Yan Yan: Towards a Cultural Conservative Critique of Modernity
In the history of Western political thought, utopianism and liberalism are usually regarded as irreconcilable adversaries. Liberals argue that utopianism is the embodiment of socialism, and that its beautiful visions of a future society ignore the profit-seeking motives of human beings, remaining nothing more than "the moon reflected in water or a flower in a mirror" [1]. Utopians, conversely, argue that liberalism ahistorically idealizes capitalist society, overestimates the positive value of Enlightenment rationality and science and technology, and falls into an uncritical positivism. It is worth noting that Marxists and socialists have also been drawn into this protracted polemic. However, due to dogmatic understandings of Marxism and socialism prevalent since the Second International [2], coupled with the slanders of Western anti-Marxists, an erroneous view has become popular in society: namely, that Marxism is a quintessential form of utopianism. To defend the scientific nature of Marxism, one must stand on a Marxist footing to reveal the essence of utopianism while simultaneously critiquing liberal ideology. The Polish Neo-Marxist theorist Leszek Kołakowski re-examined utopianism and liberalism from the perspective of cultural conservatism, arguing that both have the potential to lead to totalitarianism. He suggested that the correct approach is to resist the temptation of uniformity and seek a balance within the tension of different value positions and perspectives.
I. Critique of the Utopian "Future Society"
Kołakowski was a staunch anti-utopian, yet his attitude toward utopia was fraught with contradictions. At times he viewed utopia as a real and positive force; at others, he saw it as the primary enemy of modern society, believing that its use of identity to eliminate diversity led to the crisis of modernity.
Kołakowski provided a dual definition of the concept of utopia: first, utopia is not just any idea for improving some aspect of human life, but rather the belief that a final and unsurpassable state can be reached in which nothing remains to be corrected. Second, utopia represents a project to be realized through unremitting human effort; it excludes both the imagination of a celestial paradise in the afterlife and the apocalyptic hope for an earthly paradise established through pure divine providence. Kołakowski’s critique was aimed at two important characteristics of utopia: a perfect, ideal future and the possibility of its realization in this world. This aligns perfectly with liberal conceptions. In The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl Popper summarized the utopian method as follows: "Any rational action must have a certain aim. It acts rationally in so far as it pursues its aim consciously and consistently, and in so far as it determines its means according to this end." Popper argued that utopianism is often combined with aestheticism, its core tenet being the attempt to establish a "Brave New World" that completely eliminates evil. To realize this ideal social blueprint, one must "demand a strong centralized rule of a few, and... therefore lead to a dictatorship." Kołakowski did not believe that the philosophy of history could replace religion in pointing a clear path for people; instead, he maintained it could only lead to irremediable self-destruction. Regarding philosophical eschatology and utopianism, he offered a profound analysis: "Nothing is more deeply rooted in us than the belief in a moral law as an ultimate arbiter—the conviction that the world we live in will finally reach a state where all our honors and rewards, all sins and punishments, will be dealt with fairly; where evil is punished and good rewarded, and every record of immorality handled—in other words, where all human values are fully realized." It must be pointed out that the utopianism Kołakowski opposed has nothing to do with the Marxist conception of a future communism; the illegitimate linking of the two is precisely a clumsy trick commonly used by Western anti-Marxists.
Kołakowski categorized utopias into onto-epistemological utopias, political utopias, revolutionary utopias, and so on. In the history of Western philosophy, Descartes was an important founder of the onto-epistemological utopia; his principle of cogito ergo sum found an absolute, certain vantage point for humanity. However, "is complete certainty fundamentally attainable? If so, can it be reached without recourse to absolute divine wisdom?" Kołakowski argued that the metaphysical concept of truth is merely a distortion of the mind, manifesting an illusory autonomy. Based on this, he divided the whole of Western philosophy into empiricism and transcendentalism, consciously taking his place in the transcendentalist camp. Kołakowski opposed not only Cartesian rationalist dogmatism but also the British empirical tradition, believing that the latter’s abandonment of the idea of certainty would lead to profound disaster. Kołakowski's conclusion was that philosophy can never discover or know universal truths, yet the cultural function of philosophy is to create the spirit of truth. This means that philosophy must eternally interrogate those things that appear to possess certainty. "Philosophers neither sow nor reap; they only turn the soil. They do not discover truth; but to keep the spirit alive, to face the various possibilities of answering our questions, they are needed."
