Mediterranean democracy, Year 2 Athens, 10-11 January 2014

Discussion:

Paschalis Kitromilides said that he had heard the rising of Christians against Turks was interpreted as in itself a sign of decline.

Marinos said more to explain why the Ottomans were failing to repress them. He noted that in early C19, another part of Ibn Khaldun came into fashion: the notion that as nomads settled down and formed states, civic spirit declined. This notion was much drawn on in the early stages of the Greek rising: it was argued that the Ottomans had become too settled, and should become nomads again. The sultan decreed that a state of nomadism should prevail: every Muslim should be armed; laws were also passed against luxury.

Several comments were collected. Since Marinos responded to each in turn, this report repositions his comments after each question.

Ioannis Kyrakantonakis asked about the continuing relevance of earlier Ottoman political thought in the Tanzimat period. Marinos said that in Islamic theory, the ruler was not absolute, but a delegate bound by holy law or justice (these constraints were especially stressed in the Persian tradition, and not always with a religious emphasis). Legitimacy derived from right conduct. This was a continuing theme.

Stella Ghervas considered there was a philosophical opposition between a “republican”/secular, and a “patrimonial”/religious view of politics. In the “republican” view of society (from “res publica”, the affairs of the state belong to the public), political legitimation was based on a social contract built from the bottom up, instead of being conferred by God. Also she was curious that at one point he had set up a contrast between aristocracy and monarchy; it seemed to her that they were conjoined at that time, but that democracy was really the antonym of aristocracy: democracy implied that the political rights should be extended to the largest number, while a monarch could stay in power in a constitutional monarchy. Marinos said both democracy and aristocracy were antonyms of monarchy.

Nassia Yakovaki wanted to know if the Ottoman for democracy was cumhur or some version of ‘democracy’. Marinos said that the latter seemed to be used only for direct translation.

Antonis Anastasopoulos said that he was very interested in one passage in the account of the English revolution, in which the common people seemed to be attributed agency. He wondered how common that was. Marinos said there was an echo of what was said about early elections of caliphs.

Ioannis Tassopoulos wasn’t clear what basic ideas informed the idea of democracy. Was it seen as an expression of natural law? Or did it derive from Aristotle? Marinos said references to Aristotle in this context were extremely rare.

Maurizio Isabella noted that in C18 France, the Ottoman empire was sometimes described as a democracy; in C19, it was praised by some as liberal. He wondered if the Ottomans were aware of these characterisations. Marinos said that although Tezcan says that the Ottoman state can be considered to have been a kind of democracy, he doesn’t think this was their self-image.

Michalis Sotiropoulos noted that democracies seemed to appear out of crises, and wondered if they were seen as an effect of crisis. Marinos said that it was only represented in that way by some authors, and the French revolution wasn’t seen in those terms: they were seen actively to be trying to incite revolts elsewhere. There was a fear they might try to stir revolt in Ottoman lands.

Marios Hatzopoulos would have liked a summary at the end of the paper to pull its arguments together. Would it be possible to summarise in a few words what the Ottoman conception of democracy was? Marinos said that it was not conceptualised as a possibility in an Ottoman context; only discussed in relation to other states.

Anna Karakatsouli (University of Athens) Discourses of rebellion and independence [the following represents a slightly abbreviated version of her written paper]
She planned to focus on the period preceding the Greek War of Independence, i.e. on the cultural moment described as the Modern Greek Enlightenment, and to survey modern historiography on its contribution to the Greek rising. The ‘Modern Greek Enlightenment’ refers to the sense of intellectual awakening and import into Greek thought and education of models originating in the philosophical and scientific culture of Western Europe, esp. from late C18. As demonstrated by Professor Kitromilides, these included a) the transition from Neoaristotelianism to rationalism, b) the introduction of the attitudes, temper and methods of modern natural science, c) the secularization of historical thought and the transition to a perception of a distinct historical lineage that connected the modern Greeks with classical Hellenism, and d) the emergence of a new geographical literature that focused on Western Europe.

