Adamantios Korais
Greek humanist scholar (1748–1833)
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Life and views
Korais was born in Smyrna, in 1748. His father Ioannis, of Chian descent, was demogérontas in Smyrna, a seat similar to the prokritoi of mainland Greece, but elected by the Greek community of the town and not imposed by the Ottomans.
He was exceptionally passionate about philosophy, literacy and linguistics and studied greatly throughout his youth. He initially studied in his hometown, Smyrna, where he graduated from the Evangelical Greek School.
After his school years, he lived in Amsterdam for a while as a merchant, but soon decided that he wanted to study in a university. He also studied Hebrew, Dutch, French and English apart from his knowledge of ancient Greek and Latin.
Korais studied at the school of medicine of the University of Montpellier from 1782 to 1787. His 1786 diploma thesis was entitled Pyretologiae Synopsis, while his 1787 doctoral thesis was entitled Medicus Hippocraticus.
He traveled to Paris where he would continue his enthusiasm for knowledge. There he decided to translate ancient Greek authors and produced thirty volumes of those translations, being one of the first modern Greek philologists and publishers of ancient Greek literature.
After 1788 he was to spend most of his life as an expatriate in Paris. As classical scholar, Korais was repelled by the Byzantine influence on Greek society and was a fierce critic of the lack of education amongst the clergy and their subservience to the Ottoman Empire, although he conceded it was the Orthodox Church that preserved the national identity of Greeks.
Korais believed Western Europe was the heir of the ancient Greek civilization, which had to be transmitted to the modern Greeks through education. Additionally, he advocated the restoration and use of the term "Hellene" (Έλληνας) or "Graikos" (Γραικός) as an ethnonym for the Greeks, in the place of Romiós, that was seen negatively by him.
While in Paris, he was witness to the French Revolution. He was influenced by the revolutionary and liberal sentiments of his age. He admired Thomas Jefferson and exchanged political and philosophical thoughts with the American statesman. A typical man of the Enlightenment, Korais encouraged wealthy Greeks to open new libraries and schools throughout Greece. Korais believed that education would ensure not only the achievement of independence but also the establishment of a proper constitution for the newly liberated Greek state. He envisioned a democratic Greece, recapturing the glory of the Golden Age of Pericles.
Korais died in Paris aged 84 soon after publishing the first volume of his autobiography. In 1877, his remains were transferred to Greece to be buried there.
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Views on religion
Korais was Greek Orthodox but also a critic of many practices of the Orthodox Church. He was a fierce critic of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, considering it a useful tool in the hands of the Ottomans against Greek independence. Later, he was one of the supporters of the newly established, autocephalous Church of Greece.
Korais was also a critic of monasticism, the lack of education among the clergy, and practices like that of the "Holy Fire". He was a supporter of religious freedom, empiricism, rationalism and tolerance. He set himself in opposition to some metaphysical ideals of Greek custom and sought to mould Greek Orthodoxy towards a more syncretic religious vision, in order to bring it under the auspices of liberal thought and government.
Views on the Greek language
One of his most significant accomplishments was his contribution to the standardisation of the modern Greek language. During his lifetime, the Greeks were widely dispersed around the Mediterranean and throughout Europe, and the language they spoke contained many foreign elements, depending on the region and local traditions. Korais proposed a standard language purged of many such foreign elements (especially Turkish, but also Western words and phrases). Moreover, there was a variety of idioms spoken by Greeks in everyday life and no common agreement on which dialect should serve as the basis for Standard Modern Greek. Finally, people involved in the Greek language question were also divided between "archaists" and proponents of a simpler standard language.
Korais's solution was to take a middle path regarding all these issues. He cleansed his proposed standard language from elements that he considered too foreign or too vulgar. Moreover, he proposed the creation of a "katharevousa" (a "purified" version of modern Greek), based on the ecclesiastical language used by the Greek Orthodox Church, close to Koine Greek. This standard was eventually adopted by scholars and the Greek state.
Influence on the Greek constitutional and legal system
Unknown to most, Korais held passionate views on how the legal system should function in a democracy (views which of course, were greatly influenced by the French Enlightenment, closer to Montesquieu than to Rousseau) and managed to have a great, albeit indirect, impact on the Constitutions of the Greek Revolution, but also, primarily, on the Constitution or Syntagma created after the end of the Greek Revolution. This element holds significant importance if one takes into consideration the fact that these post-Revolution Constitutions still, to the present day, form the basis of the Greek Constitution and the philosophy on which the guiding principles of the Greek legal and judicial system are rooted in.
The influence Korais exercised on Greek Law was due to a personal relationship the intellectual formed with another Greek intellectual, the legal scholar of international repute N. I. Saripolos, who, after the Greek Revolution, became the founding father of Greek Law and the "author" of the Greek Constitution. Proof of this relationship and of the strong and progressive views Korais held on how the legal system of the new Greek state should be formed, is based on correspondence exchanged between the two men, during a long period of time, beginning before the Greek Revolution. These letters which manifest the influence the older intellectual (Korais) had on the then aspiring lawmaker Saripolos, are in the possession of the archives of the Greek National Library, were discovered and brought to academic light, in 1996, by a Law School student, researching a project sponsored by the Faculty of Law of the University of Athens and the National Academy for Constitutional Research and Public Law (adjacent to the University of Athens). The ensuing thesis was published.
Legacy
Korais was declared Pater Patriae ("Pateras tis Patridos") by the revolutionaries at the Third National Assembly at Troezen. Korais' portrait was depicted on the reverse of the Greek ₯100 banknote of 1978–2001. Many streets all over Greece are named after him, while his archive can be found in Korais Library in Chios.
"Adamantios Korais" is also the name of the ferry connecting Alexandroupoli, Samothrace, and Lemnos. The vessel, built in 1987 in Onomichi Japan, was previously operated by Zante Ferries and is now operated by Fast Ferries.