Kołakowski further pointed out that if philosophers merely regarded theory as normative rather than constitutive, the harm caused to social reality would not be so severe. Admittedly, philosophers can set value goals for human society, but they must never regard these as absolute truths, nor falsely claim that these goals will certainly be realized in the future. In fact, Kołakowski distinguished between two kinds of utopian spirit: "One of them conforms to the Kantian precept of pure reason and resides in the belief that the ultimate foundation is actually being constructed, or at least that the premise of all premises is about to be found; the other is the search for a foundation for any kind of foundation we believe we have elucidated, which corresponds to what Hegel scornfully called 'bad infinity' [3]." Kołakowski believed that the first kind of utopia contains the attempt to deify philosophy, emphasizing that finite humans can grasp the absolute like God. The second kind of utopia acknowledges human finitude and advocates for the continuous expansion of potential. Clearly, Kołakowski focused his critique on the first kind of utopia.
Once an onto-epistemological utopia falls into the soil of social reality, it transforms into a social utopia. All such utopias share a commonality: the denial of human finitude and the attempt to eliminate the diversity of things. "A viable utopian world must assume that people have lost their creativity and freedom, that the diversity of human life forms and individual lives has been eliminated, and that all people have reached the complete satisfaction of their needs and accept a permanent, death-like stagnation as their normal state." Obviously, such a society can only be realized through violence and totalitarianism. It should be seen that the utopia Kołakowski described is only a specific type—one characterized by a strong egalitarianism, requiring people to live in the same houses, wear the same clothes, and even share the same hobbies. In such a society, individuality and difference are extremely dangerous and must be thoroughly rooted out. However, the pursuit of the Marxist communist ideal is completely different from this kind of utopia; it is merely something Kołakowski forced upon Marxism. His basic logic is to first posit the ineradicability of evil and human finitude, then portray Marxist communism as a world of absolute good, and finally point out the insurmountable contradiction between ideal and reality—concluding that Marxism is a "bad utopia."
Two issues need clarification here: first, what exactly is utopia and what are its types? Second, can the utopia Kołakowski criticized be attributed to Marxism? I believe we should distinguish between at least two distinct types of utopia. One is the "good" utopia—the utopia in an ethical-moral sense emphasized by Ernst Bloch in The Spirit of Utopia. This was mainly directed against the economic determinism of the Second International and carried a clear sense of cultural critique and human liberation. In the overall context of Eastern European Neo-Marxism, culture is not a conservative ideology but possesses a critical and transcendent function. "Culture is the process and result whereby man is humanized through the design of a more humane life, transformed into a new world." If utopia is defined this way, reality is no longer closed or constant, but an unactualized process in the state of becoming. "Utopia is not a трудноопределимый [hard to define] existence in the imagination. It is not a 'scientific fiction' or an illusory fantasy detached from reality, but a project that can be realized through the practice of the 'New Man' [4], a part of the kingdom where new ideas and new normative commands are proposed, and where courage and imagination constantly burst forth—that is, something not yet realized, but which is a condition of active reality." Agnes Heller called this "good" utopia a "rational utopia": "A rational utopia is always conceived for the present; its ideals indicate the—relative—goals toward which people should head in the direction of progress now, and the goals for which people should act now." In today's common parlance, a rational utopia is "value rationality"; without it, the human world would lose meaning and value.