One feature was the transformation of political thought, with the development of conceptions of citizenship and of the nation-state, leading to a liberal republican vision. The 1790s was a period of radical aspirations and liberal hopes, marked by emphasis on the opposition between enlightened despotism and political radicalism, and debate over whether the liberation from Ottoman rule should come through foreign intervention or by the Greeks themselves. Liberal aspirations became dominant among merchants, esp in the Greek diaspora, and intellectuals. After the Napoleonic wars, economic slump and international competition hit Greece’s maritime commerce hard. By 1820 the sharp decline of profits had induced even wealthy merchants to seek membership in the Philiki Etaireia.

Bearers of the ideas of the Enlightenment declared not only the right to armed resistance against an unjust ruler and the hope for national independence but also the demand to reconstruct Greek society according to the standards of the free countries of Western Europe and North America; latterly these ideas were connected with anticlerical feeling and the prospect of social transformation. Constantinos Dimaras singles out five key texts: the Anonymous of 1789 (a violent parody of the clergy), Korais’ Mémoire sur l’état actuel de la civilisation dans la Grèce (Paris, 1803), and the anonymous Rossagglogallos (1805), Hellenic Nomarchy (1806) and the pamphlet Kritonos’ Reflections (1819), a condemnation of sumptuary practices of the higher clergy burned publicly in Constantinople by order of the Patriarch.

Radical republicanism is best represented in the works of Rhigas Velestinlis (1757-1798), who made his living as clerk of well-known Phanariots and as a successful businessman by moving between Bucharest, Vienna, and Wallachia. While in Vienna, he embarked on an ambitious publication program connected with his grand plans for the liberation of the Balkans from Ottoman rule. His central vision was a vast, multinational, unitary state, dominated by Greek language and culture, graphically displayed in his celebrated map of Greece (Χάρτα της Ελλάδος). He advocated the overthrow of Ottoman autocracy and the establishment of institutions of governance, representation and participation on the model of the Jacobin constitution of the French Republic of 1793. The vast geographical extent and ethnic diversity of the new republic he envisaged posed problems; he put his faith in the effectiveness of republican institutions and the moral and psychological power of the ethic of patriotism and free citizenship. In his patriotic hymn 'Thourios' he urged freedom-loving men to rise, inspired by patriotism and guided alone by the laws, to join forces fraternally with the other subject nations, 'black and white', and driven by the impetus of liberty to assault tyranny, break the yoke of despotism and establish justice and freedom for all.

The other great figure of Modern Greek Enlightenment, Adamantios Korais, was primarily known his authoritative editions of ancient Greek texts. Living in France, he gained recognition there, especially following his appearance at the Société des Observateurs de l’Homme in 1803, and later in Britain through his correspondence with Jeremy Bentham and Philhellenes in Europe and the US. To Rhigas it was obvious that the achievement of Greek national independence must be preceded by a period of national awakening; therefore education needed to be spread prior to proceedingto achieve the Greeks’ sovereignty. His more radical thoughts are contained in his political pamphlets published anonymously and openly urging for revolution, such as his Franco-Greek scheme of liberation written in poetic form, the Song of War (Άσμα πολεμιστήριον) in 1800, and the Trumpet of War (Σάλπισμα πολεμιστήριον) in 1801, the last translated into Russian and French. These texts were composed during Napoleon’s campaign to Egypt, when the prospect of liberation through foreign intervention was still valid.

It is interesting that in the second edition of his Trumpet, in 1821, after Napoleon’s fall and the outbreak of war in Greece, Korais added an Introduction by a supposed French translator where he distinguished between recent revolts – namely the French Revolution as well as the Spanish and Neapolitan insurgencies – and the Greek rebellion: “The Greek cause is not similar to that of the French Revolution. Revolts in enlightened Europe are carried out by one part of a nation against the rest of it; in Greece all people are against the conquerors.” Similarly in later newspaper articles he contrasted the Greek War of Independence and liberal revolutions in Italy and Spain. Critical of Jacobinism in his commentaries on the violent turn of the French Revolution in the 1790s, he continued to express reservations about whether subjective conditions for the Greek uprising existed. Even after March 1821, he continued to argue that national independence was necessary but not sufficient for the creation of a free society. For that, constitutional guarantees were necessary.

