What is it about?
Plato was a philosopher and political thinker of utmost importance. This work discusses how his political works (above all the Republic) were studied by nineteenth-century Polish authors, including historians of philosophy, philosophers and social thinkers (B. Limanowski, W. Dzieduszycki, W. Lutosławski, T. Sinko, S. Pawlicki, E. Jarra). They had various intellectual backgrounds and goals, but they all found inspiration in Plato’s work for developing their own arguments touching upon contemporary social or political issues, including the questions of democracy, socialism and gender equality.
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Why is it important?
This work demonstrates everlasting vitality and topicality of Plato's political ideas which went far beyond his time and place and proved to be inspiring even after millennia in remote countries. Moreover, it demonstartes that Polish thinkers, even during the partitions of their homeland, when it had ceased to exist as an independent state, did not abandon reflecting on political philosophy and searched for a stimulus in classical texts.
Perspectives
I think that it is interesting to see how old texts and ideas were read, re-read, interpreted or even distorted by the thinkers of subsequent centuries. For me personally it is important to present some section of Polish philosophy in its connection to classical works to international reading audiences.
Tomasz Mróz
Uniwersytet Zielonogorski
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This page is a summary of: Plato’s Political Works in Nineteenth-Century Polish Thought, September 2024, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004679344_014.
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