Iwona Barwicka-Tylek

The author of the paper tries to identify the basic methodological assumptions of the personal pattern of the ideal ruler as presented by Machiavelli in his Il Principe. While comparing the “mirror of the Principe” elaborated by Machiavelli, with the Galileo’s pendulum that came to being 100 years later, one may observe significant similarity between the manures along which the two devices were construed. They both came to being as a result of some idealization. Both speculum and pendulum is exploited above all in order to demonstrate interrelations between major variables which determine the course followed by the phenomena which arouse interest of both authors. In case of Machiavelli, this is the wish to describe the mechanism that is responsible for the effective – i.e. the one that guarantees the political success – method of ruling. At the same time the selection of the procedure applied for idealization (the one that requires the considering of extreme cases or disregarding the less important ones) causes that the description of the Prince assumes mainly the theoretical and ostentatious values. Thanks to the outlined analogy between pendulum and speculum it is possible to present a hypothesis that the assessment of the factual political radicalism of the methods of controlling the state as proposed in Il Principe should take into consideration not only that content of these methods which pertains to their subject matter but also the methodological nature of the entire concept.

The paper refers to sir Isaiah Berlin’s famous essay concerning differences between two types of human personality. Using a metaphor whose authorship is ascribed to an ancient Greek poet, Archilochus, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing,” Berlin argues that writers  and  thinkers  of  one  kind  (“hedgehogs”)  relate  everything  to  a  single,  central  vision  or principle, while those of another kind (“foxes”) expand their thinking in many autonomous directions. As this opposition became famous, Berlin himself was almost unanimously numbered among those who are claimed to “lead lives, perform acts and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal.” However, by taking a closer look at his work as a whole, we can see a different pattern of Berlin’s attitude. On the basic level of his intellectual presumptions the author of “The hedgehog and the fox” seems to have much of a hedgehog – encouraging us to share his quite coherent outlook of the history of our culture and values attached to it. This paper attempts to trace crucial features of Berlin’s “hedgehogness” and demonstrate their presence in his writings on German romanticism, concepts of freedom, value‐pluralism, and other topics.

The article is a voice in the debate concerning the role of historical-legal subjects in the curriculum of legal studies. The authors argue that the declining popularity and attractiveness of those subjects largely results from inadequate understanding of the purpose and form of instruction. Instead of building the intellectual ethos of future lawyers they contribute to a new type of absolute ignorance. Referring to their own academic discipline, the history of political and legal thought, the authors outline a workable teaching model.

The article discusses the current state of edition of legal historical sources in Poland from the perspective of historians of political and legal thought. The authors begin by explaining the idea and scope of „source base”specific to their field of research. Three following issues are discussed later: (a) translation of foreign sources into Polish; (b) critical (re)edition of classic Polish texts in political thought; (c) edition of 20th century documental sources by the Institute of National Remembrance and The KARTA Centre. The authors make a number of comments and requests concerning the subject of discussion.