Conversely, the other kind is the "bad" utopia, corresponding to the traditional sense of visionary value concepts. Not only is it fundamentally unrealizable in reality, but it also leads to serious socio-political disasters. This type of utopia suffers from a common ailment: dreaming of a perfect future ideal society. However, it is nothing more than an ahistorical fantasy without any realistic possibility or operability. I believe it is utterly absurd for Kołakowski to impose a large number of non-Marxist views on Marx to reach such incredibly hasty conclusions. For example, in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx identified: "Communism is the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement... It is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man—the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species." Kołakowski distorted this passage, arguing that "the elimination of alienation means the final reconciliation of all social forces," that "the opposition between the individual and the species will no longer exist," that "the opposition between the subject and object of history will be transcended," that "nothing exists except the unity of the individual and the species as a whole," that "the identity of the individual and the social whole will eliminate the source of all human antagonism," that "all individual interests, needs, and desires will be completely consistent with society," and that "the results of all individual and collective actions will be predictable, with no unexpected occurrences." In fact, Western anti-Marxists hold similar views, their core argument being that "Marxism is nothing but a utopian dream. It pins its hopes on a perfect society where there is no hardship, no pain, no violence, and no conflict. In the communist world, there is no antagonism, self-interest, possession, competition, or inequality." Anti-Marxists paint this picture of utopianism with ulterior motives; their fundamental purpose is to smear and negate Marxism. They find it convenient to start from the "evil of human nature" and daily experience to emphasize the ineradicability of contradictions and the gap between reality and ideals, thereby rejecting this "illusory utopianism." I believe this is an utter slander of Marxism. As Ernest Mandel said, Marxism contains no elements of Christian millenarianism or "secularized religion." Marxism does not naively dream of a total reconciliation between man and nature or man and society; it does not prophesy that all social conflicts and contradictions will completely disappear in the future, nor has it ever attempted to force people to accept a utopia. Marx and Engels wrote in The German Ideology: "Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence." This is the most powerful refutation of Western anti-Marxists and their fallacies.
Kolakowski’s view of Marxism as a "bad" utopia is closely linked to the "three motives" thesis he proposed in Main Currents of Marxism. He argued that Marx’s thought is full of contradictions and tensions, containing three important motives: the romantic motive, the Faustian-Promethean motive, and the rationalist-determinist motive, among which the romantic motive directly leads to utopianism. It is generally believed that "the Romantics attacked industrial society from a conservative point of view, lamenting the disappearance of 'organic' [5] bonds and loyalties, and the fact that people interacted not as individuals but as representatives of impersonal forces or of the power of institutions or money." Romanticism challenged liberalism and social contract theory; while it did not deny that the latter described social reality, it declared from a normative perspective that such a reality did not conform to human nature and was therefore illegitimate and must be transcended. Kolakowski believed that Marx inherited the Romantic intellectual tradition, and that the communist ideal implied that "all mediation between the individual and humanity would cease to exist," and "the individual would voluntarily identify himself with the community; coercion would be unnecessary, and the roots of conflict would disappear." However, the reality is as Terry Eagleton stated: Marx’s fundamental concern was "not a beautiful vision of an ideal future, but the resolution of the real contradictions that would prevent such an ideal from being realized." Marx never said that communist society would be free of conflict; he only emphasized that by then, large-scale class antagonism would no longer exist, or rather, that antagonism would no longer be based on private ownership [6]. Regarding the stance and viewpoints of Marxism, we should make three clarifications: first, Marxism does not place its theoretical focus on beautiful visions of a future society, but is more concerned with the real contradictions of capitalist society and their eradication; second, Marxism does not emphasize that the future society should "abolish individuality and destroy the family," nor does it believe that the future society is a uniform, homogeneous society; third, Marxism never overestimates human nature, nor does it believe that communism will eradicate all evil. Although members of a communist society are not flawless angels, in a state of extreme material abundance, the roots of moral degradation will be gradually eliminated.
II. An Examination of Market Liberalism’s "Open Society"
On the issue of opposing utopianism and totalitarianism, Kolakowski held views similar to liberalism; one could even say he was a fellow traveler of Popper. Curiously, however, in his essay "The Self-Poisoning of the Open Society," Kolakowski put liberalism in the dock, claiming that Popper, while attacking totalitarian ideologies and social movements, ignored the "reflexive" phenomenon of the open society acting as its own enemy. In other words, liberal capitalism itself contains the elements of totalitarianism, or is itself another face of totalitarianism. If this judgment is correct, it can be inferred that totalitarianism is no longer the "patent" of the closed society, but the result of the open society's self-poisoning.
