Page 78 - Beholding Liberty!
P. 78
10 ΑΝΤΙΚΡΥΖΟΝΤΑΣ ΤΗΝ ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΙΑ
A little before the mid-18th century,
it starts to become a conviction among
the scholars of the time that an essential prerequisite for the enlightenment of the Race [Genos] of the Greeks and the shaking off of the Ottoman yoke was nothing else but the spread of education.
Faith in the values of the Enlightenment,
in combination with the radicality
of the French Revolution, motivate
the Greeks, mainly of the Diaspora, who visualize the creation of an independent Greek state, founded on civic equality
and political freedoms. In this context,
the Greek Enlightenment, as a cultural appropriation of an international intellectual and ideological movement, pursues programmatically a cultural convergence with the European domain. Within this innovative condition,
a real expansion in publishing is observed, with the geography and thematology of books, original as much as translated, undergoing important changes: scientific, philosophical and ancient culture
treatises, grammars of ancient Greek
and dictionaries/lexicons, unilingual or multilingual ones, contribute to a constant
