We do not know as much about the Greeks as we think we know. Most of our ideas about them are simplifications and mystifications. Our identity, however, does not lie in the content of these half-truths but in the meaning we associate with them. From generation to generation, we pass on the conviction that to some extent – if only to an insignificant degree – we are all Greeks. It is worth remembering that there is nothing inevitable about such a relation to the past – nothing that would require us to treat it as binding and important, to take root and settle in it, and even to elevate it above the present moment. This attitude towards the Greeks and classical heritage in general is one of the most intimate components of our European project of ourselves, which, because it is not necessary, we could easily lose.

The third issue of State of Affairs is devoted to Greece: the classical one, the contemporary one, and the one we imagine. The volume includes translations of essays by Norbert Elias and Alvin Gouldner and contains a number of reviews, including Tomasz Zarycki’s polemic with Jan Sowa on the “phantom body of the king.”