Theory of Politics in Poland on the Track of Consensual Approaches to “the Political”

Abstract

Polish political theorists’ research revolves around the question of the political. There have been many analyses of this issue in Polish political science journals, for which the starting point was antagonistic and subsequently agonistic approaches to the political. Against this background, inquiries going in the direction of consensual approaches constituted a minority; additionally, it is difficult to synthesise them directly from the output of Polish theorists, as these approaches are often not explicitly articulated, but their significant elements appear in nominally non-consensual considerations. The purpose of this article is to bring this picture closer, not only from the personal side, but also as an attempt to reconstruct the essence of the political in terms of consensus, no longer antagonism or agonism. The other objective is to indicate both the theoretical potential of this approach and its interpretative usefulness against the background of other dominant approaches.