ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the most characteristic and most commonly used word of the noble political discourse: the Rzeczpospolita. In a sense, it expressed in a single word the concept of the state, as well as the citizens’ place in it, and lastly also a certain vision of government. This chapter presents the concept of the Rzeczpospolita against the broad backdrop of European discussions about the state as well as traces how its understanding and use shifted in the eighteenth century under the influence of the political ideas of the Enlightenment as well as changes in the situation of the Polish-Lithuanian state.
