Wojciech Turski przeciw sukcesji tronu. Próba ponownego odczytania myśli republikańskiej z okresu Sejmu Czteroletniego
Wojciech Turski against the succession to the throne. An attempt to re-read the thoughts of the Republican period of Four Years Seym

Summary/Abstract: The article presents one of the most crucial issues of the pre -partition Polish republican thought, namely – criticism over the succession of the throne as it was exemplified by Wojciech Turski’s essays delivered in 1790 during a long publicists’ debate accompanying the Four Years Seym (1788 -1792). The aim of this article is to describe Turski’s attitude against a hereditary crown – including a general criticism of the throne, the rejection of the English inspiration, counter -arguments in the interregnum question, the vision of a “free and well -governed” rzeczpospolita, the criticism of aristocracy and, last but not least, the notion of “national” and “popular” liberty – as complete and coherent. The author does not read Turski’s thought, revealing the influence of Jean -Jacques Rousseau’s Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne, as self- -contradictory or paradoxical, which was the tendency of 19th century interpreters. On the other hand, there is no need to agree definitely with another way of reading, considering it as almost the herald of the new Jacobinian republicanism in Poland, perhaps even overshadowing the so called old -szlachta tradition of political thinking. Generally, the author of the article would rather prefer to read Turski’s essays against the succession as one of the possible ways of expressing antimonarchical republican rhetoric, inspired by Rousseau and connected with other voices against the succession, even though they were different in many respects, and applied in a concrete political debate in 1790. Such a voice represents an interesting example of the intellectual and political progress of the old Rzeczpospolita which still merits new examinations.

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