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'It is my impression that sooner or later politics will be faced with the task of finding a new, postmodern face.' Václav Havel (1998, 92).'...[T]he content of Havel's 'post-modern' speeches was contradicted by the recognizable modern spectacle of a head of state attempting to stave off political decline by reaching for abstractions and looking to the heavens.' John Keane (2000, 487).
Introduction
Is Václav Havel's political thought modern or postmodern?1 Given Havel's conscious use of the latter term, an inquiry into this subject has both philosophical and political significance. Indeed, political thinkers seeking to make sense of Havel's employment of the signifier 'postmodern' are often frustrated by his philosophical vagueness and his outright contradictions. For example, how can he embark on an essentialist quest for 'truth' and yet expect to find a 'postmodern' face of politics? How can he at once condemn grand narratives and epistemological foundations, and yet embrace a liberal language of individual dignity and universal rights? How can he speak of moral absolutes while denying metaphysical certainties? How can he appeal to an ethical politics inextricably linked to religious and spiritual values and also promote secular institutions?
To be fair, Havel the political thinker has never claimed philosophical consistency, for he seems to be neither interested in entering the arena of formal philosophy nor in formulating a 'political theory' per se . In fact, he even goes so far as to claim that he has never been wedded to a comprehensive worldview (Havel, 1988, 147-148, 270). Still, as Robert Pirro (2002) and Jean Bethke Elshtain (1992) astutely observe, Havel's political and contemplative writings and speeches offer 'the promise of a coherent theory of politics' (Pirro, 2002, 228). In addition, his ideas have had a tremendous impact in the 'real world' of politics as he struggled for decades at the forefront of the Czechoslovakian anticommunist opposition and later served as the new Czech Republic's first Head of State.
A number of recent studies have explored the various dimensions of Havel's political thought. Scholars have commented in much detail on his philosophical debt to the phenomenological tradition inaugurated by Edmund Husserl and taken in new directions by Martin Heidegger and Jan Patocka (Rorty, 1991; Matustik, 1993; Elshtain, 1999; Findlay, 1999; Tucker, 2000). Havel's...