Popper distinguished between the "closed society" and the "open society," the former referring to societies operating according to traditional mysticism and historical determinist thought, and the latter to societies highlighting individual freedom and human reason. Here, historical determinism primarily refers to the rationalist intellectual tradition following the "Plato-Hegel-Marx" line. Regarding its characteristics: "on the one hand, it emphasizes that the operation of history is subject to an external, iron necessity unaffected by individual actions and free human activity; on the other hand, it places the whole, the collective, the group, and the state above the individual, and thus belongs to a holist or collectivist intellectual tradition that opposes the spirit of Western liberal culture." In The Poverty of Historicism, Popper emphasized that historicism is a social science method applied by people without reflection: "it considers historical prophecy to be its primary aim, and assumes that this aim is attainable by discovering the 'rhythms' or the 'patterns', the 'laws' or the 'trends' that underlie the evolution of history." Equating historicism with historical determinism, and subsequently linking it to a totalizing utopia, is the core thesis of Popper’s anti-historicism. The limitation of this viewpoint is that it "sets aside the specific historical background and divergent thoughts of historical figures, specifically extracting certain concepts or thought patterns according to the needs of his personal arguments and biases." When he categorically argued that he did not reject historicism, he precisely exposed the true face of his anti-historicism.
Some argue that Popper ignored the flaws of free-market capitalism primarily because social contradictions had not intensified during the period in which he lived. This view is clearly untenable, as the self-destructive historical trend of the liberal market mechanism had already been revealed by other thinkers. For example, Karl Polanyi elaborated in detail on the latent risks of the capitalist free market, emphasizing that a pure self-regulating market was an unsustainable utopia: "to allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment, indeed, even of the amount and the use of purchasing power, would result in the demolition of society." Although Polanyi was not a Marxist, he correctly revealed the decisive role of the relations of production (the economic system). In his view, "the economic system was submerged in general social relations; the market was merely an accessory feature of an institutional setting controlled and regulated, more than ever, by social authority." Like Polanyi, Kolakowski remained fully alert to the "omnipotent market" boasted of by liberals. In his view, liberals inevitably fall into a theoretical blindness, the fundamental problem of which lies in their over-reliance on an optimistic philosophy—a blind belief that all problems can be perfectly solved with the assistance of technology and reason.
Kolakowski further argued that Popper’s analysis of closed and open societies was erroneous. In Popper’s view, "closedness" is the basic characteristic of tribal communities, where strict, magical taboos operate. Tribal communities not only reject all change but also oppose the use of reason and critical debate; democracy, individualism, and equality are all non-existent here. Conversely, the open society is characterized by a universal spirit of criticism and anti-dogmatism; it prizes open debate and submission to reason, opposes irrational taboos, and believes in science. Kolakowski believed that Popper overestimated the functions of reason and science and underestimated the role of faith and taboos; the reality is that certain closed societies run better than open societies. Kolakowski also found that in reality, the open society is rarely described as a state system, but rather represents a value system of rational tolerance—a value system that ignores tradition and believes that all the values it contains (such as democracy, freedom, and equality) can support each other without limit. He regarded this as a naive illusion and raised three objections: "(1) among the important values of the open society, there are some which, for empirical rather than logical reasons, conflict with each other and can only be realized through mutual limitation; (2) therefore, any attempt to promote these values in a completely consistent manner inevitably threatens the survival of the open society; (3) no society, not even an open society, can exist without a certain degree of trust in tradition, or—to put it another way—some of the 'irrational' values characteristic of the closed society are indispensable to the open society."
It is generally believed that Western rational civilization consists of three core components: a free market economy, a democratic political system, and the concept of individual freedom. These three aspects are usually closely intertwined. Popper believed that these three basic ideas would not conflict in an open society and could support one another. Kolakowski, however, believed the three were full of internal contradictions and were bound to be irreconcilable. For instance: "the market implies political freedom, the growth of reason, technical progress, and contempt for tradition; it also implies the ruthless struggle of private interests, egocentrism, obsession with money, indifference to neighbors, the decline of religious values, poverty, and the exploitation of workers, as well as the victory of reason over history, authority, and emotion." No choices are made within pure institutions. Neither an absolute free market nor a completely closed tribal community exists. Under the Western liberal capitalist system, when people choose universal suffrage, political freedom, social security, and the rule of law, they will have to accept pollution, hunger, servitude, and crime. Popper’s attribution of all good aspects to the open society while leaving the bad to the closed society is entirely a metaphysical illusion and prejudice.
