Among the several models in circulation today for the study of socio-cultural admixture, syncretism, although relatively neglected, remains the most promising one. With its rich history of meanings and debates, it offers a broad variety of applications from which Modern Greek can greatly benefit. This paper defines syncretism as the agonistic yet symbiotic coexistence of incompatible elements from diverse traditions, describes its purview, and explains its relevance for scholarship in a multicultural, global world.

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Postsecularism may be seen as an ongoing response of the Counter-Reformation to Protestant secularism. It represents a spiritualist critique of modernity that advocates civic harmony and a nonpolitics of belonging. Yet the ethico-political dilemmas that the baroque church attempted to resolve continue to be dramatized in all their urgency by modern tragedy.

The Greek Revolution of 1821–1829 mobilized the ideas of classical reception and Philhellenism developed over the previous century to appeal for international support for the war. These complicated ideas influenced the ways both Greeks and non-Greeks thought about the nation, its political character, language, literature, history, culture and landscape. How the revolution and post-revolutionary Greece have been interpreted has shifted over the past 40 years, reflecting changes in both critical theory and also in the geopolitical circumstances in the Eastern Mediterranean and globally. The bicentenary celebrations of 2021 have highlighted the complex, competing claims for the authority to give the dominant account of the founding of modern Greece. Reviewing the scholarship on both Western and Greek Hellenism over the past four decades, our article considers the relationship between classical reception, revolution and the act of commemoration and reveals the hybridity of Hellas in 1821 and 2021.

A reading of Solon's elegy to eunomia through Castoriadis's seminal theory of autonomy as the explicit and reflective self-institution of society can elucidate the question of what constitutes sound governance. Solon proposes that the dignified realm of mortal life is the ethos of citizenship in a political state. Accordingly, this regime, which relies on intrinsic justification, needs to be understood in ethico-political terms. Its inherent ordinance is the rule of justice - the reciprocity of equitable proportion governing relations among citizens. It is the responsibility of these citizens to safeguard the governing reciprocity, and when they neglect it, the entire state suffers the dire consequences of hubris. The political order that best observes and promulgates the rule of justice is good governance, which functions both as self-limitation and as a balancing measure by arranging the contest of civic forces into a fitting harmony.