inward truth of the self and the truth of others in a civil society are necessary precursors to political action, as is being able to see the troubling implications of a society organized around a techno-scientific world-view. These ideas are general enough to be applied to a variety of political contexts both contemporary and historical, and thus have innovative theoretical content. One moment where this possible theoretical synthesis can be glimpsed is in Havel’s 1984 essay “Politics and Conscience.” Despite the relationship that Havel and Patočka had with each other, the cases where Havel cites Patočka directly are relatively few. One such instance is worth quoting at length from “Politics and Conscience,” as it shows how Havel thought about the political and theoretical implications of Patočka’s ideas: It is becoming evident that wholly personal categories like good and evil still have their unambiguous content and, in certain circumstances, are capable of shaking the seemingly unshakeable power with all its army of soldiers, policemen and bureaucrats. It is becoming evident that politics by no means need remain the affair of professionals and that one simple electrician [Lech Walesa in Poland leading the Solidarity movement] with his heart in the right place, honouring something that transcends him and free of fear, can influence the history of his nation… Under the ‘rule of everydayness’ we have to descend to the very bottom of a well before we can see the stars… When Jan Patočka wrote about Charter 77, he used the term “solidarity of the shaken.” He was thinking of those who dared resist impersonal power and to confront it with the only thing at their disposal, their own humanity. Does not the perspective of a better future depend on something like an international community of the shaken which, ignoring state boundaries, political systems, and power blocs, standing outside the high game of traditional politics, aspiring to no titles and appointments, will seek to make a real political force out of a phenomenon so ridiculed by the technicians of power—the phenomenon of human conscience?83
In some sense, this essay is Havel’s full tribute to Patočka, even more than “Power of the Powerless,” which was directly dedicated to him. “Politics and Conscience” is a description of what Havel calls “anti-political” politics, a type of politics based on the ideas already described here:
83 Havel, “Politics and Conscience,” in Open Letters, 271.
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turning inward toward the human conscience to find truth, acting in solidarity with those who similarly understand the predicament of human isolation and the destructive power of techno-science, and putting truth and morality into practice in order to transcend the ‘everydayness’ of a stultifying totalized existence. While more is elaborated in Chapters Four and Five about Patočka’s notion of ‘solidarity of the shaken,’ what is illuminating about Havel’s use of the idea in this passage is that he understands a mode of solidarity as a precursor to an international community that would identify itself around a way of thinking about human conscience and morality. Patočka writes that the “solidarity of the shaken is the solidarity of those who understand,”84 and then Havel takes this notion and expands it globally, relating political action to the connection between the truth of oneself and the truth of the world. For Havel, the ‘place’ of truth in this sort of ‘living in truth’ is the bridge between the personal and the global; the “international community of the shaken” connects the individual’s recognition of his or her ‘shaken’ truth with global solidarity. While Patočka never gets this specific, with his extrapolation, Havel manages to presage what became after 1989 the phenomenon of ‘global civil society,’ that is, the world-wide network of NGOs, international organizations, and citizen’s groups that expanded exponentially at the end of the Cold War.85 This was something like an “international community of the shaken,” and the contemporary climate change activism discussed in the last chapter is put forward as another illustrative example, demonstrating part of Patočka’s ‘global’ appeal. There is something within all of these ideas that can indeed cross state boundaries, question the power blocs of state sovereignty, and do so in the name of human conscience. Havel never wrote a systematic political theory treatise, nor did Patočka, but it might be possible to say that Havel’s writings have left behind such a thing that can be called ‘Havelian politics.’86 As this conversation has hoped to demonstrate, that view of politics and the world 84 Patočka, Heretical Essays, 134–136. 85 The publication that best tracked this phenomenon from 2001 until 2012 was the “Global Civil Society Yearbook,” based at London School of Economics, http://www.gcsknowledgebase .org/. 86 Some commentary on Havel’s political thought and political life: Aviezer Tucker, The Philosophy and Politics of Czech Dissidence from Patočka to Havel (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000); David Danaher, Reading Václav Havel (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015); Marketa Goetz-Stankiewcz and Phyllis Carey, eds., Critical Essays on Václav Havel (New York: G.K. Hall and Co., 1999); John Keane, Václav Havel: A Political Tragedy in Six Acts (London: Bloomsberry, 1999); James Pontuso, Václav Havel: Civic Responsibility in the Postmodern Age
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has much affinity with Patočka, demonstrating that Patočka is himself, in his philosophical thinking, creating a bridge between the personal and the global, the philosophical and the political. If this might be Sisyphus on a tightrope, it might not be the place for everybody, just as the police interrogation room where he spent some of his last days is not for everybody. Yet there is a framework here for moving forward on that tightrope: for dissidents and activists both historical and contemporary, his ideas can add depth, meaning, and purpose to our understanding of politics. The historical and contemporary examples that follow are chosen to show moments in time where Patočka might have recognized his own dissident sensibility in the political actions of others.
(Oxford: Rowan and Littlefield, 2004); Delia Popescu, Political Action in Václav Havel’s Thought: The Responsibility of Resistance (Lexington Books, 2012).
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