Page 75 - Beholding Liberty!

The anonymity that is typically associated with radicalism also appears in other significant texts of social criticism and militant demands for freedom during the first 20 years of the nineteenth century. Greek society and the Greek nation which, throughout the Enlightenment acquired a live- ly understanding of itself as a historical and political entity, found themselves on the threshold of revolution. This was the moment in which another element of radicalism would appear as an explicit choice for political action, the secret society. The time had come for this element of the European experience to be incorporated into the Greeks’ political demands for freedom.
Secret societies provided a refuge for the radical and revolutionary elements after the fall of the French Revolution and the imposition of the Restoration in Europe by the Council of Vienna in 1814-1815. Among the secret societies, perhaps the most successful case, in terms of the rapid achievement of its goal and the speed – within six years – of the successful outcome of the organized effort, was the Greek Filiki Etaireia (Friendly Society). Its goal, as its evocation was expressed in the oath taken by its initiated members, was the liberation of Greece, the achieve- ment of the dream of freedom. Owing to the action of the Friendly Society, the vision became reality: after six years of hard work and secret preparation, the Greek world found itself ready to announce the revolution. The Filiki members, having gone through the harsh stage of induction, took the Oath, which in its conclusion, contained the following stipulation:8
And finally, I swear by You, a Holy Country! I swear to your long years of suffering [...] and to the future Liberty of my fellow citizens, that I am dedicating myself entirely to You.
The time had come for freedom. This was also known by Adamantios Korais. From Paris, the capital of Lights and birthplace of revolutionary tremors, Korais dedicated his life, his political activity and his impressive mental production to the freedom of Greece. At the outset of his po- litical thought, in the brochure Brotherly teaching (1798) he appears to share the ideas of Rigas, whose sacrifice of himself and those of seven comrades, is referred to emotionally.9 The text was inspired by the democratic ideas of the French Revolution and the author refers, among other things, to the “political currency”, the social contract.10 An expression of this radical phase in Ko- rais’ political thought was also the willingness he expressed to translate the “political exchange” of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.11
Following the momentum of things in enslaved Greece and the world and balancing the pros- pects of freedom, Korais maturing politically realized that the issue of Greek freedom was more complex. He judged that in order for the Greeks to succeed in becoming free, and to re- tain freedom and self-government as a free nation, what was initially required was for a “eth- ical revolution” to be preceded, as he wrote in the famous essay “Regarding the present state of culture in Greece” in 1803.12 The ethical revolution that would radically reform Greek society and prepare it for freedom would emerge from the development and generalization of educa- tion among the Greeks. Thus Korais dedicated the maximum of his effort to the two decades that preceded the Greek Revolution by cultivating leadership of his fellow Greeks through his constant publications of classical writers in order to reform Greek education in accordance with the models of the Enlightenment and to cultivate the modern Greek language to make it a suitable organ for this reform.
But when the time came for the Revolution, the “great earthquake” that had been provoked by the announcement in the soul of Korais, pushed him to a new crusade: on the one hand to teach his fellow citizens about the debts of the free citizen and on the other to inform public opinion
8. Ioannis Filimon, Δοκίμιον ιστορικόν περί της Φιλικής Εταιρείας, [Historical Treatise about the Friendly Society] Nauplio 1834 (reprint: Athens s.d.)
p. 157.
9. Αδελφική Διδασκαλία προς
τους εύρισκομένους κατά πάσαν
την Οθωμανική έπικράτειαν Γραικούς, in Rome (Paris) 1798
(reprint KNE/EIE 1983) pp. iv-v.
10. Ibid. p. 54.
11. See Paschalis M. Kitromilides, «Οι φάσεις της πολιτικής σκέψης του Κοραή. Πρόταση ερμηνείας», Διήμερο Κοραή, Athens 1983, pp. 102-112, esp. p. 106.
12. Memoire sue l’etat actual
de la civilization dans la Grece
lu a la Societe des Observateurs
de l’Homme, par Coray, Docteur
en Medicine et Memgre de la dite Societe, Paris 1803 pp. 52 and 54.
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