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ABSTRACT
The paper clarifies Havel’s perception of post-democracy through his various writings and speeches, in comparison with the concepts of post-democracy as proposed by C. Crouch, J. Rancière, R. Rorty, S. Wolin, J. Habermas, and Ch. Mouffe. Consequently, Havel’s critique of the then Western parliamentary democracy and the very essence of his notion of post-democracy will be thoroughly illuminated. The historical and intellectual circumstances that shaped his thinking on the topic will be analysed as well. Some misinterpretations of Havel’s thinking that have emerged in the meantime will also be clarified.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 John Keane, Václav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2000); Delia Popescu, Political Action in Václav Havel’s Thought: The Responsibility of Resistance (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2012); David S. Danaher, Reading Václav Havel (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2015).
2 Milan Znoj, ʻVáclav Havel, His Idea of Civil Society, and the Czech Liberal Tradition', in Thinking Through Transition. Liberal Democracy, Authoritarian Pasts, and Intellectual History in East Central Europe After 1989, eds. Michal Kopeček, and Piotr Wciślik (Budapest, New York: CEU Press, 2015): 109–37.
3 Richard Rorty, Truth and Progress (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 237; italics in original.
4 Jacques Rupnik, ʻIn Praise of Václav Havel', Journal of Democracy 21, no. 3 (2010): 136.
5 Petr Drulák, ʻBetween Geopolitics and Anti-Geopolitics: Czech Political Thought', Geopolitics 11, no. 3 (2006): 420–38; Ondřej Ditrych, Vladimír Handl, Nikola Hynek and Vít Střítecký, ʻUnderstanding Havel?', Communist and Post-Communist Studies 46, no. 3 (2013): 407–17.
6 Dean C. Hammer, ʻVáclav Havel’s Construction of a Democratic Discourse – Politics in a Postmodern Age', Philosophy Today 39, no. 2 (1995): 119–30; Peter Augustine Lawler, ʻHavel’s Postmodern View of Man in the Cosmos', Perspectives on Political Science 26, no. 1 (1997): 27–34.
7 Martin Potůček, ʻHavel Versus Klaus: Public Policy Making in the Czech Republic', Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice 1, no. 2 (1999): 163–76.
8 Petra Gümplová, ʻRethinking Resistance with Václav Havel', Constellations 21, no. 3 (2014): 401.
9 Jindřich Fibich, ʻVize Václava Havla o demokracii a demokratismu', Mezinárodní vztahy 32, no. 4 (1997): 67–75.
10 Timothy Barney, ʻCitizen Havel and the Construction of Czech Presidentiality', The Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 4 (2015): 585–611.
11 Timothy Barney, ʻVáclav Havel at the End of the Cold War: The Invention of Post-Communist Transition in the Address to U.S. Congress, February 21, 1990', Communication Quarterly 67, no. 5 (2019): 560–83.
12 Fabio Petito, ʻThe Global Political Discourse of Dialogue among Civilizations: Mohammad Khatami and Václav Havel, Global Change', Peace & Security 19, no. 2 (2007): 103–26.
13 Chantal Delsol and Michel Maslowski, eds., Histoire des idées politiques de l’Europe centrale (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1998); Aurelian Craiutu and Stefan Kolev, ʻPolitical thought in Central and Eastern Europe: The Open Society, its Friends, and Enemies', European Journal of Political Theory 21, no. 4 (2021): 808–35.
14 Delia Popescu, ʻThe Importance of Bearing Witness', East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 32, no. 2 (2018): 315–9; Daniel Brennan, ʻReading Václav Havel in the Age of Trump', Critical Horizons 20, no. 1 (2019): 54–70.
15 Josette Baer, ʻImagining Membership: The Conception of Europe in the Political Thought of T. G. Masaryk and Václav Havel', Studies in East European Thought 52, no. 3 (2000): 203–26.
16 James F. Pontuso, ʻTransformation Politics: The Debate Between Václav Havel and Václav Klaus on the Free Market and Civil Society', Studies in East European Thought 54 (2002): 153–77; Martin Myant, ʻKlaus, Havel and the Debate over Civil Society in the Czech Republic', Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 21, no. 2 (2005): 248–67.
