Antipolitics and the Philosophy of Dissent

Shore’s own judgments and connections

Shore offers a simplified schema: once Marxism and the grand narratives die, Eastern and Western Europe answer that death in two distinct ways, which sometimes overlap or interact.

Put simply Shore's simplified picture: once Marxism and the other all-explaining stories died, Eastern and Western Europe responded in two different ways, which sometimes overlapped or influenced each other.

Imagine every greengrocer taking his sign down one day: Havel calls that the start of a revolution, which shows the greengrocer was never really powerless.

Put simply Havel: imagine every greengrocer one day taking down the communist slogan in his shop window. That would start a revolution, which shows the greengrocer was never really powerless.

In the text In "The Power of the Powerless" (1978), section VII, Havel imagines a single greengrocer: "one day something in our greengrocer snaps and he stops putting up the slogans", and he is punished for it.

The line dividing victims from oppressors runs through every individual: each person, in a fashion of their own, is at once the system's victim and its supporter.

Put simply Havel: the line between victims and oppressors runs through each person. Everyone, in their own way, both suffers under the system and helps hold it up.

If living a lie is what holds the system up, then living in truth is, unsurprisingly, the fundamental threat to it.

Put simply Havel: if the system rests on everyone living a lie, then "living in truth", refusing to pretend, is naturally the greatest threat to it.

Shore reads Kołakowski and Patočka as holding that robust subjectivity grounds truth instead of relativizing it, linked through responsibility; subjectivity becomes a key word for Havel.

Put simply Shore reads Kołakowski and Patočka as saying that a robust personal standpoint ("subjectivity") grounds truth rather than making it merely relative. Responsibility connects truth and subjectivity, and the word becomes key for Havel.

Eagleton's jab: deconstruction's dogma, that we are locked inside our discourse, lets you wreck everyone else's beliefs while holding none; an invulnerable position, and emptiness is its price.

Put simply Eagleton mocks deconstruction: claiming we are trapped inside our own language lets you demolish everyone else's beliefs without holding any yourself. No one can attack that position, but the price is that it is empty.

Kołakowski argued in a 1966 Warsaw University lecture that Poland's regime worked by negative selection: the worst people, those without conscience or responsibility, were the ones promoted to power.

In some ways Marxism's collapse hit the parents' generation harder than the students: anyone over forty who had built a life on it found quitting the party negated that life.

Put simply Shore: in some ways Marxism's collapse hit the students' parents harder than the students. Anyone over forty who had built a life on it felt that quitting the party canceled that whole life.

Shore offers a simplified schema: once Marxism and the grand narratives die, Eastern and Western Europe answer that death in two distinct ways, which sometimes overlap or interact.

Put simply Shore's simplified picture: once Marxism and the other all-explaining stories died, Eastern and Western Europe responded in two different ways, which sometimes overlapped or influenced each other.

Across Eastern Europe, most pointedly in Czechoslovakia after 1968, Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor, whose one secret is unbelief, became the metaphor for a party that no longer believed in communism.

Put simply Shore: across Eastern Europe, especially in Czechoslovakia after 1968, people likened the ruling party to Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor, a churchman whose one secret is that he does not believe. The party no longer believed in communism.

In Dostoevsky's parable the Grand Inquisitor tells Jesus that humans find freedom the hardest burden of all, and will lay it down in exchange for guaranteed bread.

The parable's punchline, as Alyosha guesses and Ivan confirms: the Grand Inquisitor, who burns heretics for believing too little, has one secret, his own lack of faith in God.

Put simply The twist in Dostoevsky's parable: the Grand Inquisitor burns heretics for not believing enough, yet his one secret is that he himself does not believe in God.

Vague, unenforceable, and signed by regimes that never meant to honor it, Helsinki's human-rights language still filled the vacuum Marxism's collapse left among Eastern intellectuals; its universality mattered.

Put simply Shore: the human-rights promises the Soviet-bloc regimes signed at Helsinki were vague, unenforceable and never meant sincerely. Still, after Marxism collapsed, they gave Eastern intellectuals a new language, and it mattered that it applied to everyone.

For the Charter 77 circle, political opposition meant sharing in politics and dirtying one's hands; the only clean space lay outside politics, in a moral force grounded in human rights.

Put simply Havel's Charter 77 circle: joining a political opposition meant entering politics and dirtying your hands. The only clean ground lay outside politics, in a moral force based on human rights.

In 1948 notes, Patočka holds that Marx, following Hegel, rightly centers alienation but misreads it: no reorganized conditions can heal it, because humans are permanently other than themselves.

Put simply Patočka, in 1948 notes: Marx, following Hegel, was right that alienation, our estrangement, is the central problem. But no change in social conditions can cure it, because humans are always other than themselves.

Imagine every greengrocer taking his sign down one day: Havel calls that the start of a revolution, which shows the greengrocer was never really powerless.

Put simply Havel: imagine every greengrocer one day taking down the communist slogan in his shop window. That would start a revolution, which shows the greengrocer was never really powerless.

In the text In "The Power of the Powerless" (1978), section VII, Havel imagines a single greengrocer: "one day something in our greengrocer snaps and he stops putting up the slogans", and he is punished for it.

Havel's greengrocer is not powerless, which makes him answerable and so guilty: it is people like him whose compliance keeps the game going.

Put simply Havel: the greengrocer, an ordinary shopkeeper who displays a communist slogan he does not believe, is not powerless. That makes him responsible, and so guilty, because people like him keep the system going.

