The Riddle of Death

Essays offering critical analysis of the decadent phenomena in contemporary Greek society and politics. But also a clearly articulated proposal for a practical political perspective. The central theme of the book’s analyses is the urgent demand today for the linking of politics with culture, not at the level of nationalistic rhetoric, but as a condition and prerequisite for fruitful political realism. At a time when political proposals differ only in the minutiae of administrative practice and the internationalisation of the economy appears as a threat of globalised totalitarianism, de-socialisation and homogenisation of human life, the book counters this with real possibilities for resistance through pioneering critical discourse.

The book ‘Refuge of Ideas’ is the chronicle of a total commitment, spanning ten years, to a community organisation with a strong character of ideological religiosity. Through the narrative, the empirically cultivated methods of exercising psychological power and the shaping of characters of absolute dependence on this specific organisational structure are analysed. That is, symptoms produced in any ‘closed’ structure of ideological mobilisation, regardless of its religious, political or ‘social objectives’ orientation. The book’s success lies in the fact that it clearly serves as an archetypal illustration of the anthropological consequences of all manner of ideological refuges.

The term ‘Critical Ontology’, within the Western philosophical tradition, is in itself a contradiction: The medieval experience identified ontology (the question of the cause and purpose of existence) in the Western consciousness with the renunciation of critical thought, the a priori acceptance of aphorisms, axioms and dogmas. Are there any leeway or ‘footholds’ with which we might today overturn this entrenched prejudice? Can there be proposals for interpreting the ‘meaning’ (cause and purpose) of existence, life, beauty, uniqueness and otherness that withstand critical scrutiny not only of the rational method but also of empirical verification? These are the questions addressed in the pages of this book.

Cultural diplomacy refers to the systematic use of a country’s cultural achievements (or distinctive characteristics) in the conduct of international relations.Cultural diplomacy cannot be practised solely through the embellishment and propaganda (however clever) of some glorious cultural past. Nor can cultural diplomacy be practised by showcasing imitations of foreign cultural models. Cultural diplomacy can only be practised by peoples who can discern what is distinctive and creatively their own to contribute to the international arena of cultural interaction, and what dynamic diversity makes them active participants in cultural development. From societies that embody achievements capable of serving as a cultural proposition with a universal scope. The book is the first Greek-language publication on cultural diplomacy. It discusses in detail the advantages, the real problems and the conditions necessary for the exercise of cultural diplomacy by the modern Greek state.

Do we belong to the West? What connects us to the West and what divides us? Did the Greeks ‘enlighten’ the West? Or was it the West that preserved the ancient Greek heritage, whilst Christianity and Ottoman rule cut us off from it? The main arena in which these questions can be answered is not historical events. It is their preconditions: the motives, causes and purposes; the ‘meaning’ that we humans ascribe to existence, to the world, to History. The field in which the convergences and differences between Hellenism and the West arise is philosophy. Without a study of the philosophical conditions that determine our relationship—our encounter—with the West, our participation today in the world-shaping endeavour of ‘European integration’ is doomed to manifest itself either as a disadvantageous post-modernism and mimicry or as psychological rivalry and a baseless rupture. This book aims to serve every Greek who undertakes to represent our country in any aspect of relations with the EU today. But also every Greek for whom Greekness is still a proposition of ‘meaning’ that is of topical and universal interest. This is a reprint of the now classic book first published in 1980.

Taking specific current events as its starting point, the book dissects the now established political crisis, which has taken on international dimensions. The dissection of Greek symptoms reveals, in a negative reflection, the particular nature of the needs that Greeks have always invested in politics. The current inability to invest such needs in politics perpetuates, in today’s Greece, structural weaknesses in ‘modernisation’ and ‘development’. But it also preserves, like the negative of a photograph, the Greek counter-proposal for a way out of the impasse. A counter-proposal that may have universal relevance today.

The book attempts to distinguish religiosity from the metaphysical quest. The former is an innate, instinctive need; the latter is an exercise in freedom from that necessity. This is why religion has a universal and timeless character, whilst metaphysical inquiry is always the preserve of the few. However, as a rule, it is the metaphysical quest that produces culture, not religion, just as no applied science produces culture. The language of the quest is not the language of Art and philosophical propositions. As a key historical aspect of the problem, the book analyses the religiousisation of the ecclesiastical event

In a personal, quasi-retrospective account of his work, the author of the book identifies six thematic areas of ‘philosophical inquiry’ where he believes he has contributed something new and fruitful. It would, of course, be preferable for the identification of these contributions to emerge and be judged by others within the realm of unbiased scholarly scrutiny, which is always what we define as scientific “progress”. But such a field is neither visible nor foreseeable in today’s Greece. That is why the need for criticism, which is vital for progress, is inevitably expressed as a series of questions: What does the principle of the “decisionism” of knowledge, the social verification of knowledge, bring to contemporary epistemology? To what extent does “critical ontology” or “ontology of the person” truly overturn the achievements of Kantian philosophy? Is the term “ontology of Art” to be taken literally? What kind of empiricism can a metaphysics consistent with linguistic realism preserve? Is there such a thing as philosophy without metaphysics? Do Greece and the West constitute two mutually exclusive philosophical traditions?