The Enlightenment as social criticism : Iosipos Moisiodax and Greek culture in the eighteenth century / Paschalis M. Kitromilides.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kitromilides, Paschalis.

Series:

Princeton modern Greek studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Iōsēpos, ho Moisiodax, active 18th century.

Iōsēpos, ho Moisiodax.

Educators--Greece--Biography.

Educators.

Greece.

Greece--Intellectual life--1453-1821.

Intellectual life.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xvi, 203 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1992.

Summary:

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.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

069107383X :

OCLC:

24068434