It is often said, and indeed by a large part of Greek intellectual thought, that we are a people prone to emotion, with a deficit of rationality. One wonders if this opinion is confirmed by reality. The answer to this question served as the impetus - but not the purpose - for writing this book. As emotion is connected to the identity of the Greeks, the exploration of the latter in the light of emotion and rationality recommended the central subject of the research. Its approach necessitated the consideration, on the one hand, of the biopsychological formation of emotion and the socially constructed notion of rationality, and on the other hand, the relationship between rationality and emotion as it unfolds in the fields of individual, social, and collective/national consciousness and identity.

By analyzing the fluctuations of the "emotion-rationality" difference, the study focuses its attention on the conditions and ways that determine the prevalence of one or the other pole of the difference. Subsequently, it proceeds to review the modern Greek national and social consciousness and identity, highlighting their peculiarities, which it contrasts with the dominant so far "modernizing" perception of Greek identity.