The critical, as well as laudatory, responses we received to yesterday’s reference to the so-called Greek Neo-Orthodox “intelligentsia”—prompted by the death of Stelios Ramfos, a personal friend of the Prime Minister himself and of government officials who have honoured the deceased and praised his “philosophical” work in their public statements—compel us to return to the same question.
We do so with the following observations, which also explain and justify the severity of our criticism and our position that neither Stelios Ramfos nor the other Neo-Orthodox zealots, living or dead, belong to the ranks of Greek intellectual life or to the community of those who genuinely serve it.
If, from the outset, we clarify the two concepts linguistically—intellectualism and intellect—we acquire a powerful instrument for testing and verifying the authenticity of the reasoning behind their interpretation. This resolves, from the very beginning, the problem of sterile confrontation with those who disagree, at the expense of substance.
And this, in turn, means that we are not obliged to keep “breaking down open doors”—to insist on proving what should already be self-evident.
Intellectualism is the approach to matters from a position of superiority: condescendingly, superficially, and with little serious regard for their substance. It is a shallow and surface-level method of analysing reality.
Intellectual life, by contrast, rests on two unshakable pillars: critical thought and reflection.
By definition, the first prevents thought from being imprisoned within dogma, while the second makes it impossible for thought to settle permanently inside such a confined space.
The principal imprint, therefore, left by genuine intellectual life—visible and unmistakable from the very beginning—is that of the free, detached and unmanipulated attitude of those who serve it.
And such a quality, as its defining characteristic, excludes from its community those who are intellectually “foreigners” and “settlers”—those who enter it already committed to an external authority, doctrine or ideological camp.
The intellectual, the thinker, the person who investigates the foundations of things, signs a commitment from the outset: an intellectual “declaration” that makes him accountable—and, should he fail to honour it in his intellectual journey, exposes him as a mere declarer rather than a genuine seeker.
The central axis of that journey is the search for truth.
One cannot be a follower, a disciple, a partisan or a supporter—above all, a supporter of preconceived ideas, whether political, religious, national, nationalist or racist.
He who declares a “roof” over his head, whatever that roof may be made of, cannot at the same time claim to be “roofless.”
The intellectual, however, has the privilege of choosing the boundless sky as his roof, beneath its countless luminous stars.
And just as the sky has neither beginning nor end, and neither its galaxies nor their immensity can be measured, so the person who declares himself to live beneath its shelter cannot impose barriers or limitations upon the infinity of thought.
Dogma, affiliation and allegiance bring to a halt one of the greatest virtues of the mechanism of thought and intellect: the ability to descend upon—and depart from—safe destinations without ever mistaking them for the final destination.
If the Neo-Orthodox figures we have repeatedly named here, by their own declarations and at various times, chose to honour the political Right and the work of the present Prime Minister’s government—and of a Prime Minister who is also their friend—if they chose to align themselves with and serve doctrines, ideological constructs and behaviours of the (far) Right, then they placed themselves outside the realm of genuine intellectual life.
And, as the people have aptly put it:
“You sleep in the bed you make.”