The leading theoretical monument of Greek republicanism was a fervent 'discourse on freedom' that appeared anonymously in Italy, most probably in Livorno: Hellenic Nomarchy, 1806. The radicalism of the tract consisted primarily in the use of the term 'nomarchy' (= the rule of law), opposed to the conventional idea of Christian monarchy and of its latter-day adaptations by the theory of enlightened absolutism. Disillusionment with the prospects of liberation with Napoleon’s aid is clear. Independence could now only be achieved through a massive collective effort of the entire community of patriots. The example of the Serbs, who were at the time embarking on their own revolt against the Ottomans, is cited by the anonymous author as a model, but the Serbs were not invited to join a common nomarchy.

She concluded with brief look at the print production that conveyed the ideas described. Book circulation at the turn of the eighteenth century was facilitated by maritime commerce; successful editions sold up to 1,500 copies. Funding came primarily from wealthy merchants, but publishers also solicited subscribers for particular editions. However, only 7% of subscribers resided in the regions that would eventually become the Kingdom of Greece; cultural ferment was largely confined to the Greek Orthodox diaspora in Italy, Central Europe, the Danubian Principalities, Constantinople, and Smyrna; literary journals also proliferated in the same areas.

She had intended to examine references to contemporary revolutionary turmoil in Europe by the Greek press. Imperial censorship in the Habsburg Empire, however, kept all publishing activity under close control and did not allow subversive articles or news to see the light. Greek journals and newspapers published in Restoration Europe had to confine themselves to inoffensive literary or educational matters or news of commercial interest to the Greek merchants of the Diaspora.

These publications, first initiated by printers and later by scholars, are hard to classify.¹ Logios Ermis or Melissa, for example, exhibit characteristics of an encyclopedic journal. their tables of contents included such headings as: Bibliography, Greek Archaeology, Curiosities, Art History, Greek Philosophy, Chemistry, and Physics. Mainly based on western data, they aimed to educate.. By contrast, the Viennese Ephemeris of 1790, or Εllinikos Telegraphos of 1812, although not coming out on a daily basis, were more like newspapers. Ephemeris gave information the clashes in Europe after the French Revolution and the war of 1787-1792 between Russia and Turkey. Ephemeris, which is the main publication of interest for our subject today, was a bi-weekly illustrated paper published in Vienna by the brothers Markides Poulioi from 31 December 1790 to 11 December 1797. Officially it adopted a negative stance to the French Revolution but in 1794 its printers began to publish also clandestine uncensored issues. They were eventually accused of helping Rhigas by printing and distributing his manifestos and in February 1798 the Austrian authorities ordered the closure of the press and expelled the Markidis brothers from their country. The fact that they were Austrian citizens saved their lives. Logios Ermis ventured into current affairs only in its last issue dated May 1st 1821, almost two months after Ypsilantis’ march into the Danubian Principalities, but a month before his defeat, when it published two letters Patriarch Grigorios V of Constantinople sent to the Metropolitan of Moldavia. In these letters the Patriarch pledged allegiance to the Turkish government and fiercely condemned Ypsilantis’ actions.

During the War of Independence printing presses were for the first time installed in the Greek lands. In total we have six presses: in Kalamata-Corinth (1821-22), Messolonghi (1823-26), Psara (1824), Hydra (1824-27), Athens (1825-26) and Nafplion-Aegina (1825-27) donated by Philhellenes (Stanhope, Didot) or manufactured locally that produced about 50 books or pamphlets, 216 broadsides and 7 newspapers in Greek or foreign language.² They mainly served administrative and educational needs as well as the propaganda for the Greek cause and they publish mostly official pronouncements, news of the war (usually manipulated for obvious reasons) and about the Philhellenic movement in Europe and the US. Freedom of the press was a constant subject of discord.

