ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on what is perhaps Rhigas Pheraios's most politically ambitious work of translation, the New Political Constitution. To elaborate a constitutional project for the Balkan-Ottoman peoples at the end of the eighteenth century, meant, necessarily, incorporating new challenges, new formulations and new paradoxes into the experience of Modernity. However, when Rhigas imagined, at the end of the eighteenth century, a Greek and Balkan Republic, indivisible and multinational, a constitutional state based on democratic and liberal principles, he was in fact situating himself in the realm of political utopia. In order to facilitate comparison of the texts, Rhigass Greek version of the French Constitution is preceded by the corresponding articles from the original French text and their translation into English. As enlightened man, Rhigas was convinced that his hazardous venture could only succeed if people were sufficiently prepared for a revolution, and the preparation required instruction.
