Half a century has passed since the publication of The Foundations of Modern Political Thought by Quentin Skinner and The Machiavellian Moment by J.G.A. Pocock, two works that have become foundational texts of the contextual approach to the history of political thought. Today, it is no longer possible to study political thought while ignoring its broader cultural, intellectual, linguistic, political, and social contexts. Thanks to the Cambridge School, as well as to scholarship in historical semantics (the history of concepts), we now have a deeper understanding of the inseparable entanglement of these contexts. This perspective encourages us to move beyond a narrow focus on canonical texts and great authors of political philosophy. This theme issue of “Horizons of Politics” seeks to explore the extent to which Polish – and more broadly Central European – scholars have engaged with, and may further benefit from, the contextual approach to the history of political thought.

As Skinner observed, “political life itself sets the main problems for the political theorist, causing a certain range of issues to appear problematic and a corresponding range of questions to become the leading subjects of debate”. Does the distinct political experience of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its neighbouring regions, particularly in the early modern period, limit the applicability of the Cambridge School’s methods for understanding the legacy of Polish and Central European political thought? Or, on the contrary, might analytical tools developed through the study of Italian and British political thought offer new interpretative possibilities for authors from Central and Eastern Europe? Does the relatively limited interest in the contextual approach among Polish scholars stem from the continued dominance of political history and the national historiographical paradigm at Polish universities? To what extent, given the specific historical trajectories of Central and Eastern European countries, might approaches that more strongly link political thought to its socio-economic context, such as Begriffsgeschichte, offer advantages over the Cambridge School?