It can be argued that the discourse on rebellion and independence among Greek scholars before 1821 was directly influenced by events in France and French presence in the Mediterranean. Though it focused primarily on the liberation from Ottoman rule, it was also marked by new social values, issues about the future political organization of the independent state and anticlerical criticism. It evolved from the expectation of liberation through foreign intervention, Russian or French, the emergence of a liberal democratic vision of self-determining emancipation by general uprising. Commentary on contemporary events was prevented by police authorities in Restoration Europe, so all subversive printed material had to circulate secretly and under great danger.

She concluded with the declaration of the revolutionary Greeks to the civilized world on January 1, 1822 as a prologue to the Provisional Constitution of Greece, epitomizing the ideological emblem of the Greek War of Independence:

The Greek Nation, under the dreadful Ottoman despotism, unable to bear any longer the most oppressive and unprecedented yoke of tyranny, having shaken it off with great sacrifice, declares through its legal defenders gathered in a National Assembly in front of God and men, its political existence and independence.

Epidavros, January 1822 and First Year of Independence

Innes'>Discussion

Joanna Innes asked if the word ‘democracy’ was used in the Greek press. Anna said yes, though democracy and republic weren’t distinguished. It was used in the context of discussion in Greece about whether government should take a monarchical or republican form.

Paschalis Kitromilides added that it was used in the title of Rhigas’ constitutional proposal, Hellenika Demokratika, clearly there meaning an institutional form. [English translation of article 1 of the projected constitution: THE GREEK DEMOCRACY is one despite the fact that it includes in its bosom diverse nations and religions. The Greek democracy does not regard the differences of the religion with a hostile eye. It is undivided, despite the fact that rivers and seas divide its provinces, because all are one [?] indissoluble body.] It was also used during constitutional discussions in the 1820s.

Innes asked whether democracy was contrasted with aristocracy.

Paschalis said that Korais used this antonym in the 1820s; he argued against both monarchical and aristocratic forms.

Konstantina said that though people writing in the Greek language might have to make a single word stand for both, others were writing in Italian, and could distinguish. Thus, Capodistrias could distinguish republic and democracy, and speak pejoratively of democracy.
Stella Ghervas remarked that it was important to distinguish between moderate and radical Enlightenments. The further one goes from Western centres, the more one finds mystical or Christian (Orthodox) ideas. Yuri M. Lotman [a Russian literary scholar] stated that the Enlightenment movement continued in the Eastern Europe until the 1840s, long after it died out in the West. Romanian historian Alexandru Dutu shows that this was the case in the Danubian principalities.

She wanted to ask a question to Anna about the Greek war of independence. It seems to her that the fundamental question about the Greek affair was legitimacy: was it a lawful war waged by the Greek “people” against the Ottoman Sultan, or was it a Jacobin, illegal rebellion started by “individuals”?

Anna thought the main argument was that it was a revolt for liberty, against an unjust ruler – which could comprehend both ways of thinking.
Maurizio Isabella suggested that the 1820s saw a critique of the French revolution; even revolutionaries found it difficult to defend in its entirety. One could make a revolution without feeling that this was a matter of re-enacting the French revolution. The Greek revolution was supported across the political spectrum in Europe. He wondered if it was also possible within Greece to distinguish a conservative strand of support.

Anna said yes, she thought this became clear later, when they were looking for European support.
Marinos noted that it was ultimately Greek peasants who had to put the independence movement into practice. What were their ideas?

Anna said she had cited limited figures for press circulation in order to suggest that these ideas did not circulate very widely.

Yanna thought there was something to be said about popular intellectuals, those who acted eg as secretaries to chieftains; they were the mediators between discourses. There seem to have circulated notions about sacrifice, wounded bodies, suffering; she thought these were common themes across the Mediterranean and in Latin America. [See on these themes Eleni Andriakaina, “The Promise of the 1821 Revolution and the Suffering Body. Some thoughts on Modernisation and Anti-intellectualism”, Synthesis 5, fall 2013, p. 51, at http://synthesis.enl.uoa.gr/current-issue/hellenism-unbound/eleni-andriakaina-_.html]
Andrew Arsan asked what Rhigas had in mind when he wrote about free peoples ‘black and white’? He also wanted to know more about how a composite state might have worked.

