Adamantios Koraes: The Second Aristotle of Freedom

Prologue

In the early 1970s, I wrote my Ph.D. thesis on Adamantios Koraes at the University of Wisconsin. I read his voluminous writings and hundreds of letters – mostly written in Greek and some in French. I tried to understand his philosophy, purpose, method and influence in the making of the Greek Revolution of 1821.

The second Aristotle

More than 50 years later, I see Adamantios Koraes, 1748-1833, like Plato and Aristotle in one. Like them, he was a polymath: philosopher, political thinker, superb linguist, scientist, lover of freedom and passionate patriot. He wrote dialogues like Plato. His dialogues were Platonic, addressing political and ethical ideals he tried instilling to the revolutionary Greeks fighting for freedom.

In 1827, Kores chose Arrianos for commentary. Arrianos, 86-160, was philosopher, historian and military commander whom the Roman Emperor Hadrian appointed to the Senate and governor of the province of Cappadocia in Asia. Arrianos was also a writer. He authored the Anabasis or Campaigns of Alexander the Great and wrote a handbook (Encheiridion) on the philosopher Epictetos. Koraes edited Arrianos’ work on the philosopher Epictetos, also of the second century. His introduction / prolegomena to this work took the form of a dialogue about the fate of the island of Chios in the Aegean, after the 1822 Moslem slaughter and enslavement of more than 30,000 Chian Greeks. The speakers of the dialogue, Demochares (joy of the people / citizens) and Philolaos (lover of the people), remembered and talked about Greek history, the ups and downs of democracy in ancient Greece, as well as its golden age, that gave birth to great scientists, philosophers and civilization. They agreed that eudaimonia (the ultimate happiness / flourishing) of people exists only among citizens who are blessed by the virtues of justice, phronesis / moderation, and politismos / civilization.

Koraes, however, wrote primarily scientific and protreptic texts like Aristotle. In fact, he became the second Aristotle. He invented the science of freedom. He studied and wrote about political theory, strategy, ethics, science, education, the Greek language, medicine, diplomacy, statecraft and freedom.

Where did Koraes come from?

Koraes was born in 1748 in Smyrna, a Greek affluent city on the southern coast of Asia Minor. Smyrna was occupied by the Mogol Moslem Turks, who also occupied most of Greece since 1453. His father was a merchant of silk clothes, which means he was relatively affluent. He inherited a library from his grandfather and attended the local “Evangelical” Greek school for basic learning. His Eros for paideia (outstanding education and civilization) led him to finding private tutors who taught him Dutch, Italian, German, French and English. He also mastered ancient Greek and Latin.

His father, however, thought his son should take over his business, so he sent him to Amsterdam in Holland to manage his store selling silk clothes. Adamantios obliged, but he did not find business exciting. Adamantios’ assistant wrote to the elderly Koraes in Smyrna that his son was interested in women and the classics. He urged him to send Adamantios to a foreign university. Adamantios’ father did exactly that.

At the University of Montpellier

Adamantios went to the University of Montpellier in France and studied medicine. At Montpellier and later in Paris his name became Coray. He excelled in his studies, especially in his examination of ancient Greek medicine and, in particular, his study of Hippocrates who, in the fifth century BCE, invented scientific medicine and healing. Koraes wrote two dissertations in Latin: (1) about the history of fevers: Pyretologiae Synopsis (Montpellier, 1786) and (2) the medical science and achievements of Hippocrates: Medicus Hippocraticus (Montpellier, 1787). He edited the Greek text of Hippocrates’ seminal work (Airs, Waters and Places) and translated it into French. One of his professors wrote a strong letter of recommendation for Koraes, which opened the doors to the scientific world of Paris. He arrived at the French capital in 1788, one year before the outbreak of the French Revolution.

The French Revolution

The French Revolution was a cosmic upheaval and vicious class warfare. The revolutionaries cut off the heads of the king and queen and sent dozens and dozens of royal officials and members of the gentry to the guillotine. But behind the mayhem, the revolutionaries tried to restore some of the lessons of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, that healthy free democratic societies, republics, needed the virtues of fraternity, equality and freedom. They restored temporarily a crude version of the ancient Athenian democracy in Paris.