17 Jean Bethke Elshtain, ʻPolitics Without Cliché', Social Research 60, no. 3, (1993): 433–44; Martin J. Matuštík, Postnational Identity: Critical Theory and Existential Philosophy in Habermas, Kierkegaard, and Havel (New York: Guilford Press, 1993); Martin J. Matuštík, ʻPost-National Identity: Habermas, Kierkegaard and Havel', Thesis Eleven 34, no. 1 (1993): 89–100; Aviezer Tucker, The Philosophy and Politics of Czech Dissidence from Patočka to Havel (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000); Robert Pirro, ʻVáclav Havel and the Political Uses of Tragedy', Political Theory 30, no. 2 (2002): 228–58; James F. Pontuso, ʻThe Political Philosophy of Václav Havel', Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 5, no. 1 (2002): 43–80; James F. Pontuso, Václav Havel: Civic Responsibility in the Postmodern Age (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004).
18 Colin Crouch, Post-Democracy (London: Polity Press, 2004); Colin Crouch, ʻThe March Towards Post-Democracy, Ten Years On', The Political Quarterly 87, no. 1 (2016): 71–5; Colin Crouch, Post-Democracy After the Crisis (London: Polity Press, 2020).
19 Roland Czada, ʻ“Post-Democracy” and the Public Sphere: Informality and Transparency in Negotiated Decision-Making', in Complex Democracy: Varieties, Crises, and Transformations, eds. Volker Schneider and Burkard Eberlein (Springer: Cham, 2015): 231–46; Michael Augustín, ʻHow to Escape from the Dead End of Post-Democracy? Representation and Principle of Popular Sovereignty', Filosofický časopis 65, Special Issue (2017): 93–111; Aliénor Ballangé, ʻPost-Democracy: Principles and Ambiguities', French Politics 15, no. 1 (2017): 128–45; Nicholas J. Long, ʻPostdemocracy and a Politics of Prefiguration', in Handbook of Political Anthropology, eds. Harald Wydra and Bjørn Thomassen (Cheltenham, Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018): 293–311; Klaus von Beyme, From Post-Democracy to Neo-Democracy (Cham: Springer, 2018); Gundula Ludwig, ʻPost-Democracy and Gender: New Paradoxes and Old Tensions', Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory 19, no. 1 (2018): 28–46; Mehdi Ghasemi, ʻParadigms of Postmodern Democracies', SAGE Open, (2019): 1–6; Meike Schmidt-Gleim, ʻDemocracy, Post-democracy and What Came After', in Rethinking Politicisation in Politics, Sociology and International Relations, ed. Claudia Wiesner (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), 89–106; Seongcheol Kim, ʻ“Illiberal Democracy” after Post-Democracy: Revisiting the Case of Hungary', The Political Quarterly 94, no. 3 (2023): 437–44.
20 Manfred B. Steger and Sherri S. Replogle, ʻVáclav Havel’s Postmodernism', Contemporary Political Theory 4, no. 3 (2005): 253–74; Saskia van Goelst Meijer, ʻThe Power of the Truthful: Satya in the Nonviolence of Gandhi and Havel', International Journal on World Peace 32, no. 2 (2015): 19–39.
21 Barbara J. Falk, ʻResistance and Dissent in Central and Eastern Europe: An Emerging Historiography', East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 25, no. 2 (2011): 333.
22 Caleb R. Miller, Living Under Post-Democracy: Citizenship in Fleetingly Democratic Times (London, New York: Routledge, 2020).
23 Johan Farkas and Jannick Schou, Post-Truth, Fake News and Democracy: Mapping the Politics of Falsehood (New York: Routledge, 2020).
24 Greg Simons, ʻPolicy and Political Marketing: Promoting Conflict as Policy', Journal of Political Marketing, (2020), First View, https://doi.org/10.1080/15377857.2020.1724426.
25 Crouch, Post-Democracy, 49.
26 Pavel Šaradín, ʻÚvahy o současné demokracii', Filozofia 72, no. 4 (2017): 310.
27 Miller, Living Under Post-Democracy, 14.
28 Crouch, Post-Democracy, 6.
29 Colin Crouch and Lukáš Kantor, ʻVládnou korporace, postdemokracií je i Česko, říká britský politolog Crouch',November 3, 2019, https://www.idnes.cz/zpravy/zahranicni/britanie-cesko-eu-postdemokracie-korporace-globalizace-brexit-populismus-neoliberalismus-crouch.A191029_201258_zahranicni_luka.
