The paper discusses some fundamental differences between Aristotelian and modern conceptions of the state. It focuses its attention on the early liberal thinkers, such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, and contrasts the theory of state developed by them with the classical republican ideal described by Aristotle. As I will demonstrate main differences come down to (1) distinct ideas concerning the state’s origins (and especially human motivations behind establishing the state), (2) divergent convictions about the role of the state and its ethical dimension; and finally (3) different beliefs concerning basic feelings and passions which sustain existence of political community. I argue that on the basis of Stagirite’s philosophy it is possible to question whether civic association described by the precursors of liberal political thought is actually the state. In conclusion, I signalize the problem of serious limitations of contemporary liberal democracies (or even their internal contradictions) resulting from their attempt to follow an ideal of an ideologically neutral state. 

Liberal Education in the Contemporary Political Thought

The article is devoted to the problem of the place ascribed to liberal education (and most of all to humanities as constituting its essential part) in contemporary political thought. In times when many rightist as well as leftist thinkers diagnose a crisis of liberal democracy and its educational system, displaying much anxiety about the still-lowering level of citizens’ willingness to participate in a public sphere, some of them propose their diagnosis of such situation and postulates of reform aimed at raising the level of citizens’ engagement in democratic life. One of the means to achieving that goal is implementation of the idea of liberal education, which might work in favor of students’ character development, their acquisition of a holistic view of reality, and their consciousness of the fact of overlapping character of relations binding individual and communal wellbeing. The article aims at presenting theoretical ways of defending humanities in face of contemporary restatement of the role of liberal education in Western societies. The course of argument is following: firstly the transition made in XXth century from “liberal education” to “education to liberalism” (resulting in specialization and vocational character of science) will be traced. Then the opinions of critics to such model of education will be shown, focusing on the representatives of three political doctrines: republicanism, communitarianism and liberalism. In case of each of these group of thinkers their characteristic attitude towards humanities, will be displayed.

This paper analyses the options to apply the model of Polish-Lithuanian republicanism – studied mainly for the 16th–19th century context – for the research of the Czech historical tradition of political thought. By doing so, the article tries to deconstruct the traditional national narrativization of the Czech domestic political discourse as a gradual evolution of classical liberalism and ethnic nationalism (i.e., the narrative created during the National Revival and emphasized dominantly again after 1989) with the help of suggestion that the Czech historical political thought might have reflected specific interpretations of political values (liberty, equality, common good, etc.) that have been already identified in the Polish-Lithuanian aristocratic milieu. Contrary to the Polish historiography that reflects and analyses the domestic tradition of republican political thought on a large scale, the Czech historical science still lacks appropriate theoretical and methodological tools to interpret the Bohemian (and later Czech) discourse of political theory from the perspective of Central European republican tradition. Hence, this paper identifies the main impetuses for such research on possible patterns of Czech historical republicanism, including the challenge to deconstruct the traditional narrativization of the Czech “national story” constructed mainly at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The operationalization of the republican theory in the Central European context – based primarily on the current state of research of the Polish-Lithuanian historical case revealing new contextual meanings of political concepts such as mixed government, liberty, equality, or common good – opens the space for re-interpretation of fundamental Czech political and civic values that have been so far dominantly understood in the framework of the “victory march” of liberal, democratic and ethno-national principles. Such reinterpretation – enriching the perspectives of both Czech as well as broader Central European study of political ideas – is therefore suggested in case of two relevant historical cases: 1) the Bohemian political thought during the 1618 anti-Habsburg uprising; 2) the Czech political discourse in the 1848 revolution.