In the text In "The Power of the Powerless" (1978), section VI, Havel writes that "Position in the power hierarchy determines the degree of responsibility and guilt", and that rulers and ruled are both unfree.

The line dividing victims from oppressors runs through every individual: each person, in a fashion of their own, is at once the system's victim and its supporter.

Put simply Havel: the line between victims and oppressors runs through each person. Everyone, in their own way, both suffers under the system and helps hold it up.

If living a lie is what holds the system up, then living in truth is, unsurprisingly, the fundamental threat to it.

Put simply Havel: if the system rests on everyone living a lie, then "living in truth", refusing to pretend, is naturally the greatest threat to it.

Living in truth carries a strong Heideggerian motif: Havel takes over the authentic/inauthentic distinction but turns it into an explicitly moral one.

Put simply Shore hears Heidegger in Havel's "living in truth," refusing the regime's pretenses. Havel takes Heidegger's contrast between living authentically and inauthentically and makes it openly moral.

The greengrocer lies twice. Feigning belief in communism is the shallow lie; the deeper one, Sartrean bad faith, is telling himself he is powerless when greengrocers keep the game going.

Put simply Shore: Havel's greengrocer, displaying a communist slogan, lies twice. Faking belief in communism is the shallow lie. The deeper one is Sartre's "bad faith," self-deception: telling himself he is powerless, when people like him keep the system running.

The parallel polis, an idea Benda voiced most famously, is a second society built by self-organization: institutions of one's own in which people speak and live in truth.

In Audience, Vaněk will not, on principle, ghost-write the brewmaster's weekly police reports on himself; the brewmaster, who sheltered him, protests that Vaněk keeps clean while he gets smeared.

Put simply In Havel's play Audience, the dissident Vaněk refuses on principle to write the brewmaster's weekly police reports about himself. The brewmaster, who took him in, protests that Vaněk stays clean while he gets dirtied.

On Shore's reading, Havel's roots are not in Western liberalism but in a Heideggerianism that reached him through Patočka.

Put simply Shore: Havel's roots lie not in Western liberalism but in a kind of Heideggerian thinking, which reached him through the philosopher Jan Patočka.

On Shore's reconstruction, Havel insists truth is real, not a language game; one reason is that lies are plainly real, and their reality in some sense proves truth's.

Put simply Shore's reading of Havel: truth is real, not just a game played with words. One reason: lies are plainly real, and that in some sense proves truth is real too.

The search for truth has value in itself even when truth cannot easily be grasped, and so the search must go on.

Put simply Patočka: searching for truth is worth doing for its own sake, even when the truth is hard to grasp. So the search must go on.

On Shore's account, Kołakowski concedes the subject-object gap cannot be bridged and Husserl's quest fails, yet insists we keep seeking truth: abandon it and ethics goes too.

Put simply Shore's account of Kołakowski: no one can bridge the gap between mind and outside world, so Husserl's search for certain truth fails. Yet we must keep seeking truth, because giving it up means giving up ethics too.

Shore reads Kołakowski and Patočka as holding that robust subjectivity grounds truth instead of relativizing it, linked through responsibility; subjectivity becomes a key word for Havel.

Put simply Shore reads Kołakowski and Patočka as saying that a robust personal standpoint ("subjectivity") grounds truth rather than making it merely relative. Responsibility connects truth and subjectivity, and the word becomes key for Havel.

Addressing the US Congress in 1990, Havel inverted Marx: "consciousness precedes being," meaning that individual responsibility comes first and transcends any socioeconomic conditions.

Put simply Havel to the US Congress in 1990, reversing Marx: "consciousness precedes being." Individual responsibility comes first, he meant, and stands above any economic or social conditions.

The Brothers Karamazov Brat'ya Karamazovy

Patočka studies with Husserl and Heidegger at the same time.

Patočka helps bring Husserl to Prague for lectures he can no longer give in Nazi Germany.

During the communist takeover Patočka notes in his diary that Marx and Hegel misjudge alienation.

Polish October: communist reform movement in Poland, taken as the start of a hopeful revisionist Marxism.

Kołakowski, invited by students incl. Michnik, gives harsh tenth-anniversary lecture on the Polish October; expelled from the Party.

March 1968 Warsaw student revolt against censorship, crushed with violence; the regime's accompanying "anti-Zionist" campaign drives about 13,000 Polish Jews to emigrate; Michnik among those jailed.

Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia ends the Prague Spring.

Normalization: hardline regime installed after the invasion, with spending shifted toward consumer goods.

Barred from the university, Patočka reads Being and Time aloud in German with students, translating orally into Czech.

Audience Audience

Helsinki Accords signed: Western recognition of postwar borders traded for Eastern-bloc human-rights pledges.

Ivan Jirous button-holes Havel on his way to a party and plays him Plastic People tapes; Havel's epiphany.

Plastic People band members and Jirous arrested; Havel and others send an open letter to Heinrich Böll (Paul Wilson is expelled the following year, 1977).

Charter 77 Charta 77

Charter 77 released January 1 with 242 original signatories; Patočka, Havel and one colleague as first spokespeople.

Patočka dies after exhausting police interrogations; funeral becomes a mobilizing event.

The Power of the Powerless Moc bezmocných

Havel's essay, dedicated to Patočka, smuggled to Michnik in Warsaw for his samizdat journal.

Havel, Michnik and Kuroń climb Sněžka on the Czechoslovak-Polish border to coordinate resistance.

Havel, last released from prison in May 1989, is brought to the castle as first post-communist president of Czechoslovakia.

Havel tells a joint session of the US Congress that consciousness precedes being.