"Enlightened" Concepts in the "Dark": Power and Freedom, Politics and Society

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to develop a truism. Given that the introduction of liberal institutions and ideas into most peripheral countries, including Greece, did not succeed in producing westernized liberal societies, the immediate question asked is why should this be so. And though the phrasing of it might differ, the answer seems equally banal: peripheral or Greek liberalism could not function for obvious lack of so-called objective conditions. The country was not dominated by the capitalist mode of production and/or/therefore liberalism ran into obstacles connected to the economic, political or cultural underdevelopment of social relations. Despite its limited explanatory value, this statement of fact is undoubtedly correct. But it is not my intention to discuss the fundamental economic factors which determined the overall development of Greece. I intend to consider it as given that the development of Greek market capitalism beyond an almost rudimentary stage was impeded for almost a century. Consequently, I shall not even consider the question of the factors contributing to the indubitable, and possibly inevitable, peripherization of Greece. My aim is much narrower. What I have in mind is to present, in a necessarily incomplete, abstract and schematic way, some of the most flagrant contradictions in the logical structure of dominant cultural practices in Greek society. Indeed, all societies presuppose the elaboration of a relatively coherent system of prevalent practical and normative codes. But coherence is not a virtue in itself. And herein lies the general problematic I shall try to develop. It is my contention that a great number of value loaded cultural particularities, some of which are still to be observed up to the present day, are only interpretable in the light of the original formation of modern Greece after 1830. This formation was circum-