Nassia Yakovaki said that we knew little about how Rhigas’ constitutional were circulated at his times before late C19.

Paschalis added that all original copies of Rhigas’ constitution have disappeared. The text was recovered through the discovery of two ms. copies in late C19-early C20. Memory of his proposals was lost during the war of independence, though his song, Thourios, was circulated. It was recorded by the folk-song collector Claude Fauriel. The phrase ‘black and white’ comes from the song. The pamphlet, recovered later, doesn’t give citizens a role in the political process; it was based on the Jacobin constitution of 1793.
Antonis Anastasopoulos wanted to put the two last papers together and ask why the ‘Ottomans’ were not receptive to these ideas while the Greeks were? Later in C19 the discourses Marinos describes would be cited by Turkish intellectuals to show that Turkey was a western nation, but the ideas they foregrounded were still not ideas of democracy.

Joanna Innes added that she would like to know more about the ideology of such Ottoman rebel figures as Pasvanoglu and Ali Pasha of Ioannina: they were prepared to play European off against Ottomans, but it wasn’t clear that they espoused a European world-view.

Antonis said there was a source problem: we knew little about their thinking except as that was reported by western observers. They don’t seem to have been trying to overthrow the sultan.

Marinos noted that in Istanbul, attempts to overthrow sultans were often successful.
Ioannis Tassopoulos wondered if it was so easy to separate peasants from intellectuals, given the way that communities were structured.

Stella Ghervas observed that, at the time, the divide was education. Most of the ordinary people’s education came through the word of the priest, and there was a problem of illiteracy in the clergy itself. Thus the issue was: how should the government go about general education and the creation of schools?

She wanted also to know more about how Greek intellectuals argued that the sultan was not a legitimate ruler.

Mark Philp noted that in the French case it seemed clear that scholarship on the French enlightenment didn’t help understanding of motivating ideas in urban sections, or how the Estates General fell apart – even if enlightenment ideas were among the intellectual resources on which people drew. No doubt in the Greek case there were links between enlightenment ideas and revolution, but these needed to be more precisely specified.
Anna responded in relation to the illegitimacy of the sultan. He was seen as illegitimate both because he was despotic and because he was Muslim. She did not think peasants in Kalamata had ideas in common with intellectuals in Paris.

Nassia Yakovaki (University of Athens) Ideas of the public sphere in the early national press [the following represents a slightly abbreviated version of her written paper]
She said that it was both a welcome invitation and a challenge for those working in the field of Modern Greek history of late C18 or of the first and turbulent decades of C19 to reflect on the use and presence of Democracy, of Δημοκρατία, in the written and printed sources of that period. In the present context, the period was placed in “the Age of Revolutions in a global context’, whereas it has for too long been looked upon as the period of the Modern Greek Enlightenment.

The word that is of course present in texts in Modern Greek during the period of the rise of the printed Greek book, addressed to a specifically modern Greek readership -- also a period in which the turn towards ancient Greek was on the rise. Yet, she thought that its presence has not been investigated. The task was complicated by its Ancient Greek origin, making the dictionaries of the period a very uncertain tool. Many words not only had a very long history, but had some of their influence through strong textual traditions, both ecclesiastical and classical.

There is a second challenge at work: because the Greeks had a rather stunning participation in the Age of Revolutions, not only with the revolutionary risings of the 1821, but more interestingly with the activation of this distinctive and innovative democratic institutions of the National Assemblies, a local encounter with the democratic challenge.

She would offer only a limited contribution, in the exploratory spirit of the workshop, presenting some aspects of here work in progress on the nascent Greek public sphere in the first decades of C19, before the outbreak of the Revolution. She didn’t intend to make heavy theoretical weather of the debated concept of the ‘public sphere’, but to employ it as a useful shorthand. She would ask two questions. First, how does the dynamic of a Greek public sphere, developing during the Napoleonic Wars and through the first years of the Restoration era, connect with a hypothetical process of re-imagining “democracy” among the Greeks? And in what way was this social dynamic related to the outbreak of 1821 and the course taken by the Revolution? She would proceed by considering a small corpus of selected quotations, hoping in this way to open up a discussion based on the vocabulary of that period.

