In the paper I try to reconstruct the main theoretical assumptions underlying Paul Veyne’s vision of the ancient world that are to be found in his book L’empire gréco-romain. First of all, recalling the opposition between two ways of making the past intelligible: “explication” versus “explicitation”, I show how the French historian uses that second type of historical analyse to reveal some ancient phenomena (i.e. “democracy”, “imperialism”, “soul”, “faith”) in their original and singular forms. Then, I pass to the question of causality and genesis in history. It seems that in Veyne’s book we can distinguish three different “models” of becoming: 1) “time of a project”, 2) “epigenesis” and 3) “discourse effectiveness”. All these fi ndings lead me to the conclusion that Veyne’s writing of history is essentially “essayistic”.

The article is an invitation to discuss the way of understanding human development as an actualization of individual’s potential. I present two opposite approaches to this particular problem: human development as choosing preferable potentials and also as striving to actualization of, in some way, every potential, especially these which concern the uniqueness of an individual. In the following parts of the article I locate the problem of human potential in three main discourses regarding: 1) human nature and its origin, 2) the possibility of full experience of individual lifespan 3) the possibility of influence through people on the content and the form of their actualizing potential. To the latter and strictly practical issue I pay most attention. I formulate five thesis regarding this issue. They may, in my opinion, be a starting point to discuss the general problem mentioned above. Therefore, they encourage to think about the mechanism of human development and the future environment of his life.