The Moral Imagination -  Michael Matheson Miller
The Moral Imagination
Ep. 23: Flagg Taylor Ph.D: Living in Truth: Vaclav Havel on Existential Dissent & the Re-discovery of Conscience
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Ep. 23: Flagg Taylor Ph.D: Living in Truth: Vaclav Havel on Existential Dissent & the Re-discovery of Conscience

In this episode I speak with Flagg Taylor about the Czech playwright, dissident, and political figure Vaclav Havel.  We discuss his idea of dissent as living in truth. For Havel, dissent is not primarily a political act, but  an existential one—it is a dissent from ideology, from the politicization of life, from false narratives, political fashion, and consumerism.

We discuss a number of his essays, including a letter to Dr. Husack, his very famous essay, Power of the Powerless,  Stories and Totalitarianism, and we talk about some of his plays including The Audience. We also discuss Havel’s life and some key events like Charter 77, and his shift from a writer to a political figure.

Though many of his plays and essays were written in the 1970s and 80s under Czechoslovakian communism, I think they are very  relevant to our time.  Havel stresses the importance of self-awareness and how to avoid thinking only in ideological categories that we see all over the left and right.  We discuss the idea of dissent and theatre and culture, and how dissent is sometimes as simple as sitting down with one’s family and reading together, playing music together, doing theatre, and so on.  The family of Vaclav Benda did just this—part of their dissent from communist rule was Mrs. Benda simply reading the Lord of the Rings to their 6 children each night. 

We also talk about the difference between state planned events and authentic liturgical worship and compare Havel’s insights with Joseph Pieper and his books In Tune With the World: A Theory of Festivity and Only the Lover Sings

Biography

Flagg Taylor is an associate professor of political science at Skidmore College and the editor, most recently, of The Long Night of the Watchman: Essays by Václav Benda, 19771989. You can follow him on Twitter

Resources

See Links to Books Below

Flagg Taylor on Havel’s play The Memorandum — John Miller’s Great Books Podcast

Vaclav Havel Library Foundation

Letter to Dr. Husak

Charter 77

Prague Spring

I highly recommend this short essay by C.S. Lewis: C.S. Lewis on the Inner Ring

Commerce and Culture 

MMM Essay on Capitalism and Culture Essay

Consumerism as economic manifestation of spiritual  problem 

Peter Berger on Capitalism 

MMM Essay on Consumerism 

Chris Arnade on non-credentialed forms of meaning.

Dignity Book

Chris Arnade on The Moral Imagination Podcast

Dissent— See Vaclav Benda book below and on Liturgy, Dissent, and the State see Havel and the Pieper Books below

Open Letters: Selected Writings, 1965-1990

By Havel, Vaclav

Buy on Amazon

The Garden Party: and Other Plays (Havel, Vaclav)

By Havel, Vaclav

Buy on Amazon

The Long Night of the Watchman: Essays by Vaclav Benda, 1977-1989

St. Augustines Press

Buy on Amazon

Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation

By Josef Pieper

Buy on Amazon

Discussion about this podcast

The Moral Imagination -  Michael Matheson Miller
The Moral Imagination
Welcome to the Moral Imagination Podcast.
The overarching theme of my podcast is what it means to be a human person and what makes for a meaningful and good life.
We will discuss philosophy of the human person, culture, religion, social philosophy, and many other related topics, like education, learning, economics, food, technology, artificial intelligence, and intellectual history. My goal is to interact with ideas and people whose work I find challenging, and intellectually and socially important.