What is happening unto us today is unlike the ordinary and everyday works of men, but rather it is born of such a mother as is the C19, and springs forth from that same spring wherefrom flowed the change in America, in Spain, in Portugal, in Naples (and now, they say, in Savoy as well), with only this difference: that with us the change is still a moral one in preparation of the political. Whosoever dare obstruct this spring shall be drowned by it.

Adamantios Korais, early March 1821: from the last known private letter he wrote before the news of Ypsilantis’ revolt in the Principalities (the crossing of Prouthos) reached him in Paris. His terminology raises several questions: most interestingly perhaps concerning what he calls the “spring”: the idea of a common spring from which all the revolutions of the 1820s sprang: is there a sense in which this “spring” relates to ‘democracy’? Given his opposition to all kind of revolutionary plans or activities which he judged to be immature “προ του πρέποντος καιρού», one is left to wonder: what did the ‘peaceful moral Greek works’ have in common with revolutions elsewhere?

Korais was of interest to her especially as a ‘public opinion maker’, a role invented by him as early as 1804.

If the [fatherland] is in need of wealthy individuals”, he wrote to Zois Kaplanis, who supported the schools in Jannina, “it has also need of dragomans. One such dragoman I am myself, such is my trade, such is my duty; I have no other way, no other means to be of use”. […] “a dragoman through speech and the press”, whose duty is to “thank, stimulate and check.”

So Korais invented for himself a new role: he presents himself as a Δραγομάνος της πατρίδος, Dragoman of the fatherland, in contrast of course to the Sultan’s Dragoman. Here is a creative attempt to transfer into an Ottoman context and for the needs of the Greeks, new public and institutional roles which had already been undertaken elsewhere in Europe or America. An idea derived from Phanariots in Ottoman service becomes the basis for imagining an alternative role for a Greek, a new public role.

Not as such perhaps a democratic project, yet what Korais had in mind was to support and cultivate a new type of public communication among his compatriots. Paramount among them was an innovative publishing activity: his Greek Library, the series of Greeks authors he copiously edited, from 1805 up to 1827, prefaced by serial and lengthy prolegomena in modern Greek, addressed plainly “To the Greeks”, sometimes taking the form of an editorial, in other cases that of a serialised epistolary novel.

Korais aimed to transform the way writers and readers connected, validating a free open and rational exchange between equals. As he explained privately to a friend and collaborator in 1804:

“I, my friend, seized as a precious find the opportunity afforded by your name” in order to use it in public so as to show: “how an address is made from a free man to a free man”.

His intervention was also shaped by his belief that the printing press was a ‘weapon’ and that there was now scope for a Greek critical public to emerge. In his epistolary novel of the 1810s, his hero -- a semi-literate naïve cleric in Chios transformed into an ardent letter-writer, lover of the printing press and author to be -- writes:

Assume one thousand copies of the printed book in one thousand people’s hands. Now, count the families of many of these, and their friends, to whom they lend the book, or read aloud what the book says. Do you really think that all of these thousands of readers and listeners would reap no more benefit than the deaf? No my child, do not hold in such low esteem our selfsame rational and kindred animals!

It is interesting to note in this connection the warm response of a young reviewer in a Greek literary journal, who argued – in public again - for egalitarian manners:

Each honest man must receive with pleasure any good counsel without consideration of where it comes from; it should suffice that it be useful. External appearances should not cause apprehension among the friends of truth and of the good. When one offers counsel to further the common good, one must not consider the other, to whom one speaks, but as one’s same; for we all to a greater or lesser degree have need of counsel.

This concept of “omoios, omoiotita” -- sameness, semblable -- which is difficult to translate into English is not so different from the idea of equality.

