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De officiis

De officiis is the ninth volume published in the series Library of Old Polish Political Thought, issued by the National Centre for Culture, the Alexis de Tocqueville Centre for Political and Legal Thought, and the Foundation for Supporting Research on Old Polish Political and Legal Thought named after Andrzej Maksymilian Fredro.

This systematic treatise is dedicated to moral, political, legal, and theological matters. Łukasz Opaliński the Younger — a distinguished scholar, a member of the inner ruling elite of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and one of the wealthiest magnates of the Crown — in this work, drawing on Grotius’s De iure belli ac pacis, develops a model of absolutism based on contractualist principles. The reconstruction of the text was based on the editions from 1659 and 1668 — the latter being the first edition published under the author's name and prepared by Andrzej Maksymilian Fredro. This offers a unique opportunity today to trace the intellectual interaction between two of the most outstanding minds of the era. For the first time, De officiis is made available to Polish readers in a brilliant translation by Dr. Anna Maciejewska, preceded by an introduction written by Dr. hab. Marek Tracz-Tryniecki, Professor at the University of Łódź. Due to the significance of the interwar research on Opaliński’s thought, this edition is dedicated to Professor Eugeniusz Jarra and the Participants of his Seminar on Philosophy of Law, with a separate text devoted to them in this volume by Professor Anna Pikulska-Radomska.

The preparation of the translation and scholarly edition of De officiis was made possible thanks to the support of the Sponsor — the PZU Group.

The project was carried out in cooperation with the National Center for Culture and co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

 

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