Leszek Kołakowski, Polish-English historian and philosopher (died 2009)

Leszek Kołakowski was a Polish philosopher and historian of ideas. He is best known for his critical analysis of Marxist thought, as in his three-volume history of Marxist philosophy Main Currents of Marxism (1976). In his later work, Kołakowski 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".