31 Colin Crouch, The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism (Cambridge: Polity, 2011), 153.
32 Crouch, Post-Democracy, 36–39. See also Ján Koper and Simona Kováčová, ʻThe Power of Companies in Post-Democracy' in Medzinárodné vzťahy 2019: Zborník vedeckých prác z 20. medzinárodnej vedeckej konferencie, eds. Adrianna Baleha et al. (Bratislava: Ekonóm, 2019): 572–82.
33 Crouch, ʻThe March Towards Post-Democracy, Ten Years On’, 74.
34 Cf. Ján Koper, ʻVýchodiská z postdemokratickej situácie', in Postdemokracia ako process hľadania novej kvality demokracie, eds. Ján Koper et al. (Prague: Naše vojsko, 2019), 54.
35 Nancy Fraser, ʻLegitimation Crisis? On the Political Contradictions of Financialized Capitalism', Critical Historical Studies 2, no. 2 (2015): 159.
36 See Bartołomiej Błesznowski, ʻIn Defence of the Political. The Crisis of Democracy and the Return of the People from the Perspective of Foucault and Rancière', Polish Sociological Review 179, no. 3 (2012): 332–48; Aletta J. Norval, ʻ“ʻWriting a Name in the Sky”: Rancière, Cavell, and the Possibility of Egalitarian Inscription', American Political Science Review 106, no. 4 (2012): 810–26; Gianpaolo Baiocchi and Brian T. Connor, ʻPolitics as Interruption: Rancière’s Community of Equals and Governmentality', Theses Eleven 117, no. 1 (2013): 89–100; Samuel A. Chambers, The Lessons of Rancière (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
37 Georganna Ulary, ʻRancière, Kristeva and the Rehabilitation of Political Life', Theses Eleven 106, no. 1 (2011): 28.
38 Jacques Rancière, Hatred of Democracy (London, New York: Verso, 2006), 54 and 55.
39 Isabell Lorey, ʻThe 2011 Occupy Movements: Rancière and the Crisis of Democracy', Theory, Culture & Society 31, nos. 7/8 (2014): 50.
40 Jacques Rancière and Joseph Confavreux, ʻThe Crisis of Democracy', 24 February 2020, https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4576-jacques-ranciere-the-crisis-of-democracy.
41 Jacques Rancière, ʻDemocracies Against Democracy', in Democracy in What State?, eds. Giorgio Agamben et al. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 79; see also Rancière, Hatred of Democracy, 96; Todd May, Benjamin Noys and Saul Newman, ʻDemocracy, Anarchism and Radical Politics Today: An Interview with Jacques Ranciere', Anarchist Studies 16, no. 2 (2008): 173–85.
42 Jacques Rancière, Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy (Suite: University of Minnesota Press, 1999): 101–2; highlighted by J. Rancière.
43 Kate Nash, ʻPost-Democracy, Politics and Philosophy: An Interview with Jacques Rancière', Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 1, no. 3 (1996): 174.
44 Matthias Flatscher and Sergej Seitz, ʻOf Citizens and Plebeians: Postnational Political Figures in Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Rancière', European Law Journal 25, no. 5 (2019): 505.
45 Jean Bethke Elshtain, ʻA Man for this Season: Václav Havel on Freedom and Responsibility', Perspectives on Political Science 21, no.4 (1992): 207–11; Katarína Mayerová, ʻPatočka and Rorty: The Problem of Freedom', Folia Philosophica 37 (2017): 49–66.
46 Walter H. Capps, ʻInterpreting Václav Havel', Cross Currents 47, no. 3 (1997): 301–16; Edward F. Findlay, ʻClassical Ethics and Postmodern Critique: Political Philosophy in Václav Havel and Jan Patočka', The Review of Politics 61, no. 3 (1999): 403–38; James Krapfl, ʻBoredom, Apocalypse, and Beyond. Reading Havel through Patočka', East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 32, no. 2 (2018): 278–84; David Gilbreath Barton, Havel: Unfinished Revolution (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020), 144–146.
