Milosz is obviously talking about Communism and the philosophy it was based on. (If you haven’t read The Captive Mind, it’s pretty good albeit obviously dated).
The lesson is that philosophy can be Serious Business and you ignore bad philosophy at your own peril. To paraphrase the famous Trotsky paraphrase: You may not be interested in diseased Philosophy, but diseased Philosophy is interested in you.
Milosz is obviously talking about Communism and the philosophy it was based on. (If you haven’t read The Captive Mind, it’s pretty good albeit obviously dated).
The lesson is that philosophy can be Serious Business and you ignore bad philosophy at your own peril. To paraphrase the famous Trotsky paraphrase: You may not be interested in diseased Philosophy, but diseased Philosophy is interested in you.
Money is the unit of caring; there’s a similar quote about “some dead economist” or the like I can’t quite recall.
In Soviet Russia...