Patterns of political thinking and arguments in Poland-Lithuania: virtues, res publica and education
ENThe term we are using in this publication, ‘the Jagiellonian ideas’, is a very rich and broad category that includes intellectual and cultural developments of two centuries. I am going to focus on certain aspects of the political discourse and political culture that matured in the late fifteenth and at the beginning of the sixteenth century along with the mixed form of government of Rzeczpospolita. What were the key concepts that shaped public philosophy of the Jagiellonian Commonwealth whose heritage would last so long and would animate political discourse of the next two centuries? It can be argued that the project of the Jagiellonian epoch resembles the Greek paideia which meant an overall process of education that aimed at perfection of human character, at the attainment of areté. The period of the Renaissance in Poland can be seen as the most vital and the most significant for the development of Polish-Lithuanian culture including political and legal culture as well as education with the central role played by the University of Kraków.