47 Eduardo Mendieta, ʻPost-Democracy: From the Depoliticisation of Citizens to the Political Automata of Perpetual War', Juncture 22, no. 3 (2015): 207.
48 Danny Postel, ʻLast Words from Richard Rorty', The Progressive Magazine, June 11, 2007, https://progressive.org/magazine/last-words-richard-rorty/.
49 Richard Rorty, ʻPost-Democracy', London Review of Books 26, no. 7 (1 April 2004), https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v26/n07/richard-rorty/post-democracy.
50 Postel, ʻLast Words from Richard Rorty', online.
51 Rorty, ʻPost-Democracy', online.
52 Ibid., italics added.
53 John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 4.
54 Cf. William M. Curtis, ʻRorty as Virtue Liberal', Contemporary Pragmatism 13, no. 4 (2016): 411.
55 See Richard J. Bernstein, ʻOne Step Forward, Two Steps Backward: Richard Rorty on Liberal Democracy and Philosophy', Political Theory 15, no. 4 (1987): 538–63; Ana Matan, ʻA Well-Ordered Society as a Democratic Community: Alternative Readings of Rawls’ Political Theory', Croatian Political Science Review 41, no. 5 (2004): 123–33.
56 Sheldon S. Wolin, Tocqueville Between Two Worlds: The Making of a Political and Theoretical Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 322.
57 Ibid.
58 Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008), 194.
59 Miller, Living Under Post-Democracy, 22.
60 Ibid., 52.
61 Augustín, ʻHow to Escape from the Dead End of Post-Democracy?', 100.
62 Jürgen Habermas, ʻThe Crisis of the European Union in the Light of a Constitutionalization of International Law', The European Journal of International Law 23, no. 2 (2012): 348.
63 Jürgen Habermas, The Lure of Technocracy (Cambridge: Polity, 2015), 76–7; italics added.
64 Daniel Ritter, The Iron Cage of Liberalism: International Politics and Unarmed Revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 63.
65 Michaël Foessel, ʻCritique and Communication: Philosophy’s Missions 1: A Conversation with Jürgen Habermas', in The Routledge Companion to the Frankfurt School, eds. Peter E. Gordon, Espen Hammer and Axel Honneth (New York: Routledge, 2018), 562.
66 Ibid., 559; see also Jürgen Habermas and Michaël Foessel, ʻCritique and Communication: Philosophy’s Missions. A Conversation with Jürgen Habermas', Esprit, nos. 8–9 (2015): 40–54.
67 See Charles Sabatos, ʻCriticism and Destiny: Kundera and Havel on the Legacy of 1968', Europe-Asia Studies 60, no. 10 (2008): 1827–45; Stefan Auer, ʻ1938 and 1968, 1939 and 1969, and the Philosophy of Czech History from Karel H. Mácha to Jan Patočka', Europe-Asia Studies 60, no. 10 (2008): 1677–96.
68 Craiutu and Kolev, ʻPolitical thought in Central and Eastern Europe', 4.
69 Niklas Forsberg, ʻAmong the Onions and Carrots: The “dissident” and the Countersignature of Post-Totalitarianism', Filosofický časopis 70, no. SI 1 (2022): 69.
70 Barbara J. Falk, ʻThe Power of the Powerless and Václav Havel’s “ʻResponsibilityism”', East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 32, no. 2 (2018): 333.
71 Manfred B. Steger, ʻOf Means and Ends: 1989 as Ethico-Political Imperative', New Political Science 21, no. 4 (1999): 508.
72 Jiří Suk, Politika jako absurdní drama: Václav Havel v letech 1975–1989 (Prague, Litomyšl: Paseka, 2013), 149.
73 Chandler Rosenberger, ʻThe Dissident Mind: Václav Havel as Revolutionary Intellectual', The Journal of the Historical Society 6, no. 3 (2006): 475.
74 Jiří Suk, ʻPodrobná zpráva o paralelní polis: Nad korespondencí Václava Havla a Františka Janoucha', in Korespondence 1978–2001, eds. Václav Havel and František Janouch (Prague: Akropolis, 2007), 17, italics added.
