In eighteenth-century Greek culture, Iosipos Moisiodax (c.1725-1800) was
a controversial figure, whose daring pronouncements in favor of cultural
change embroiled him in ideological conflicts and made him a target of
persecution. The first intellectual in Southeastern Europe to voice the
ideas of the Enlightenment in public and without qualification, he
advocated the use of vernacular Greek in education and aspired to see
the backward and intellectually conservative Balkan societies remodeled
along European lines. In the first modern book-length treatment of this
passionate reformer, Paschalis Kitromilides skillfully retraces
Moisiodax's career and contrasts the Greek Enlightenment with the
Western Enlightenment as a whole, enriching our understanding of each
tradition in the process. Moisiodax's efforts failed tragically in his
own lifetime, but his vision of the Enlightenment was an impressive
project of intellectual reconstruction that had a considerable effect
after his death, both in the promotion of modern scientific ideas and in
the enunciation of republican politics in Southeastern Europe. The
methodology of literary history has traditionally dominated inquiries
about his life and about the Greek Enlightenment in general, but here
both man and movement are examined from an interdisciplinary
perspective. Drawing on a broad range of sources and combining insights
from the social sciences, cultural history, and political theory, this
work reveals Moisiodax as a figure of major significance in the
ideological tradition of Southeastern Europe.
Originally published in 1992.
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