In fact, contradictions between the elements of Western rational civilization can be seen everywhere. Taking the capitalist free market as an example, people must face the following dilemma: "allowing the market to develop self-regulations and frantically according to the profit-seeking logic of capital will threaten the organic bonds between people and lead to the disintegration of the community; whereas strengthening government intervention and implementing welfare society policies may, under certain circumstances, lead to the suppression of individual freedom and the emergence of totalitarian tendencies." At the practical level, liberals usually hold a very complex attitude toward the state (government intervention); they acknowledge the necessity of the state's existence, hoping it can protect fragile individual rights, but at the same time fear the state, worrying that coercive state power without any restrictions will pose a threat to individual rights. Overall, liberals believe that the core of modern society is the market, and that abolishing the market means entering a Gulag society. Kolakowski, on the one hand, acknowledged that these dangers indeed exist, but on the other hand emphasized: "by the end of the 19th century, the liberal creed that the state had virtually no right at all to interfere with economic life had only a few supporters left." Taking the welfare state as an example, many liberals believe that this system is the "recipe" for saving capitalism; through the coercive power of state legislation to suppress the power of individuals or corporations, the freedom of all will be guaranteed. However, from a realistic perspective, welfare-state capitalism has already encountered a serious development bottleneck. The original intention of state intervention was to protect the interests of the weak from infringement; the result, however, has led to a prevailing mood of indolence. People even believe that "the best chance of getting rich comes not from work and investment, but from suing those who succeed in business; not from health, but from accidental disability; not from a long and productive career, but from timely retirement." National welfare policies also imply that the government will comprehensively intervene in economic, political, and cultural life, which carries a socialist tendency. For example, Friedrich Hayek once mockingly referred to Leonard Hobhouse’s work on the welfare state, Liberalism, as Socialism. According to him, "although the stated goal of the plan is that man should no longer be a mere tool, in fact—because it is impossible to take into account individual likes and dislikes in the plan—the individual as a mere tool will be more so than ever before, a tool used by authorities to serve abstract ideas such as so-called 'social welfare' and 'social interest'." In Hayek’s view, while the unlawful acts of individuals are indeed terrible, the coercive acts of the state are even more dangerous, especially when the latter are carried out under banners such as "the welfare state," "public happiness," and "fairness and justice." Hayek’s attack on socialism is naturally untenable, but it must be admitted that any well-intentioned state intervention, once it goes too far, can indeed turn from truth into error. Kolakowski fully agreed with the potential risks brought by state intervention; he realized that if the basic principles of the welfare state were thoroughly implemented, it would very likely lead to the abolition of the market and state tyranny. But unlike liberals such as Hayek, Kolakowski did not ignore the connection between liberalism and totalitarianism; rather, he determined that totalitarianism is the fruit grown on the tree of liberalism. This means that liberalism will inevitably have to turn into its own opposite.
Leszek Kołakowski argues that the contradiction between freedom and equality is a paradox that liberalism cannot overcome. Liberalism never regards equality as its primary goal; extreme liberals even consider it foolish to prioritize equality over the well-being of all individuals. Kołakowski contends that liberalism rejects equality not only to oppose the egalitarian principles of utopian socialism but because it possesses an inherent internal resistance to equality itself. Since John Rawls introduced the normative concept of justice, liberals have no longer been able to comfortably ignore the idea of equality; however, they still emphasize that freedom is superior to equality and restrict equality merely to "equality of opportunity." This so-called equality of opportunity posits that in a just society, all positions and statuses must, in principle, be accessible to everyone. Kołakowski argues that equality of opportunity is an unachievable, false equality because every individual’s family environment differs; therefore, universal education cannot achieve equality of opportunity, as any inequality today becomes the root of inequality for the next generation. To achieve true equality of opportunity would require completely identical living conditions, which would mean the abolition of the family and the implementation of collective compulsory state education for all children. This, however, could only be realized through totalitarian means, to the extent that "if we take the principle of equality at the starting point of life seriously and wish to remain faithful to it consistently, we have one foot on the path toward a system of totalitarian slavery."