75 Cerwyn Moore, ʻHeretical Conversations with Continental Philosophy: Jan Patočka, Central Europe and Global Politics', British Journal of Politics & International Relations 11, no. 2 (2009): 322; see also Roger Scruton, ʻMoc bezmocných: Some Thoughts from Afar', East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 32, no. 2 (2018): 239–43.
76 Václav Havel, ʻThe Power of the Powerless', East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 32, no. 2 (2018): 406–407, note 98; italics added (transl. from Czech by Paul Wilson). See also Václav Havel, Moc bezmocných a jiné eseje (Prague: Knihovna Václava Havla, 2012), 216.
77 Marek Junek, Svobodně! Radio Svobodná Evropa 1951–2011: 60 let RFE (Prague: Radioservis, 2011), 216.
78 Ibid.
79 Havel, ʻThe Power of the Powerless', 404.
80 See Junek, Svobodně! Radio Svobodná Evropa 1951–2011, 216.
81 Robert B. Pynsent, Questions of Identity: Czech and Slovak Ideas of Nationality and Personality (Budapest, London, New York: CEU Press, 1994), 7.
82 Václav Havel, O lidskou identitu, 3rd ed. (Prague: Rozmluvy, 1990), 260.
83 Ibid.
84 Václav Havel, Summer Meditations (London, Boston: Faber and Faber, 1992), 53.
85 Jiří Suk, ʻDisent jako morální výzva a politická skutečnost (1977–1989–2000)', In Šest kapitol o disentu, eds. Jiří Suk et al. (Prague: Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, 2017), 256.
86 Both intellectuals maintained a mutual correspondence, which can be found in the Archives of the Masaryk University in Brno; 24 letters from Václav Havel, 3 letters from Josef Šafařík, and 12 postcards. See Jan Hron, The Correspondence of Václav Havel. Unpublished Diploma thesis (Prague: Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Arts, 2008), 31, 42–95. ʻI read the book Seven Letters to Melin at an early age, and it had a tremendous meaning for me, because it oriented me philosophically even in my childhood', Havel wrote a few decades later about the impact of Šafařík’s collection of essays on him; Václav Havel, ʻO Josefu Šafaříkovi', Box pro slovo-obraz-zvuk-pohyb-život, no. 6 (1996): 114. Havel even dedicated his play ʻThe Increased difficulty of concentration' (1968) to Šafařík.
87 Suk, ʻDisent jako morální výzva a politická skutečnost (1977–1989–2000)', 256.
88 Erich Fromm, Mít, nebo být? (Prague: Aurora, 2014), 18.
89 Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man. 16th ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), 9.
90 Robert B. Pynsent, ʻVáclav Havel: A Heart in the Right Place', East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 32, no. 2 (2018): 348.
91 Jiří Suk and Kristina Andělová, ʻThe Power of the Powerless and Further Havelian Paradoxes in the Stream of Time', East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 32, no. 2 (2018): 220.
92 Ibid., 221.
93 Karel Hvížďala, Václav Havel, Disturbing the Peace: A Conversation with Karel Hvížďala (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), 9.
94 Balázs Trencsényi, Michal Kopeček, Luka Lisjak Gabrijelčič, Marian Falina and Mónika Baár, A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe. Volume II: Negotiating Modernity in the ʻShort Twentieth Century’and Beyond, Part II: 1968–2018 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 185; italics added.
95 Havel, Summer Meditations, 60.
96 See Juhan Saharov, ʻCombining Laclauian Discourse Analysis and Framing Theory Václav Havel’s ‘Hegemonic Rhetoric’ in Charter 77', Czech Journal of Political Science 28, no. 2 (2021): 186–203.
97 Rorty, Truth and Progress, 243.
98 Růžena Hlušičková and Blanka Císařovská, eds., Hnutí za občanskou svobodu: Dokumenty (Prague: Maxdorf, 1994), 26.
99 Ibid., 47.
100 James P. McGregor, ʻValue Structures in a Developed Socialist System: The Case of Czechoslovakia', Comparative Politics 23, no. 2 (1991): 197.
101 See Ondřej Krása, ʻTwo Concepts of a Lie: Václav Havel on Living in a Communist Regime', Filosofický časopis 70, no. SI 1 (2022): 50–67; Mary M. Keys, ʻTruth, Lies, and Politics: Augustine and Havel on the Problem of Civic Integrity and “ʻLiving in Truth”', in Augustine and Contemporary Social Issues, ed. Paul L. Allen (London: Routledge, 2022).
