Download or read book Vaclav Havel His Message and Its Meaning written by Vera Kovacovic and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book V clav Havel s Meanings written by David S. Danaher and published by Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press. This book was released on 2024-01-01 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No one in Czech politics or culture could match the international stature of Václav Havel at the time of his death in 2011. In the years since his passing, his legacy has only grown, as developments in the Czech Republic and elsewhere around the world continue to show the importance of his work and writing against a range of political and social ills, from autocratic brutality to messianic populism. This book looks squarely at the heart of Havel’s legacy: the rich corpus of texts he left behind. It analyzes the meanings of key concepts in Havel’s core vocabulary: truth, power, civil society, home, appeal, indifference, hotspot, theatre, prison, and responsibility. Where do these concepts appear in Havel’s oeuvre? What part do they play in his larger intellectual project? How might we understand Havel’s focus on these concepts as a centerpiece of his contribution to contemporary thought? How does Havel’s particular perspective on the meaning of these concepts speak to us in the here and now? The ten contributors use a variety of methodological tools to examine the meaning of these concepts, drawing on a diversity of disciplines: political science and political philosophy, historical and cultural analysis, discourse/textual analysis, and linguistic-corpus analysis.
Download or read book The Power of the Powerless written by Vaclav Havel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-09-16 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Books of great political insight and novelty always outlive their time of birth and this reissued work, initially published in 1985, is no exception. Written shortly after the formation of Charter 77, the essays in this collection are among the most original and compelling pieces of political writing to have emerged from central and Eastern Europe during the whole of the post-war period. Václav Havel’s essay provides the title for the book. It was read by all the contributors who in turn responded to the many questions which Havel raises about the potential power of the powerless. The essays explain the anti-democratic features and limits of Soviet-type totalitarian systems of power. They discuss such concepts as ideology, democracy, civil liberty, law and the state from a perspective which is radically different from that of people living in liberal western democracies. The authors also discuss the prospects for democratic change under totalitarian conditions. Steven Lukes’ introduction provides an invaluable political and historical context for these writings. The authors represent a very broad spectrum of democratic opinion, including liberal, conservative and socialist.
Download or read book V clav Havel written by James F. Pontuso and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2004 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than any other public figure, VOclav Havel has reflected on the opportunities and dilemmas facing humankind as a result of the collapse of Communism. In VOclav Havel: Civic Responsibility in the Postmodern Age, James F. Pontuso argues that Havel's life as a dissident and political leader, his political philosophy, and his plays must be understood as connected to one another. Pontuso skillfully explores these connections and explains Havel's prescriptions for political life.
Download or read book Reading V clav Havel written by David S. Danaher and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Reading Václav Havel, David S. Danaher approaches Havel's remarkable body of work holistically, focusing on the language, images, and ideas which appear and reappear in the many genres in which Havel wrote.
Download or read book To the Castle and Back written by Vaclav Havel and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2011-03-11 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An astonishingly candid memoir from the acclaimed, dissident playwright elected President after the dramatic Czechoslovakian Velvet Revolution — one of the most respected political figures of our time. As writer and statesman, Václav Havel played an essential part in the profound changes that occurred in Central Europe in the last decades of the twentieth century. In this most intimate memoir, he writes about his transition from outspoken dissident and political prisoner to a player on the international stage in 1989 as newly elected president of Czechoslovakia after the ousting of the Soviet Union, and, in l993, as president of the newly formed Czech Republic. Havel gives full rein to his impassioned stance against the devastation wrought by communism, but the scope of his concern in this engrossing memoir extends far beyond the circumstances he faced in his own country. The book is full of anecdotes of his interactions with world figures: offering a peace pipe to Mikhail Gorbachev, meditating with the Dali Lama, confessing to Pope John Paul II and partying with Bill and Hilary Clinton. Havel shares his thoughts on the future of the European Union and the role of national identity in today’s world. He explains why he has come to change his mind about the war in Iraq, and he discusses the political and personal reverberations he faces because of his initial support of the invasion. He writes with equal intelligence and candour about subjects as diverse as the arrogance of western power politics, the death of his first wife and his own battle with lung cancer. Woven through are internal memos he wrote during his presidency that take us behind the scenes of the Prague Castle – the government’s seat of power – showing the internal workings of the office and revealing Havel’s mission to act as his country’s conscience, and even, at times, its chief social convenor. Written with characteristic eloquence, wit and well-honed irony combined with an unfailing sense of wonder at the course his life has taken, To the Castle and Back is a revelation of one of the most important political figures of our time.
