Vaclav Havel and the rhetoric of folly

Abstract

In the post‐cold war clamor, Czech President Vaclav Havel's “rhetoric of folly” encouraged an unusual reversal of thinking. Havel's discourse, characterized by irony, humility, and empathy, was foremost concerned with the folly of the human endeavor, with people restrained and frequently made ridiculous by their limitations or attempts to overcome them. Yet, Havel's rhetoric urged that folly is a kind of lived wisdom, a motivation for overcoming despair and moving toward hopeful human action during a difficult transitional period in European history.