Professor Hubert Dreyfus: Dostoyevsky on how to Save the Sacred from Science / Leszek Kolakowski: The Revenge of the Sacred in secular culture

By Dilip -

In The Brothers Karamazov one of the monks tells Alyosha that "the science of this world has … analyzed everything divine handed down to us in the holy books. After this cruel analysis the learned of this world have nothing left of all that was sacred of old.” The Brothers Karamazov is Dostoyevsky's answer to the alleged loss of the sacred. There he quite explicitly interprets Christian practices such as baptism, confession, and even belief in miracles, so that they allow one to appreciate the sacred without having to deny the validity of modern science. He even makes clear in each case which specific sacred experience he is existentializing. As far as I know, no one has understood Dostoyevsky's profound accomplishment. I will present, discuss, and defend his view -

Professor Hubert Dreyfus: Dostoyevsky on how to Save the Sacred from Science 
PROFESSOR HUBERT DREYFUS is an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. His main interests include phenomenology, existentialism and the philosophy of psychology and literature, as well as the philosophical implications of artificial intelligence. Dreyfus is known for his exegesis of Martin Heidegger. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001 and is a recipient of the Harbison Prize for Outstanding Teaching at UC Berkeley. Erasmus University awarded Dreyfus an honorary doctorate "for his brilliant and highly influential work in the field of artificial intelligence, and for his equally outstanding contributions to the analysis and interpretation of twentieth century continental philosophy".


Distinguished Polish philosopher and historian of ideas. He is best known for his critical analysis of Marxist thought, especially his acclaimed three-volume history, Main Currents of Marxism. In his later work, Kolakowski increasingly focused on religious questions. In his 1986 Jefferson Lecture, he asserted that "We learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are.”

In Poland, Kołakowski is not only revered as a philosopher and historian of ideas, but also as an icon for opponents of communism. Adam Michnik has called Kołakowski "one of the most prominent creators of contemporary Polish culture".

Kołakowski died on 17 July 2009, aged 81, in Oxford, England. In his obituary, philosopher Roger Scruton said Kolakowski was a "thinker for our time" and that regarding Kolakowski's debates with intellectual opponents, "even if ... nothing remained of the subversive orthodoxies, nobody felt damaged in their ego or defeated in their life's project, by arguments which from any other source would have inspired the greatest indignation."





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