The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct Roger Scruton’s views on patriotism and the attitudes of nationalism and oikophobia that endanger proper love of homeland. According to Scruton, patriotism is identical with loyalty to the people who inhabited a certain territory and share common culture, customs and history. The feeling of national loyalty so understood is peaceful by its nature and stabilizes the democratic system. Besides patriotism, Scruton distinguishes two attitudes, of worship of one’s nation and of hostility towards it. The first attitude may transform into nationalism, and then deifies nation and leads to wars and conflicts in history. Unlike the former, the attitude of hostility towards own nation (oikophobia) justifies development of transnational institutions that limited sovereignty of the democratic nation-states and – indirectly – undermine the sovereignty of one’s people. In the final part of the paper I paraphrase the concepts of nation presupposed in the attitudes of patriotism, nationalism and oikophobia, as they are discussed in the theoretical apparatus used by Leszek Nowak in his deformative conception of culture.

The author in the terms of idealisation theory of science explicates two visions of history represented by positivism (Hempel) and narrativism (White) and paraphrases some paradoxes of historical narrative elaborated by mentioned-above representatives of these standpoints what is argument for the unity of science presupposed by idealisational theory of science.

In the article the Author presents the typology of alternative history and un its light he characterises the historical writings of Jerzy Łojek, in particular his approach towards history of November Uprising, 1830-1831.

The aim of this article is to present selected methodological threads of the discussion on the status of historical sources which took place in Polish post‑war historiography. In the article, I present the concepts of the historical source formulated in 1957–1989, mainly by Gerard Labuda and Jerzy Topolski. Further in the text, I will present the discussion about Topolski’s concepts and characterize the peculiarities of contemporary history as regards historical sources. In the light of the presented classification of sources, I will reflect on the status of the documents created by the apparatus of repression of the Polish People’s Republic.

In the article the Author presents the typology of alternative history and in its light he characterises the historical writings of Jerzy Łojek, in particular his approach towards history of November Uprising, 1830–1831.