It must be pointed out that Kołakowski does not oppose equality per se, but rather the liberal conception of equality of opportunity, as this equality is built on the basis of the equal distribution of material interests. He often cites a dialogue between God and a peasant to reveal the dangers of this type of equality: God promises to give the peasant anything he wants, on the condition that his neighbor receives twice as much; consequently, the peasant asks God to pluck out one of his own eyes. Distinct from liberal equality of opportunity, Kołakowski looks forward to an equality of rights and responsibilities based on dignity. "When we say all people are equal, we mean they are all equal in human dignity; this dignity is something we all possess, and no one has the right to violate it." Proceeding from this, Kołakowski holds Christian theology in high esteem and believes that human equality and the enjoyment of equal dignity can only be realized under the gaze of God. He states frankly: "To justify the claim that all people are equal, one must certainly appeal to the Christian—but not only Christian—religious tradition. When we say all people are children of one Father, that all people, regardless of their status, education, class, or place of birth, whether rich or poor, are judged by God according to the same standard, it is precisely this tradition we have in mind." If one removes the cloak of religious mysticism, Kołakowski’s critique of the liberal view of equality remains pertinent and fair.
Kołakowski argues that an open society necessarily falls into intellectual self-deception. It publicly proclaims itself the incarnation of the spirit of freedom, claiming to fully guarantee individual freedom of politics, speech, and the press, but this merely allows the spirit of reason and tolerance to gain the upper hand. The necessary result is the disappearance of irrational taboos, the abandonment of traditional culture and the sacred, and an anarchism that despises all authority. Kołakowski does not oppose tolerance, but he finds that modern people possess a potential for intolerance; people always tend to impose their own worldview on others, and in this sense, the liberal practice of protecting tolerance is desirable. The problem is that once limits are exceeded, truth turns into error, and an overemphasis on tolerance leads to moral nihilism, which we should strive to avoid. As Kołakowski emphasizes, if liberalism preaches that "no one believes in anything except that life is a game, and nothing is at stake," then sooner or later, we will be harmed by some form of ideological despotism. Western scholars regard the values obtained from liberal education as natural, innate, and consistent with the standards of human nature, which is precisely a typical manifestation of ideology. Proceeding from the ineradicability of evil and human finitude, Kołakowski argues there is no reason to believe that concepts such as benevolence, selflessness, and helpfulness are "natural." From empirical facts, misfortune, hatred, envy, tribal exclusion, racism, and aggression seem to be the social norms. It is evident that education cannot function normally without the support of religious and traditional authority. The liberal approach to universal education, which advocates the abolition of authority, tradition, and dogma, can only lead to moral nihilism. In short, absolute freedom is absolute slavery, and it is the anarchist ideology derived from liberal principles that supports totalitarianism. Although we cannot assert that all open societies will ultimately head toward totalitarianism, we should recognize that such a potential developmental risk does indeed exist in the open society.
III. Concluding Remarks
It is deeply significant that Kołakowski collected his essays critiquing utopianism and liberalism into a volume titled Modernity on Endless Trial. In the preface to that book, he states directly: "In these essays, I have tried to point out some unpleasant and insoluble dilemmas that loom whenever we think about our cultural, political, and religious life and try to remain entirely consistent." In Agnes Heller's view, modernity is composed of a series of paradoxes: "if people think about the modern social structure, they must also think about the dynamics of modernity and the paradoxes it produces." Kołakowski believes that paradox signifies a contradictory tension between different things. He poses the following question to modern people: Should we seek some kind of "consistency"? It must be noted that the answer to this question requires great caution, for Kołakowski’s thought is extremely complex. The academic community generally identifies him as a cultural conservative; this judgment is sound, and from this starting point, it is easier to understand his critique of utopianism and liberalism. However, he does not oppose all utopianism and liberalism, but rather claims that conservatism, liberalism, and socialism are not mutually exclusive: "it is possible to be a conservative-liberal-socialist." From the perspective of cultural conservatism, Kołakowski agrees with R.G. Collingwood’s view that progress is necessarily accompanied by regress, emphasizing that "in human life, there never has been, and never will be, improvement that does not come at the cost of regression and evil; therefore, in considering every plan for reform and improvement, the cost must be estimated." In a word, there is no happy ending to human history. We must not simply assume that Kołakowski holds a pessimistic attitude toward human history only because he personally experienced the "Holocaust." In fact, proceeding from cultural conservatism, Kołakowski seems to want to emphasize the historical progressiveness of evil. Faced with the overflow of instrumentalism and technical rationality, modern people always optimistically believe that all evils are temporary, or that they are caused by defects in the social system, and that all this will be wiped away along with institutional transformation. Kołakowski is deeply skeptical of this; his vigorous opposition to utopianism is based on a firm belief in human finitude. "If one blindly believes in human perfectibility and infinity, believes that an ultimate reconciliation of contradictions is possible, and believes that humanity will certainly step into an absolutely perfect society, then this idealized utopian concept is highly likely to lead to despotism and tyranny." From this, Kołakowski argues that modern people should possess a spirit of skepticism and should break the coercive logic of "consistency." Whether the future of humanity leads to hell or heaven will mainly depend on how people act in the present.
