This book is a study of the political thought and political discourse of the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It argues that the Polish-Lithuanian political tradition was preoccupied during this period with moral concepts, in particular that of public virtue, understood as the subordination of private interests to the common good. Polish-Lithuanian politicians and commentators analysed their political system primarily in moral terms, arguing that the Commonwealth existed for the promotion of virtue, and depended for its survival upon on t ... More

This book is a study of the political thought and political discourse of the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It argues that the Polish-Lithuanian political tradition was preoccupied during this period with moral concepts, in particular that of public virtue, understood as the subordination of private interests to the common good. Polish-Lithuanian politicians and commentators analysed their political system primarily in moral terms, arguing that the Commonwealth existed for the promotion of virtue, and depended for its survival upon on the retention of virtue among rulers and citizens. They analysed the Commonwealth’s acute political dysfunction from the late seventeenth century as the result of moral (not institutional) failings. Proposals for reform of the Commonwealth’s government aimed at restoring virtuous government in the service of the common good. This concern with promoting virtue animated several attempts at reform in this period, including at the Sejm (Parliament) of 1712–13, and during the General Confederation of Tarnogród (1715–17, a mass uprising by the Polish-Lithuanian nobility (szlachta) against King Augustus II). In an international context, the book argues that the Polish-Lithuanian political tradition’s continuing preoccupation with virtue set it apart from other early modern republican traditions, where thinkers were beginning to consider whether self-interest could be harnessed as a positive political force. The Polish-Lithuanian tradition’s failure to evolve in this way arguably demonstrates its backwardness: however, its emphasis on the need for political systems to be underpinned by shared values still has great relevance today.