This article examines the development of Leszek Kolakowski's thought, in the context of changing Polish political landscape; from the early Marxist text, critical of the Catholic Church and its doctrine -- to the late books on Augustine and Pascal and sympathetic analysis of the role of religion in contemporary society. The author attempts to discover a continuity in this development; it may by found, the author argues, in Kolakowski's rationalism, understood first in opposition to religion, but later as fed on (...) religious sources, reason's necessary presupposition. (shrink)