102 See Paulina Bren, The Greengrocer and His TV: The Culture of Communism after the 1968 Prague Spring (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010); Muriel Blaive, ʻIntroduction', in Perceptions of Society in Communist Europe: Regime Archives and Popular Opinion, ed. Muriel Blaive (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 1–12.
103 Václav Havel, Hry (Prague, Brno: Host, 2017), 357. Regarding the play itself, Havel later wrote that what should occur with all art occurred with it, ʻspecifically, that the work in some way surpasses its author, that it is, so to speak, “more insightful than him,” and that it breaks through to the surface through the author – even before he consciously intends it – and unveils a deeper truth about his era;' Václav Havel, Do různých stran (Prague: Lidové noviny, 1989), 303.
104 Havel himself commented on the role of theatre, or more precisely, drama from his perspective, in one of the numerous book interviews with the following words: ʻMy ambition is not to soothe the audience with a comforting falsehood and falsely assure them that I will solve something for them. (…) I am attempting something different: to immerse them as profoundly as possible into the depths of a question they should not evade, and which, in any case, they cannot avoid; to confront them with their own suffering, with my suffering, with our shared suffering. (…) Even the harshest truth, when spoken loudly and publicly, in front of everyone, suddenly transforms into something liberating: within the beautiful and unique ambiguity of theatre, its dread merges here (…) with something entirely new and unfamiliar compared to reading: with the joy (shared and only experienced collectively) that “it has finally been said,” that it is now out in the open, that the truth has been boldly and publicly articulated;' Václav Havel, Dálkový výslech (Prague: Melantrich, 1990), 172 and 174. In another context, Havel observed that ʻ[d]rama is an endeavour to confront life’s fundamental ambiguity, to unveil something akin to the skeleton of existence, to vividly depict its inner essence, concealed framework, and genuine complexities, to visually delineate beginnings, interruptions, pauses, and ultimately, conclusions or junctures, precisely those aspects that are so seldom recognized outside the realm of drama;' Václav Havel, Prosím stručně. Rozhovor s Karlem Hvížďalou, poznámky, dokumenty (Prague: Gallery, 2006), 193.
105 Milan Otáhal, ʻO nepolitické politice', Czech Sociological Review 34, no. 4 (1998): 467–76; Jan Bureš, ʻKoncept nepolitické politiky T. G. Masaryka a Václava Havla', Politické vedy 15, no. 1 (2012): 52–85.
106 Knud Erik Jørgensen, ʻThe End of Anti-politics in Central Europe', in Democracy and Civil Society in Eastern Europe, ed. Paul G. Lewis (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1992), 32–60; Alan Renwick, ʻAnti-Political or Just Anti-Communist? Varieties of Dissidence in East-Central Europe and Their Implications for the Development of Political Society', East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 20, no. 2 (2006): 286–318.
107 Barbara J. Falk, The Dilemmas of Dissidence in East-Central Europe: Citizen Intellectuals and Philosopher Kings (Budapest, New York: CEU Press, 2003), 256.
108 Paul Wilson, ʻThe Power of the Powerless Revisited', East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 32, no. 2 (2018): 237.
109 Václav Havel, ʻThe Search for Meaning in a Global Civilization', English Academy Review 16, no. 1 (1999): 5.
110 Cf. Rosamund Johnston and Lenka Kabrhelová, Havel v Americe: Rozhovory s americkými intelektuály, politiky a umělci (Brno: Host, 2019), 161.
111 Ibid., 78.
112 Adéla Gjuričová and Tomáš Zahradníček, Návrat parlamentu: Češi a Slováci ve Federálním shromáždění 1989–1992 (Prague: Argo, 2018), 105.
113 Matěj Metelec, ʻ“Vsadit i sám sebe.” Petr Uhl 1968–1989', in Za svobodu je třeba nestále bojovat. Vybrané texty 1968–1989, ed. Petr Uhl, (Prague: Neklid, 2021), 22.
