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How Far Is It from Cambridge to Kraków? The Cambridge School and the Legacy of the Commonwealth and Central Europe
Abstract
RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The article addresses the reception of the Cambridge School in Poland and in the wider context of East-Central Europe, asking how great the intellectual distance between Cambridge and Kraków really is.
THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: Drawing chiefly on the work of Q. Skinner and J.G.A. Pocock, the author examines the importance of the contextual methodological turn – reading political texts as interventions in concrete political and institutional disputes – and of the rediscovery of the republican tradition. The article is both analytical and programmatic in character.
THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: The author examines the possible causes of the marginal presence of the experience of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the republican traditions of Central Europe in the writings of the school’s leading representatives, from the structural limits of the Western canon to linguistic and geopolitical barriers.
RESEARCH RESULTS: The article argues that, thanks to an intensive reception of the Cambridge School’s methods, institutional cooperation with the University of Cambridge, and the presence of Polish scholars in international scholarly circulation, contemporary Kraków stands closer to Cambridge than ever before. At the same time a clear asymmetry persists: the experience of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth remains marginal in the writings of the school’s leading representatives.
CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The author proposes research directions capable of integrating the heritage of the Commonwealth into a broader narrative of European republicanism, calling for a shift from the reception of Cambridge methodology towards co-authoring a symmetrical research agenda.
Keywords
Cambridge School ; contextual methodology ; republicanism ; Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth ; open diplomacy
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