at Yale has held appointments at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N. J., and at the National Humanities Center in Durham, N.C.;
Bruce Cole, the current chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), who was a distinguished professor of fine arts and of comparative literature at Indiana University in Bloomington; his doctorate is from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania;
Gertrude Himmelfarb, professor emerita of history at the Graduate School of the City University of New York, a noted scholar of intellectual and cultural history in the 17th and 18th centuries and a fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Historical Society; and
Amartya Sen, master of Trinity College, Cambridge University, England, who will become university professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard in 2004. A Nobel Prize laureate in economics, Sen was educated at Presidency College in Calcutta, India, and at Cambridge.
The discussion and recommendations of members of this panel were a key factor in advising the Librarian concerning his final selection. Billington, the 13th Librarian of Congress, was formerly professor of history at Princeton University, chairman of the board that governs the Fulbright Program and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Prosser Gifford, director of Scholarly Programs at the Library, supervised the selection process for the Kluge Prize. He holds graduate degrees from three different universities in three different subject areas of the human sciences and was formerly dean of faculty at Amherst College and deputy director of the Wilson Center.