It should also be noted that Kołakowski’s opposition to "consistency" is not an unprincipled defense of particularity and difference, but rather an attempt to seek a dynamic balance between universality and particularity, and between consistency and difference. We can illustrate this with his understanding of the Kantian view of human rights. In his essay "Why Do We Need Kant?", Kołakowski differentiates between "abstract man" and "concrete man," emphasizing that "abstract man" is of great significance for defending modernity. Although "concrete man" correctly emphasizes particularity, because it denies a common humanity, its concept of human rights loses an important foundation and easily falls into being a tool of ideological rule. It is evident that Kołakowski’s critique of "consistency" precisely contains a certain Marxist dialectical thinking—namely, an opposition to extremes and ideological ossification. Kołakowski opposes the liberal open society but does not advocate a return to the closed society of pre-capitalism; he opposes the idea that utopianism can eliminate all contradictions, believing that the eradication of evil would only lead to a new totalitarianism—a "Brave New World"—but he does not frequentively oppose people using certain good future value-ideals to guide their actions. The author believes it is extremely necessary to examine Kołakowski's thought within the specific historical and cultural context of Central and Eastern Europe. For the people of Central and Eastern Europe, especially the intellectuals, the 20th century was absolutely a dark age; the Auschwitz concentration camp and the political interventions in Soviet society are undoubtedly deeply imprinted in people's minds. If the common people have entered the "age of bread," forgetting the meaning and value of life in order to obtain basic material products, then intellectuals with critical thinking and a moral conscience must answer the following questions: How is evil produced? What are the defects of a consistent society? How can totalitarianism be avoided? As an Eastern European Neo-Marxist, Kołakowski possessed a background in Marxist humanism; he realized that modern people possess a sentiment of Enlightenment optimism, where people generally believe that science and technology can continuously push the wheels of history forward and that the future will certainly be a flawless, contradiction-free, beautiful society. The critique of this concept is not meant to lead to pessimism, but to teach people that they must maintain a posture of humility and correctly view nature and life.
We should also notice the difference between Aristotle’s concept of the mean and Kołakowski’s concept of inconsistency. To oppose consistency is to pursue inconsistency; according to Kołakowski, "inconsistency is simply the refusal to make a once-and-for-all choice in the face of any two mutually exclusive values." Kołakowski does not deny that his theory has an affinity with Aristotle’s concept of the mean, but he declares that the two are fundamentally opposed. If Aristotle’s goal was to reconcile contradictions through a metaphysical system to achieve a certain consistency, Kołakowski opposes finding a fixed standard between two endpoints; his fundamental goal is the pursuit of inconsistency. From a deeper level, the fundamental difference between the two is that Aristotle attempted to avoid contradiction, viewing contradiction as a temporary existence external to a thing that could be reconciled and overcome through cognition and thought; Kołakowski, however, affirms contradiction, believing that the problem is not people’s misuse of a certain value principle, but that contradiction inherently and universally exists in this world and therefore cannot be eliminated. In any case, Kołakowski’s misreading of Marxism warrants our vigilance, but his emphasis on human finitude and religious sanctity, as well as his reflections on the relationship between universality and particularity, contain a certain philosophical wisdom that is worthy of deep consideration and reference.