Dialogue and Universalism

Volume 16, Issue 3/4, 2006

Virtual University of Dialogue and Universalism

Making Sense of Polish History—From a History of Enquiry

Throughout 19th and the first half of 20th centuries, Polish thinkers largely supplanted political philosophy with the philosophy of history. Such an approach produced an essential continuum, despite marked differences of concepts in different political and theoretical contexts. This continuity finds a particular expression in two ideas, nascent already in the 15th and 16th century Polish political thought, i.e. the idea of Poland’s Historical Mission (as a Bulwark of the West), and a notion of a specifically Polish Love of Freedom. The author approaches this phenomenon by way of presenting three sets of concepts: the late-Enlightenment one of S. Staszic, the Romantic attempt of A. Cieszkowski, and M. Zdziechowski’s Neo-Romantic take.