Václav Havel’s Reflection on Freedom and Human Identity in Contemporary Context

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F60076658%3A12210%2F19%3A43900435" target="_blank" >RIV/60076658:12210/19:43900435 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://www.flipsnack.com/unimoron/revista-de-investigaciones-cient-ficas-de-la-um-f7kaz83ko.html" target="_blank" >https://www.flipsnack.com/unimoron/revista-de-investigaciones-cient-ficas-de-la-um-f7kaz83ko.html</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

—

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Václav Havel’s Reflection on Freedom and Human Identity in Contemporary Context

Original language description

Václav Havel (1936-2011) is a key figure of intellectual and political life in Czechoslovakia (later Czech Republic) from the 1960s until his death. Already in his early plays (The Garden Party, 1963; The Memorandum, 1965 and The Increased Difficulty of Concentration, 1968), he focused on the “human condition” of a totalitarian regime: his characters are caught in a net of bureaucratic, dehumanizing relations defined by hackneyed phrases and alienated “in-human” language. The seeming “complexity” of the “system” marks the fundamental impossibility of free human expression and leads to an ever-growing dissolution of human identity. Havel’s further work, esp. his one-act plays of the 1970s, intensifies this focus. In his Vaněk plays - Audience (1975), Unveiling (1975) and Protest (1978), the fundamental situation is a conflict between a sense of inner identity and inner freedom on the part of the main protagonist and the incomprehension of those who accepted the status quo and gave up their freedom and identity for the “permitted joysˮ of an essentially consumerist late Communist Czechoslovak society. Once elected President, in a tumultuous period of post-Communist transformation, Havel repeatedly thematised the link between freedom and human identity: the temptations of a hedonistic and narcissistic society as well as the prefabricated language of post-Communist populism reduce the meaning of authentic human freedom. For Havel, freedom is not only freedom from something (oppression, poverty, or the mendacity of the Communist “system”) but above all freedom for a unique human identity, for unique contribution(s) of different cultures; freedom for creativity, innovation and peace. The paper focuses on the fundamental link between freedom and human identity in Havel’s thought and its relevance in the 21st century.

Czech name

—

Czech description

—

Type

J_ost - Miscellaneous article in a specialist periodical

CEP classification

—

OECD FORD branch

60205 - Literary theory

Project

—

Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2019

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Revista de Investigaciones Científicas de la Universidad de Morón

ISSN

2591-5444

e-ISSN

—

Volume of the periodical

3

Issue of the periodical within the volume

5

Country of publishing house

AR - ARGENTINA

Number of pages

10

Pages from-to

"103–112"

UT code for WoS article

—

EID of the result in the Scopus database

—