Děkuji všem, kteří jste přišli na včerejší mimořádný vánoční (S)tisk doby poslechnout s promluvit s naším hostem Danielem Kaisrem a Janou Klímovou a Jindřichem Šídlem. Děkuji za vaše dobroty na náš předvánoční stůl! A k dnešnímu dni třetího výročí úmrtí Václava Havla se chci podělit i zamyšlení Pavla Linden-Retka: The assumption of an “absolute horizon,” naturally, “explains” nothing. It is, however, the only source of our hope, the only “reason” for faith as a (consciously reflected) state of mind, [which] encourages one to live, helps one resist the feeling that all is vanity and futility, the pressure of nothingness. (V Havel, Letters to Olga) I like to imagine Vaclav Havels own place--the place of his memory, his writing--on this absolute horizon, the way Havels words invite us to resist closing in on ourselves, in either despair or selfishness. One reason, I think, why Havels words continue to move us is because they are courageous words, brave words. When beginning to read Havels texts, I remember being drawn to them not only for their ideas and vision but also for their intimacy. Havel crafted delicately personal interpretations of his world; he wrote letters not treatises. And, as letters, they had recipients who could challenge or dismiss them, perhaps never read them at all. Like a play in the theatre, a letter is written in the shadow of its intended audience, in the anticipation of a connection or a relationship that one can never fully anticipate in advance, that is always fragile and uncertain. But in opening the space for such a relationship, one begins to create a world in common. And it is this common world that alone can sustain the kinds of shared meaning and truth and love that human beings need. It is this opening onto a tentative common world that takes courage, that places something at stake. And it is also what seems so absent today, and why I think we continue to miss Havels voice as much as we do. In our public discourse, perhaps in our private lives, as well, we are more likely to speak with detached indifference (as though everything had already been calculated for us, perhaps that nothing mattered much at all to begin with) or with hard self-confidence (as though we scarcely needed one another to be sure of ourselves) than with Havels form of personal courage; the courage to say, Do you think this, too? And if today we are tempted to be unmoved by things and by one another, indifferent to them or simply so confident in our own selves, then Havels absolute horizon and his own performance of it point to all that we cannot make sense of without one another. And it is this call of conscience, and the deep connection between conscience and a form of politics, that I most clearly hear in my own heart as I think of Vaclav Havel on the anniversary of his passing. To charge politics in this way and to accept this as the charge of politics; this is how I like to imagine Havels star on that horizon of Being--a horizon I nevertheless imagine less in terms of space than in terms of time: in what else but all those instances when we continue to call him to mind, to remember him, to invoke his words in new times and in new places and in new ways. I like to think that this star is as bright as it ever was, and continues to inspire us to ask one another, How are we to live? https://youtube/watch?v=wiFZbbd438g
Posted on: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 13:38:32 +0000
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