If there is no Religion – L. Kołakowski’s Defence of the Sacred

Abstract

This article is an attempt to present the views of the Polish philosopher on the phenomenon of religion. L. Kołakowski devoted almost all his professional life to the issue of religion. He places the area of religious experiences and beliefs within the framework of transcendentalism, one of the basic and mutually exclusive options: “transcendentalism – empiricism”. Empiricism is the sphere of naturalistic views and contents, and their most radical representatives are empirical sciences and philosophies related to them. L. Kołakowski points out that there is no reason for the naturalistic option to exhaust the cognitive content. However, a philosophical attempt to go beyond naturalism in grasping the Absolute and the self, ends in metaphysical horror. Hence L. Kołakowski points to religious perception as an area that remains non-scientific but this fact does not contradict its value. A special place in L. Kołakowski’s analyses is occupied by the anthropological argument under which the biologisation of human existence is unjustified.