Moisiodax

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Joseph Moisiodax or Moesiodax (1725 - 1800) was a philosopher, professor and director of the Princely Academy from Iaşi, one of the greatest exponents of the Neohellenic and Romanian Enlightenment.

[edit] Biography

Moisiodax was born in the town of Cernavodă from Dobrudja, in a family of unknown origin (he was probably Romanian or Aromanian by birth, certainly not Greek). His real name is unknown, "Joseph" being his monk name and "Moisodax"/"Moesiodax" meaning "Dacian from Moesia", i.e. "the Dobrudjan". Assimilating the Greek-language culture, Moisiodax considered himself Greek and was a Greek patriot. His patriotism was not nationalist, but cultural, since being Greek was for him a question of language, religion and culture. Thus, every Greek-speaking Orthodox was Greek by these criteria.

Moisiodax went to the Greek schools from Thessaloniki and Smyrna. Probably in this period he became a monk. After 1753 he went for several years to the Athonite Academy, which was back then under the direction of Eugene Voulgaris, another prominent exponent of the Neohellenic Enlightenment. Between 1756 - 1760 Moisiodax studied at the University of Padua, under Giovanni Poleni.

In 1765, during the reign of Grigore III Ghica, Moisiodax came to Moldavia where he became the Director of the Princely Academy from Iaşi, and its professor of philosophy. In 1766, becoming sick, possibly of tuberculosis, he retired from this professorship and went to Walachia, where he passed the next 10 years. Recovered from his illness, he returns to Iaşi, where he will accept for the second time the direction of the Academy. After only seveal months he is forced to resign again, due to the opposition of the boyars to his way of teaching. He goes first to Braşov(1777), after that to Wien, where he published his most important work, The Apology. In 1797 he is briefly a professor at the Princely Academy from Bucharest. He dies in Bucharest, in 1800.

[edit] Selected bibliography

Ethical Philosophy, translation of Lodovico Muratori's Filosofia Morale, Venice, 1761, 2 vol.
Treatise on the Education of the Youth, adaptation after Locke and Fénelon with several original chapters, Venice, 1779
The Apology, Wien, 1780

This book is remarkable in many aspects. Among other things, is is the first essay of the Neohellenic litterature. But its greatest importance resides in the concept of "sound philosophy" proposed there. This philosophy is the Occidental natural philosophy, as against the Corydalean Neo-Aristotelianism that was taught everywhere in the Greek-speaking world. Moisiodax admired Descartes, Galilei, Wolff, Locke, but most of all he admired Newton. He thought that the philosophical instruction must begin with the study of mathematics, and that good philosophy is mathematical philosophy. Also, Moisiodax banned the Aristotelian logic from the academic curricula, replacing it with the theory of knowledge, and proposed that the Ancient Greek be replaced in classrooms by Modern Greek, in order to increase the clarity ot the taught lessons.