114 Uhl, Za svobodu je třeba nestále bojovat, 554.
115 Miller, Living Under Post-Democracy, 22.
116 Martin J. Matuštík, ʻHavel and Habermas on Identity and Revolution', Praxis International 10, nos. 3–4 (1990): 264.
117 Kacper Szulecki, ʻTruth in the Time of Infowars. Moral Politics and Conscience', East European Politics and Societies and Cultures 32, no. 2 (2018): 326.
118 ʻThe general points Havel takes from Masaryk are an apparent belief in a Czech humanist tradition … Again, like Masaryk, Havel considers that a major cause of the present crisis is indifference.' Pynsent, Questions of Identity, 4, 23.
119 Mayerová, ʻPatočka and Rorty', 49.
120 Cf. Petr Špecián, ʻProměny přirozeného světa: Husserl, Patočka a dál?', E-Logos, no. 12 (2009): 10–11; Tomáš Tlapa, ʻHusserl, Lévinas a Patočka: Ke kritice pojetí druhého jako alter ega', Paideia: Philosophical e-journal of Charles University 14, no. 4 (2017): 8. See also Françoise Dastur, ʻL’Europe et ses philosophes: Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Patocka', Revue Philosophique de Louvain 104, no. 1 (2006): 1–22; Ľubica Učník, The Crisis of Meaning and the Life-World: Husserl, Heidegger, Arendt, Patočka (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2016).
121 Kieran Williams, Václav Havel (London: Reaktion Books, 2016), 120.
122 Pynsent, Questions of Identity, 18. See also Daniel Brennan, The Political thought of Václav Havel: Philosophical Influences and Contemporary Applications (Leiden, Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2017), 44–52.
123 Daniel Brennan, ʻVáclav Havel’s Call for Forgiveness', in Phenomenology and Forgiveness, ed. Marguerite La Caze (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), 174.
124 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), 45.
125 See Suk and Andělová, ʻThe Power of the Powerless and Further Havelian Paradoxes in the Stream of Time', 221.
126 Aleš Prázný, O smyslu politiky: Politická filosofie Hannah Arendtové (Pardubice: Univerzita Pardubice, 2014), 141.
127 Ulrika Björk, ʻThe Dissident and the Spectre: Reading Havel with Derrida', Filosofický časopis 70, no. SI 1 (2022): 110.
128 Daniel Brennan, ʻConsidering the Public-Private Dichotomy: Hannah Arendt, Václav Havel and Victor Klemperer on the Importance of the Private', Human Studies 40 (2017): 258.
129 Jeffrey C. Isaac, ʻOases in the Desert: Hannah Arendt on Democratic Politics', American Political Science Review 88, no. 1 (1994): 156.
130 Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (London: Penguin Books, 1965), 269.
131 Havel, ʻThe Power of the Powerless', 407.
132 Delia Popescu, ʻEastern European Political Thought as a Conceptual Tool', in The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Political Theory, eds. Leigh K. Jenco, Murad Idris and Megan C. Thomas (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 690.
133 Gümplová, ʻRethinking Resistance with Václav Havel’, 407.
134 Havel, ʻThe Power of the Powerless', 405; italics only in the Czech ed.: Havel, Moc bezmocných a jiné eseje, 213.
135 Ibid.
136 Falk, The Dilemmas of Dissidence in East-Central Europe, 244.
137 Havel, ʻThe Power of the Powerless', 405.
138 Václav Havel, Projevy (Prague: Vyšehrad, 1990), 96.
139 Ibid., 153.
140 Anthony Kammas, ʻVáclav Havel’s Absurd Route to Democracy', Critical Horizons 9, no. 2 (2008): 236.
141 Havel, ʻThe Power of the Powerless', 405–6.
142 Ibid., 406.
143 Jonathan Bolton, Světy disentu: Charta 77, Plastic People of the Universe a česká kultura za komunismu (Prague: Academia, 2015), 299.
144 Havel, ʻThe Power of the Powerless', 406; italics added.
145 Ibid.; italics only in the Czech ed.: Havel, Moc bezmocných a jiné eseje, 216.
146 Michael W. Howard, ʻMarket Socialism and Political Pluralism: Theoretical Reflections on Yugoslavia', Studies in East European Thought 53, no. 4 (2001): 308.
147 Milan Znoj, ʻHavlova antipolitika na různý způsob: K Sukově knize o Václavu Havlovi', Soudobé dějiny 21, no. 3 (2014): 418.
