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Havel as Citizen: interreligious dialogue, democracy and human rights in Havel's public activity

Publication at Faculty of Humanities |
2013

Abstract

From young times in the group of Thirty-Sixers, through Charter 77 Havel was the "point of convergence" for unofficial culture and civic movement, He was intentionally connecting, mobilizing and ultimately leading very diverse communities of people that would have otherwise never meet each other and interact. This shared space between public and private where individual interests meet and provide a consensual basis for democracy; this was his very notion of civil society as a breeding ground for any meaningful (democratic) politics, "politics from below" or "anti-political politics".

His way of antipolitical politics was to search for a meaning of human life in public sphere, practical morality, and "living in truth" as opposed to "technology of power, the control of people and their manipulation".