This is the second episode focusing on truth, and it takes a rather different route than the last oneon hannah Arendt. Vaclav Havel, also, isn’t a typical theorist but certainly a very political thinker. His take on truth really approaches the question of how to live under circumstances that just seem wrong and how to maybe find the cracks that will eventually open new possibilities. And Havel speaks from experience.
Links and Literature
The full text of “The power of the Powerless” can be found here https://archive.org/embed/the-power-of-the-powerless, but if you care for the short introduction by Timothy Snyder (it is worth reading) this might be your source:
Vaclav Havel 2018: The Power of the Powerless (with an introduction by Timothy Snyder). Vintage Classics.
This is the link to the event with Mariann Edgar Budde in May2025
ACHTUNG: Daten nach YouTube werden erst beim Abspielen des Videos übertragen.
And finally some historical starting point: “Declaration of Charter 77,” in World History Commons, https://worldhistorycommons.org/declaration-charter-77 [accessed June 14, 2025]
Fotographic Source
Vaclav Havel 1965 by Jaroslav Krejčí, CC-BY-SA, via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vaclav_Havel_1965.jpg