Download or read book The Dissident Politics in V clav Havel s Vanek Plays written by Carol Strong and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-09-05 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Dissident Politics in Václav Havel’s Vaněk Plays: Who Is Ferdinand Vaněk Anyway focuses on Ferdinand Vaněk, a semi-autobiographical character created by Václav Havel and featured in a series of nine plays written by Havel himself and three other dissident writers – Pavel Kohout, Pavel Landovský, and Jiří Dienstbier. By exploring the ‘Vaněk experience,’ Carol Strong details a multi-episodic, absurdist journey that provides an ‘insider’s view’ of the challenges facing those daring enough to question the status quo, a view that remains relevant today. Strong’s contention is that the lines found in these plays served as a ‘secret language’ of dissent in Cold War Czechoslovakia, which called the citizenry to contemplate the need for societal reform. As the plays were written at a time when the work of Havel and other dissidents were banned, the plays were never performed publicly, but through clandestine living room performances and the sharing of samizdat scripts the plays found an audience. Select phrases were indeed whispered throughout underground networks and helped forge a sense of oppositional solidarity among potential activists. Strong’s argument is that the ‘Vaněk experience’ metaphorically highlights how official power mechanisms are among the least insidious forms of societal power, as the state must follow predictable patterns of legal jurisprudence. By contrast, non-governmental forms of power – as exercised by one’s fellow citizens through informal social channels – can challenge oppositional actors more because of the personal tone they adopt. Using this approach, Strong presents a timelessly relevant critique of modern society with its consumerist / conformist tendencies.
Download or read book The Power of the Powerless written by Václav Havel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 1985 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Designed as an introduction to emergency management, this book includes pieces on: social, political, and fiscal aspects of risk management; land-use planning and building code enforcement regulations; insurance issues; emergency management systems; and managing natural and manmade disasters.
Download or read book Reading V clav Havel written by David S. Danaher and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2015-05-07 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a playwright, a dissident, and a politician, Václav Havel was one of the most important intellectual figures of the late twentieth century. Working in an extraordinary range of genres – poetry, plays, public letters, philosophical essays, and political speeches – he left behind a range of texts so diverse that scholars have had difficulty grappling with his oeuvre as a whole. In Reading Václav Havel, David S. Danaher approaches Havel’s remarkable body of work holistically, focusing on the language, images, and ideas which appear and reappear in the many genres in which Havel wrote. Carefully reading the original Czech texts alongside their English versions, he exposes what in Havel’s thought has been lost in translation. A passionate argument for Havel’s continuing relevance, Reading Václav Havel is the first book to capture the fundamental unity of his vast literary legacy.
Download or read book The Power of the Powerless written by Václav Havel and published by Random House. This book was released on 2018-09-27 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Václav Havel’s remarkable and rousing essay on the tyranny of apathy, with a new introduction by Timothy Snyder Cowed by life under Communist Party rule, a greengrocer hangs a placard in their shop window: Workers of the world, unite! Is it a sign of the grocer’s unerring ideology? Or a symbol of the lies we perform to protect ourselves? Written in 1978, Václav Havel’s meditation on political dissent – the rituals of its suppression, and the sparks that re-ignite it – would prove the guiding manifesto for uniting Solidarity movements across the Soviet Union. A portrait of activism in the face of falsehood and intimidation, The Power of the Powerless remains a rousing call against the allure of apathy. 'Havel’s diagnosis of political pathologies has a special resonance in the age of Trump' Pankaj Mishra
Download or read book V clav Havel Or Living in Truth written by Václav Havel and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Economics of Good and Evil written by Tomas Sedlacek and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tomas Sedlacek has shaken the study of economics as few ever have. Named one of the "Young Guns" and one of the "five hot minds in economics" by the Yale Economic Review, he serves on the National Economic Council in Prague, where his provocative writing has achieved bestseller status. How has he done it? By arguing a simple, almost heretical proposition: economics is ultimately about good and evil. In The Economics of Good and Evil, Sedlacek radically rethinks his field, challenging our assumptions about the world. Economics is touted as a science, a value-free mathematical inquiry, he writes, but it's actually a cultural phenomenon, a product of our civilization. It began within philosophy--Adam Smith himself not only wrote The Wealth of Nations, but also The Theory of Moral Sentiments--and economics, as Sedlacek shows, is woven out of history, myth, religion, and ethics. "Even the most sophisticated mathematical model," Sedlacek writes, "is, de facto, a story, a parable, our effort to (rationally) grasp the world around us." Economics not only describes the world, but establishes normative standards, identifying ideal conditions. Science, he claims, is a system of beliefs to which we are committed. To grasp the beliefs underlying economics, he breaks out of the field's confines with a tour de force exploration of economic thinking, broadly defined, over the millennia. He ranges from the epic of Gilgamesh and the Old Testament to the emergence of Christianity, from Descartes and Adam Smith to the consumerism in Fight Club. Throughout, he asks searching meta-economic questions: What is the meaning and the point of economics? Can we do ethically all that we can do technically? Does it pay to be good? Placing the wisdom of philosophers and poets over strict mathematical models of human behavior, Sedlacek's groundbreaking work promises to change the way we calculate economic value.