148 Petr Uhl, ʻThe Alternative Community as Revolutionary Avant-Garde', International Journal of Politics 15, nos. 3–4 (1985–86): 190.
149 Ibid., 191.
150 Uhl, Za svobodu je třeba nestále bojovat, 380–1. See also Dirk Mathias Dalberg, ʻFrom Class-Society to a Democracy in Permanence. Petr Uhl’s “ʻProgram of social self-management”', Studia Politica Slovaca 9, no. 2 (2016): 5–23.
151 Cf. Zdeněk Mlynář, ʻVedoucí úloha strany v rozvoji socialistické státnosti', Právník 100, no. 5 (1961): 399.
152 Cf. Mlynář, ʻVedoucí úloha strany v rozvoji socialistické státnosti', 392. See also Zdeněk Mlynář, K teorii socialistické demokracie (Prague: Státní nakladatelství politické literatury, 1961).
153 See Jaroslav Pažout, ʻRadikálně levicová opozice v Československu v sedmdesátých a osmdesátých letech 20. století', in Kreiského éra v Rakousku a období normalizace v ČSSR, eds. Michal Stehlík and Gerald M. Sprengnagel (Prague: TOGGA, 2013), 145–62; Jaroslav Pažout, Mocným navzdory: Studentské hnutí v šedesátých letech 20. století (Prague: Prostor, 2008), Chap. IV.
154 Suk and Andělová, ʻThe Power of the Powerless and Further Havelian Paradoxes in the Stream of Time', 223.
155 Havel, Prosím stručně, 229.
156 Ibid.
157 Ibid.
158 Havel, Prosím stručně, 230.
159 Havel, Disturbing the Peace, 9.
160 See Paul Blokker, ʻDemocracy Through the Lens of 1989: Liberal Triumph or Radical Turn?', International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society IJPS 22 (2009): 273–90.
161 Václav Havel, ʻThe Emperor Has No Clothes', Journal of Democracy 16, no. 4 (2005): 7–8.
162 Václav Havel, ʻAddress by Vaclav Havel, President of the Czech Republic, National Press Club, Canberra, Australia', March 29, 1995, https://www.muzeuminternetu.cz/offwebs/czech/357.htm.
163 Václav Havel, ʻDemocracy’s Forgotten Dimension', Journal of Democracy 6, no. 2 (1995): 7.
164 Michal Kováč, Pamäti: Môj príbeh občana a prezidenta (Dunajská Lužná: Milanium, 2010): 341–2.
165 Ibid.
166 Michal Kováč, Správa Michala Kováča, ktorou položil vládu Vladimíra Mečiara; online October 6, 2016, https://komentare.sme.sk/c/20346142/sprava-michala-kovaca-ktorou-polozil-vladu-vladimira-meciara.html.
167 Richard Změlík, ʻMezi literaturou a ideologií anebo O skryté dialogičnosti', in Václav Havel: Od existenciální revoluce k invazi v Iráku, ed. Peter Steiner (Olomouc: Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci, 2022), 27.
168 Colin Crouch, ʻ10. Post-Democracy and Populism', The Political Quarterly 90, no. S1 (2019): 126.
169 See, for example, Bob Jessop, ʻThe Future of the State in an Era of Globalization', in Challenges of Globalization: New Trends in International Politics and Society, eds. Alfred Pfaller and Marika Lerch (New York: Routledge, 2005), 13–26; Henry A. Giroux, Against the Terror of Neoliberalism: Politics Beyond the Age of Greed (New York: Routledge, 2008); Alison J. Ayers and Alfredo Saad-Filho, ʻDemocracy against Neoliberalism: Paradoxes, Limitations, Transcendence', Critical Sociology 41, nos. 4–5 (2015): 597–618; Thomas Biebricher, ʻNeoliberalism and Democracy', Constellations 22, no. 2 (2015): 255–66.
170 Chantal Mouffe, For a Left Populism (London: Verso, 2019), 65.
171 Ibid.
172 Ibid., 79.
173 Ibid., 82.
174 Ibid., 71.
175 Gümplová, ʻRethinking Resistance with Václav Havel', 401.
176 I thank the reviewer for this valuable input.
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