National issues in the political thought of Zygmunt Balicki

The development of theoretical reflection on the essence and sense of the con-cept of nation was determined by the direction of socio-political transformations which took place in the Polish lands at the turn of the XIX and XX centuries. The national issues occupied much space in the political thought of Zygmunt Balicki (1858–1916), one of the “fathers of Polish nationalism”, an ideologue and a founder of the Christian Democracy and one of the antecessors of the then developing social sciences. The essence of the Polish nation, its good and deve- lopment became the main subject of interest and the motivation for the majority of Balicki’s ruminations. Nonetheless it is rather difficult to answer the question what the nation meant for Balicki since he had not elaborated a clear-cut theoretical formulation of the issue. In the light of his enunciations, the Polish nation is represented both as a po-litical, historical, cultural category and a psychological, moral and mystical one. It seems that despite the fact that he nowhere defined the nation in absolute terms, in fact, this is only lacking a verbal statement. The analysis of his writings proves that the nation was the supreme and autotelic value for him. The nation constituted in Balicki’s eyes “the highest social community”, absolutely the most important of all and as such – a source of moral norms