Download or read book Vaclav Havel written by John Keane and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2008-01-04 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This authorized biography of Havel, based on unrestricted access to him, his circle, and even his enemies, is not only the first definitive account of one of the modern world's great moral and political leaders but also a vivid panorama of the tumultuous events of his times. Havel's life, like that of his African counterpart Nelson Mandela, has been shaped and determined by the large political shifts of the twentieth century. Readers will taste the moments of joy, irony, farce, and misfortune through which he has lived, and realize that he has taught the world more about the powerful and the powerless, power-grabbing and power-sharing, than virtually anyone else on the world stage.
Download or read book Political Action in V clav Havel s Thought written by Delia Popescu and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political Action in Vaclav Havel's Thought: The Responsibility of Resistance, by Delia Popescu, examines resistance to oppression and individual responsibility in political action, all in the context of Vaclav Havel's political philosophy. The famous anti-communist dissident, acclaimed playwright, former President of the Czech Republic, and eminent political thinker argues that there is a certain tendency in modern humanity towards the creation, or at least toleration, of a political system that is invasive and controlling. Not unlike Tocqueville and Arendt, Havel claims that modern liberal democracy contains potential tendencies toward a new form of despotism that capitalizes on modern alienation and social atomization. Political Action in Vaclav Havel's Thought suggests that Havel's theory of individual opposition can be used to secure political freedom under the conditions of modernity. Popescu demonstrates that Havel's idea of attaining true political participation and freedom requires a strong connection between an individually constructed ethics and the realm of politics. On this basis she reveals that a thick notion of morality can be usefully integrated into an account of both private and public accountability. Vaclav Havel's essays, plays, speeches, and letters can therefore be integrated into a coherent political theory which contributes significantly to some of the central debates in modern political thought. Delia Popescu concludes that Havel's theory of individual opposition to totalitarianism may also serve as the foundation for a conception of responsible participation in modern liberal democracies.
Download or read book Vaclav Havel written by James F. Pontuso and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2004-08-19 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than any other public figure, VOclav Havel has reflected on the opportunities and dilemmas facing humankind as a result of the Communism's collapse. His life serves as an example of responsible and moral action, even at the cost of much personal suffering. In the first book to bring together Havel's life and work, James Pontuso examines the Czech president's political philosophy. Pontuso argues that Havel's life as a dissident and political leader, his political writings, and his plays are part of a whole and must be understood as intimately connected to one another. In this engaging work, Pontuso skillfully explores these connections and explains Havel's prescriptions for political life.
Download or read book Vaclav Havel and the Velvet Revolution written by Jeffrey Symynkywicz and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biography of Vaclav Havel, the dissident Czechoslovak playwright who spent years fighting for freedom of expression and eventually was elected president of a free and independent Czechoslovak republic.
Download or read book Keys of This Blood written by Malachi Martin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-06-30 with total page 740 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Only Malachi Martin, consummate Vatican insider and intelligence expert, could reveal the untold story behind the Vatican's role in today's winner-take-all race against time to establish, maintain, and control the first one-world government. * Will America lead the way to the new world order? * Is Pope John Paul II winning the battle for faith? * Is the breakup of the Soviet empire masking Gorbachev's worldwide agenda? The Keys of This Blood is a book of stunning geopolitical revelations. It presents a compelling array of daring blueprints for global power, and one of them is the portrait of the future.
