Reception of the Idea of “Social Contract” of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Polish Political Thought During Interwar Period

Abstract

The theory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau during interwar period was the spur to many thoughts concerning the state and the role it played in social life. In the Second Polish Republic, the representatives of Polish legal and political thought developed a number of political, social and economic concepts. The group of architects of Polish constitutional order first of all included lawyers, which have expressed their views about young Polish Republic in many commentaries. Polish legal thought of the interwar period had its excellent creators, whose ideas certainly matched the ideas of Western lawyers. Often Polish professors of law, in the discussion about the shape of the political system of the independent Polish Republic, referred to the theory of the French critic of Enlightenment and the representative of bourgeois radicalism J. J. Rousseau. The main representative of the Polish legal thought, who used the idea of “social contract” of Rousseau, was the creator of a conception of “democratic Caesarism”, professor and rector of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań Antoni Peretiatkowicz, whose reflections were an original contribution to legal thought of the Second Polish Republic. His ideas about state regime, which were based on the theory of Jean Jacques Rousseau and especially on the idea of “democratic Caesarism”, had a profound impact on the development of Polish ideas about totalitarian and authoritarian states.