Poland’s most prominent post-war philosopher, Professor Leszek Kołakowski will be buried today with military honours at Warsaw’s Powązki Military Cemetery after a funeral ceremony held at St. Martin’s Church.

Click on the icon above to listen to the report by Agnieszka Bielawska

The professor’s body was transported to Poland by a military plane from Great Britain yesterday. A brief low-key ceremony at the airport followed, organized by the defence and foreign affairs ministers.

Professor Leszek Kołakowski died in Oxford, England on 17 July, aged 82.

On his family’s request, today’s observance will be private in character, without media or speeches by politicians.

Meanwhile, books of condolence have been made available at Warsaw’s Kazimierzowski Palace, and the Library of the Warsaw University, for those who want to pay tribute to the celebrated academic.

Professor Leszek Kołakowski was one of the most influential philosophers that Poland produced this century, says Krzysztof Michalski, head of the Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna:

“He was the Pole whose name has remained present at the world’s top universities and publishing houses, and very often amid heated debate on fundamental issues,” he said. “His contribution to Poland’s capacity to understand others, to comprehend the highest accomplishments of European thought, the present and the past, the tradition, and at the same time the ongoing discussion on spiritual matters – in all these fields his exceptional contribution cannot be overestimated.”

Kolakowski’s Main Currents of Marxism (1978) became a standard academic text in universities the world over and he was awarded Poland’s highest honour, the White Eagle, for services to the history of ideas. (ab/pg)