Politics, Morality, and Civility

By Václav Havel
Foreword by Alonzo L. McDonald
(2006)

Discussion Guide Included

An essay by Czech playwright and former President Václav Havel.

“Politics, Morality & Civility” is from his 1992 book Summer Meditations, written soon after the former dissident took office after the dramatic fall of Communism in Czechoslovakia. It is a clear look at the world situation and a call for our cultures and our leaders to rediscover or cultivate what Havel terms “higher responsibility,” a morally grounded vision for the common good.

In his Foreword, Alonzo McDonald says that the essay “summarizes Havel’s thinking on how a modern politician should think and act. In this commentary, he acknowledges that the transition to democracy has also brought a ‘dazzling explosion of every imaginable human vice’ and that ‘society has freed itself, true, but in some ways it behaves worse than when it was in chains.’ Naturally these tendencies enormously complicate the challenge, which he still accepts, to administer the state morally, justly, and with truth.” Yet Havel still believes that high moral standards, respect for the transcendent, and truth in action can yet be applied in our complex, modern, democratic societies.

If a handful of friends and I were able to bang our heads against the wall for years by speaking the truth about Communist totalitarianism while surrounded by an ocean of apathy, there is no reason why I shouldn’t go on banging my head against the wall by speaking ad nauseam, despite the condescending smiles, about responsibility and morality in the face of our present social marasmus. There is no reason to think that this struggle is a lost cause. The only lost cause is one we give up on before we enter the struggle.

Václav Havel

Category: Readings (No. 44)