Abstract

This article is an attempt to reconstruct Leszek Kołakowski’s vision of education based on the study of his own notions and ideas. According to Kołakowski, any meaning which can be attributed to human life and activities is not a feature inherent in human beings but can only be granted by themselves. The process of sense creation is irremovable from culture. Kołakowski calls this process myth creation, which is one of the key concepts he employs. He considers education as an introduction to myth while the lack of an external frame of reference renders education “identical with indoctrination”. Therefore the only way to preserve the apprentice’s autonomy is to refer to another category of Kołakowski’s, which is inconsistency. Placing hope for the apprentice’s autonomy in the teacher’s inconsistency and, in consequence, in the ineffectiveness of education, is not very reassuring. Kołakowski’s vision of education demonstrates that scepticism is not capable (or even willing) of offering us anything more than that.