Enlightenment, Nationalism, Orthodoxy: Studies in the Culture and Political Thought of Southeastern Europe

by Paschalis M. Kitromilides

Overview

The first section of this volume aims to examine various aspects of the impact of Enlightenment thought in the Balkans in the 18th and 19th centuries. Particular topics include the idea of modernization, with respect to the role of science or the position of women, and the growth of new forms of political consciousness, but Professor Kitromilides is throughout concerned with the conflict between these incoming political, cultural and religious ideas and the traditions of Orthodoxy which had dominated the region under the Ottomans. Of the articles, a number focus specifically on the Greek world, both before and after the creation of an independent Greek world, and extend the coverage to include Greek communities beyond Europe. Similarly, the second part of the volume, on dilemmas of nationalism, looks also at Greek irredentism in Asia Minor and Cyprus. The final item combines bibliographical additions with the author’s further reflections on the subjects covered here and their historiography.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781040248508
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	08/01/2024
Series:	Variorum Collected Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	296

About the Author

Paschalis M. Kitromilides, PhD Harvard University, is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Athens and Director of the Centre for Asia Minor Studies. From 2000 to 2011 he was Director of the Institute of Neohellenic Research at the National Hellenic Research Foundation.

His books in English include:

The Enlightenment as Social Criticism. Iosipos Moisiodax and Greek Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); Enlightenment Nationalism Orthodoxy (Variorum, 1994); An Orthodox Commonwealth. Symbolic Legacies and Cultural Encounters in Southeastern Europe (Variorum Collected Studies Series, Ashgate, 2007); Adamantios Korais and the European Enlightenment (Voltaire Foundation, 2010); Enlightenment and Revolution. The Making of Modern Greece (Harvard University Press, 2013); Enlightenment and religion in the Orthodox world (Voltaire Foundation, 2016).

Table of Contents

Contents: The Enlightenment East and West: a comparative perspective on the ideological origins of the Balkan political traditions; War and political consciousness: theoretical implications of 18th-century Greek historiography; The idea of science in the modern Greek Enlightenment; Cultural change and social criticism: the case of Iossipos Moisiodax; Republican aspirations in south-eastern Europe in the age of the French Revolution; Religious criticism between Orthodoxy and Protestantism. Ideological consequences of social conflict in Smyrna; The Enlightenment and womanhood: cultural change and the politics of exclusion; Jeremy Bentham and Adamantios Korais; European political thought in the making of Greek liberalism: the Second National Assembly of 1862-1864 and the reception of John Stuart Mill’s ideas in Greece; Modernisation as an ideological dilemma in south-eastern Europe: from national revival to liberal reconstruction; ’Imagined communities’ and the origins of the national question in the Balkans; The dialectic of intolerance: ideological dimensions of ethnic conflict; Greek irredentism in Asia Minor and in Cyprus; Bibliographical and critical notes; Index.

Editorial Reviews

A collection of 13 articles written between the late 1970s and the present, considering the encounter of Western secular thought, represented by the ideas of the Enlightenment and romantic nationalism, with the Orthodox culture of the Greek east and of Balkan society in general. Examines the political aspects of the encounter in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the confluence of traditions of East and West in terms of cultural criticism. The articles have not been given a new, continuous pagination. Distributed by Ashgate. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

'...a valuable contribution to the field...the book’s intellectual scope and comparative depth are remarkable.' Modern Greek Studies

From the Publisher