Koraes watched these unexpected bloody, though encouraging events with fear and trembling – and hidden hopes. The speeches of the revolutionaries reminded him of the fifth century BCE poet Aeschylos urging his fellow Athenians to put their struggle against the invading Persians, in 480 BCE, above everything else – Νῦν υπέρ πάντων αγών. He also remembered the great poets of the late fifth century BCE, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, denouncing the erosion of ancient traditions and the calamitous effects of the Peloponnesian War.

Eros for paideia and language

While Paris was torn apart, Koraes was almost without money. He barely made a living by translating German medical studies into French. But what saved him was his superb knowledge of ancient Greek. He was the philologist of philologists. He corrected errors in ancient Greek manuscripts. When the French Revolution gave birth to Napoleon, who made himself an emperor, Napoleon asked Koraes to translate Strabo, 64 BCE – 24 CE. Strabo was a famous Greek geographer. Napoleon was so pleased with the translation of Strabo’s Geography, he honored Koraes and offered him a life-long pension. Koraes hoped that Napoleon would destroy the Ottoman Muslim Turkish empire. He urged the Greeks to support him. However, Napoleon turned his military talents and might against European states, especially Rusia, which devoured his large army.

Koraes’ medical studies strengthened his knowledge for ancient Greek science, philosophy and civilization. He had studied and had deep knowledge of dozens of Greek intellectuals, including Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, Plutarch and other Greek and Roman and modern thinkers. His scholarship enabled him to guide his compatriots, living under the terror of subjugation to Muslim enemy Turks, to break their chains and become free. In his prolegomena to Aristotle’s Politics, which he edited in 1821, he expressed his confidence in democracy, the constitution designed for freedom, where each citizen rules and is ruled, exactly the conclusion of Aristotle. Koraes recognized that democracy was by no means perfect, but that democracy was superior to monarchy, tyranny, aristocracy and oligarchy.

Koraes also admitted that despite the lengthy and savage occupation of Greece by the barbarian Turks, the Greeks had, to some degree, safeguarded their virtues for freedom and courage. Nevertheless, he warned the Greeks had to be careful in winning and safeguarding of freedom. He said:

“The winning and securing of freedom is definitely a great and praiseworthy virtue, though not rare. What is of the highest and most important achievement is the preservation of freedom. This demands more than short-lasting wars against tyrants but a permanent war against the more tyrannical passions of the soul, which must be subjected to the saintly virtues of justice and the rule of law.”

Koraes spent his life in Paris thinking and fighting for freedom. He made his books instruments of education and enlightenment as well as weapons of war against the Ottoman occupiers of Hellas. He kept reminding his readers they were descendants of the ancient Greeks. Some of the ancient Greek manuscripts he edited to inspire the Greeks to fight their enemies included works of Homer, Aesop, Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Isocrates, Xenophon, Strabo, Plutarch and the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius. He published these and other works with lengthy introductions / prolegomena. Those books made it to Greek schools – and to the hands of prominent Greeks, including revolutionaries.

One of the books Koraes edited in 1822 was a manual of ancient military strategy for preparing and fighting successful wars. This was Onesander’s Strategikos (Ονήσανδρος, Στρατηγικός). Onesander was a Platonic philosopher who lived in the first century of our era when the Romans had annexed Greece. Koraes’ hope was, of course, that Onesander’s military guidebook might inspire and guide Greek generals fighting the European trained and armed Ottoman Turkish troops. It probably did because the Strategikos of Onesander had a good reputation for several centuries in both East and West. Koraes said his edition of Onesander’s Strategic guide was the third since it first appeared in mid first century of our era. Koraes was pleased that Greek generals fighting for freedom would benefit from the war insights of ancient Greek military strategists and strategies. Onesander’s Strategikos played that timely role perfectly.

The books of Koraes, including Onesander’s Strategic guide for generals, started a delayed Renaissance and Enlightenment, which sparked the Greek Revolution of 1821 and its successful outcome of political independence.

Yet Koraes miscalculated badly with the appointment of Ioannes Kapodistrias in 1828 to create and run the small and almost independent Greek state. Instead of continuing the friendship and sincere esteem he had for Kapodistrias, he issued broadsides against him, falsely accusing Kapodistrias of being a Cossack. The only explanation for such tragic error is that Koraes, isolated in Paris, was fed wrong information about Kapodistrias from the enemies of Kapodistrias in Greece and Paris.

