“The works Άσμα Πολεμιστήριο and Σάλπισμα Πολεμιστήριον, published anonymously at the dawn of the new century, carried the feeling of a new expectation and depicted the hopes of a conscious deeply influenced by the French revolutionary experience. With these subversive brochures, Korais, behind the anonymous writer, encouraged his fellow Greeks to uphold the French question and support the efforts of Napoleon in the East. The forlorn hope that national revival and the independence of Greece could come from the intervention of France against the Ottoman Empire and the reform of Greek society according to the model of revolutionary France, gave a dramatic dimension both to the impact of French ideals among enlightened Greeks as well as the widely spread disappointment from the earlier tradition of expectations of Russian support. The progress of the Enlightenment had seriously questioned the viability of the hope that salvation would come from the North. Korais knew very well that the freedom he envisaged was “absolutely different from the Russian freedom”. (pp. 279-280)

In the essays ‘Αυτοσχέδιοι Στοχασμοί περί της Ελληνικής Παιδείας και Γλώσσης’ Korais elaborates on his theory regarding the dialectic of education and freedom. His arguments returned with renewed dynamism on matters promoted in the past by the thinking of the representatives of the Enlightenment against scholastic education and barren grammar teaching. Korais added the demands of the Enlightenment, the credibility of deep language knowledge and the eloquence of modesty, dictated by the savvy insight into politics. He supported the decisive transition from mechanical teaching of grammar to essential education, in the sense of developing an intellect combining the morals of classical times with modern philosophy and science. […] The centre of the theory of cultural reconstruction that he processed was the problem of language, which became his main linguistic interest. This emphasis originated from the practical importance of language as an education tool, as well as from the theoretical significance attributed to language by the gnosiology of the Enlightenment and the theory of ideology. In this field too, Korais managed to develop an integral composition, which gave the possibility to the philosophical principles of his thoughts to be linked to the practical issues that were of concern to his nation. The reconstruction of the language constituted a structural part of the general endeavour of cultural revival of the nation”. (pp. 397-398)