So we enter the world of modern Greek literary journals, the public forum par excellence, that was developing in the 1810s. It is to the most long-lived and most successful literary journal, Loghios Ermis, 1811-1821 (Hermes the Scholar), that we should now turn. Here we find in 1816 from another, young again (and anonymous) contributor an intriguing warning:

The public is not taken so easily by words any more, but examines things and evaluates them. There exist today, by the grace of God, plenty of educated people of our own nation [among our compatriots], who will not let it be deceived for long.

Here the notion of a critical public as an abstraction may be identified in its full development.

If Korais managed to succeed as a ‘public opinion maker’ or the literary journals to take root at that time, it was because a newborn public sphere was in the making, amid the Christian Ottoman, or ex-Ottoman and by then Habsburg or Russian subjects, who had started to call themselves Greeks, or more broadly those who could access (by eye or ear) the modern spoken language in print. This newborn public sphere was established by public written communication; mainly through the medium of the printing press, and through books, for different tastes, headed by the literary journals, but backed by a pre-existing, expanding and intensifying correspondence network of a semi-public nature. Printed and handwritten items alike were facilitated in their movements by the expansion of commercial networks and amelioration of postal services, all over urban Europe, in and beyond the Ottoman Empire: from Paris to Moscow, or Odessa or even further to Taganrog, from Lemessos and Chios to Vienna and Gotingen, from Smyrna, Zante and Corfu to Livorno, Marseilles or London, from Hydra and Athens to Venice, Trieste and Brasov, from Yannena and Kozani to Pest, Bucharest or Jas, Adrianople and of course Constantinople. As a result, a critical public, a public debating in spoken Greek on a whole range of issues in public and in the open, was at work by the 1810s. The creation of the forum of the Greek public, “το κοινόν των Ελλήνων” deserves notice alongside the particular content aired there.

As early as 1813, while appealing for support from their subscribers, the new editor of the Loghios Ermis acknowledged what the journal had already achieved, as follows:

Ιts grandest and most worthy [outcome], my dear compatriots, is to have attracted the attention of Greek souls; Loghios Hermes has awakened in all Greece the spirit of discussion and of the debate for what is good; all the learned today discuss amongst each other about literature, the arts and sciences […] This emulation and the spirit of discussion we should not allow to die out, but rather let us strive to stir them up into a great flame; a hearth more apt for this holy fire, to this day, we have none other than Logios Hermes; therefore let each patriot offer as much tinder as he can.”

In this passionate praise of the “spirit of discussion” (το πνεύμα της συζητήσεως) one should rather note the re-launching of an almost abandoned Greek word: the humble, trivial but nowadays essential “συζήτησις” (discussion), now synonymous with the prestigious and classical word, the word dialogue (διάλογος), which had not then come into use in this context. The testimony of the literary journals of the 1810s shows “συζήτησις” taking on a new significance at that point, linked to the new social value ascribed to the public exchange of opinions and ideas.

Equally interesting is that this word is connected at least once in Logios Hermis with our workshop’s word:

Discussions [Αι συζητήσεις] are a constituent part of Philology, and as it is the case in the Democracies, similarly to Philology, discussions and disputes are a sign of their existence, whereas absolute silence is a sign of their extinction and death.

It was also stated elsewhere in the journal that:

The democracy of the learned [the men of letters] admits every man, whatever his class, situation and walk of life may be, and the decent critic will judge the learning and what such a man’s learning engenders as a writer, when he presents himself before the Public, regardless of his particular family or private relations and circumstances.

“Democracy” provided a basis for the newborn public sphere. Its presence sheds light upon the trajectory that led from a literary to a political public sphere.

Before the coming of the national assemblies, before the Constitutions or a political free press were born, in other words before the inauguration of the novel institutional provisions which would render the term “συζήτηση” (discussion) central to the political change brought forward by the Revolution, the technology of public dialogue as exercised in the literary journals of the 1810’s had generated this crucial concept and gterm. « Η συζήτηση» may therefore be considered as a conceptual legacy, formed for the Greeks during the Ottoman years, within the dynamic of a publicity in transformation. Indeed, is it possible to conceptualize “democracy”, in C19 at least, without reference to public discussion, or debate?