Living in Truth

Living in Truth by Vaclav Havel, edited by Jan Vladislav, 294 pages

This collection of essays was published in 1986, on the occasion of the author receiving the Erasmus Prize for his "opinion that every human being must personally bear his or her responsibility" and his opposition to "all threats to a humane culture".  In the included writings, Havel defies a "revolutionary ideology in which the ideal of man's total liberation has a central place" but whose anthropology imagines man as a "creature whose only aim is self-preservation", and therefore brings about "the gradual erosion of all moral standards, the breakdown of all criteria of decency and the widespread destruction of confidence in the meaning of values such as truth, adherence to principles, sincerity, altruism, dignity, and honour."  He advocates instead a society of voluntary associations which respects the private sphere of individual conscience.

The Havel revealed in these essays is not a political figure, if "political" refers to a programmatic approach to concrete issues and specific problems.  He is, rather, a cultural, social, and ultimately moral critic.  This is consistent with his characterization of the "dissident" as simply an individual who affirms that certain values are worth suffering and, potentially, dying for.  His dissent is therefore not limited to the peculiarities of communist Czechoslovakia, but extends to the West and the twenty-first century as well, for he rejects both the faceless power of impersonal technocracy and the cynicism that is the natural result of the wreck of utopianism.

Living in Truth also includes tributes to Havel from literary figures including Samuel Beckett, Milan Kundera, Arthur Miller, and Tom Stoppard.