Epilogue

Adamantios Koraes remains relevant for Greece, America and the world. Thomas Jefferson met Koraes in Paris. In one of his letters to Koraes, dated October 31, 1823, he admitted that the ancient Greeks, their ideas and science and political theory, were rightly the force behind the Greek Revolution of 1821, as much as they had their good work done in America, freeing Americans from “Gothic darkness.” Jefferson wrote to Koraes:

“Your favor of July 10. [1823] is lately received. I recollect with pleasure the short opportunity of acquaintance with you… and the fine editions of the classical writers of Greece, which have been announced by you from time to time, have never permitted me to lose the recollection. until those of Aristotle’s Ethics, and the Strategikos of Onesander, with which you have now favored me, and for which I pray you to accept my thanks, I had seen only your lives of Plutarch. these I had read, and profited much by your valuable Scholia, and the aid of a few words from a modern Greek Dictionary, would, I believe, have enabled me to read your patriotic addresses to your countrymen.

“You have certainly begun at the right end towards preparing them for the great object they are now contending for, by improving their minds and qualifying them for self-government. for this they will owe you lasting honors. nothing is more likely to forward this object than a study of the fine models of science left by their ancestors; to whom we also are all indebted for the lights which originally led ourselves out of Gothic darkness….

“I have thus, dear Sir… given you some thoughts, on the subject of national government. they are the result of the observations and reflections of an Octogenary who has passed fifty years of trial and trouble in the various grades of his country’s service. they are yet but outlines which you will better fill up, and accommodate to the habits and circumstances of your countrymen. should they furnish a single idea which may be useful to them, I shall fancy it a tribute rendered to the Manes of your Homer, your Demosthenes, and the splendid constellation of Sages and Heroes, whose blood is still flowing in your veins, and whose merits are still resting, as a heavy debt, on the shoulders of the living and the future races of men. while we offer to heaven the warmest supplications for the restoration of your countrymen to the freedom and science of their ancestors, permit me to assure yourself of the cordial esteem and high respect which I bear and cherish towards yourself personally.”

Koraes was delighted with the friendship and advice of Thomas Jefferson. He had a tremendous respect for him. But much more than any ancient and modern thinker, Koraes esteemed Aristotle. He grasped his political and scientific originality and genius. He embraced Aristotle and employed his ideas to work for the enlightenment and freedom of modern Greeks. He opened their minds and historical interests with his letters and books, all of them written carefully, with attention to truth based on experience, observation, study and passion for justice and the Hellenic virtues of sophrosyne (moderation) and phronesis (practical wisdom) and freedom.

Koraes corrected modern Greek from countless foreign words, thus setting the foundations of written and spoken Greek much closer to ancient Greek. However, even the corrupted Greek of his day, he kept saying, saved treasures of ancient Greek. He was confident that the Greek language was the beginning of paideia, namely, thorough education in the sciences and civilization. In his prolegomena, Plutarch said that language is the icon of the mind and the ethical standards of human beings. He emphasized that the meaning of the words matter. In fact, he put the wrong meaning of words often behind impoverishment, corruption and even wars. This convinced him that cleansing and defining correctly the meaning of the words was a top priority in rebuilding Greece. In his commentary on the edition of Plutarch, he said that “Paideia without philosophy is as impossible as a day is without Sun light.” He connected the external and internal worlds of humans. They ceaseless interact, enriching as well as impoverishing the soul. They create virtuous and unethical people. The spoken and written Greek of his time, its corruption, mirrored the political and civilizational corruption of the Greeks living under Islamic Mogol tyranny. Without freedom, few if any libraries, few schools, and a religion headed by Phanariot clergy obedient to the Sultan, Hellenic culture practically disappeared. The dreadful results of that lengthy occupation manifested themselves in hunger, homelessness, slavery and ceaseless upheavals and rebellions. The climax of that harsh foreign occupation was the kidnapping of the male children and their training to fight their parents as a personal army of the Sultan. The inability to express oneself freely and the reign of superstition sparked endless fear. These misfortunes all but destroyed mind and soul.

Koraes and his letters and books pushed back that enveloping darkness with the light of knowledge and the confidence that came with that knowledge. The outcome was the Revolution of 1821. That national fight for and winning of freedom merged ancient and modern Greece. The virtue of freedom triumphed at the battles of Marathon, 490 BCE, Salamis, 480 BCE, Plataea, 479 BCE, and the War of Greek Independence of 1821 – 1828. Eleutheria / freedom was the greatest of all virtues.

However, Koraes never ceased reminding the Greeks that freedom is not doing whatever one wished at any time convenient to him, but what the laws allowed.

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