Address by Vaclav Havel, President of the Czech Republic, in acceptance of an Honorary Degree from Oxford University

My Lord Chancellor,
Ladies and gentlemen,

The fact that I have the honour to speak in such a famous centre of European education as Oxford, and at such a renowned university, virtually impels me to dwell here upon the theme of "the intellectual and politics" - a subject that I have often had occasion to think about and to discuss.

So, to start with: who, in fact, is an intellectual?

Let me suggest one possible definition. An intellectual is a person who - thanks to the range of his interests and his education - perceives things in a broader context than is usual. It is someone who attempts to get below the surface, to grasp the deeper meanings, relations, causes and effects, to recognize individual items as part of larger entities. And more than that: in my tentative definition, an intellectual, conscious of the broader and deeper connections, also derives from this awareness a broader or deeper sense of responsibility for the world.

Does an intellectual who meets this definition belong in politics?

I would not go so far as to say that he belongs there. Putting it that way would create the impression that I consider it the duty of every intellectual to engage in politics. Claiming or demanding something like that would, of course, be a nonsense. Politics also involves a number of other special requirements, relevant to this vocation only. Some people meet these requirements and others don't, regardless of whether or not, or to what extent, they are intellectuals. Furthermore, nobody can be forced to enter into politics. Those who engage in it are, and will always be, people who want to do so, and this is as it should be.

I would say something else. An intellectual of the kind I have just defined should, as a matter of principle, be welcome in politics. Politics should not disdain him and he should not disdain politics. Never before has politics had a greater need for people who recognize, understand and, in one way or another, experience the universal interconnections. For the first time in the history of the human race, all people of this planet live in one global, interconnected civilization that is threatened by many serious, equally interconnected dangers. When if not in such a situation does politics call for people who are aware of their responsibility for the world as a whole? Nowadays, almost every political decision, even those that appear to be of a limited, partial or short-term nature, and to affect only a few people, can indirectly influence the fate of all humanity!

It is my profound conviction that the world requires today more than ever truly enlightened and thoughtful politicians who are bold and broad-minded enough to consider also those things which lie beyond the scope of their immediate influence in both space and time. We need politicians who would be truly willing and able to rise above the horizon of their own power interests or of the particular interests of their parties or states and to act in accordance with the fundamental interests of today's humanity - that is, to behave the way everyone should behave, even though most of the others may fail to do so.

I am convinced that our globally connected and globally threatened world badly needs this type of politician - all the more so since the same world, through the various consequences of the development of its civilization, is almost systematically destroying them. Probably never before has a place in politics been so dependent on the given moment, on the fleeting moods of the population or the media. Never before have politicians been so impelled into the pursuit of short-lived, and therefore often short-sighted concerns and interests! It often seems to me that the life of many politicians has to proceed from the evening news on television that presents their political existence to the public to the morning opinion poll that, in turn, affects their image on television the next evening. I am not sure whether the present era of mass media encourages the emergence and the growth of politicians of the stature, for instance, of a Winston Churchill; I rather doubt it, though there can always be exceptions.

To sum up: the less the present time favours politicians who practise long-term and truly global thinking, and the more such politicians are needed now, the more should intellectuals - at least those meeting my definition - be welcomed in politics, and supported there. Such support could come, among others, from those who - for whatever reason - never enter politics themselves, but who agree with the former, or at least share the ethos underlying their actions.

I hear an objection to this: a politician must be elected, and people vote for the person who thinks the way they do. Consequently, if someone wants to make progress in politics, he must pay attention to the general condition of the human mind; he must respect the so-called ordinary voter's point of view, share that perspective and develop it. So, a politician must, whether he likes it or not, be mainly a mirror, or an embodiment, of the prevailing sentiment or of particular short-term interests. He cannot be a herald of unpopular truths or a propagator of something which, while it may be in the interests of the future of humanity, most of his electorate do not see as in their interest at the present moment, or that they may even regard as a threat to their current pursuits.

I do not think it would be right to accept this as an unquestioned dogma. I even believe that doing so would, in a way, amount to renouncing the original definition - the good definition of politics. I am deeply convinced that the purpose of politics does not consist simply in fulfilling the short-term wishes of the people. A politician should also seek to win people over to his own ideas, even when they are unpopular. He should explain those ideas and defend them before the public. Indeed, I think that politics entails, among other things, convincing the voters that there are things which the politician recognizes or comprehends better than they do, and that it is for this reason that they should vote for him. People can thus delegate to a politician certain issues which they - for a variety of reasons - do not sense themselves, or do not want to worry about, but which someone has to take upon himself on their behalf.

Of course, all seducers of the masses, potential tyrants or blind political fanatics have used precisely this argument to make their case; the communists did the same when they declared themselves the most enlightened sector of the population and, by virtue of this alleged enlightenment, arrogated to themselves the right to rule arbitrarily over everyone else.

I would therefore venture to offer for your consideration the following thesis: The true art of politics is the art to win people's support for a good cause even when the pursuit of that cause may interfere with their particular interests at the moment. This, however, should happen without impeding any of the many ways in which we can continually check that the objective is truly in a good cause, and ensure that trusting people are not led to serve a nonsense, and suffer disaster as a consequence, in an illusory search for future universal prosperity.

It must be said that there are intellectuals who possess a very special ability for committing precisely this kind of evil. They tend to elevate their own intellect arrogantly above everyone else's, and themselves above all human beings. They tell their fellow citizens that if they do not want to understand the brilliance of the intellectual project offered to them, it is solely because they are of dull mind, and have not yet risen to the heights inhabited by the proponent of the project. After all that we have gone through in the twentieth century, I think it is not very difficult to recognize how dangerous is this intellectual, or rather quasi-intellectual attitude in the historical context. Let us remember how many intellectuals helped to create the various modern dictatorships! Indeed, almost none managed without their assistance or direct leadership.

Let me put it another way. A good politician of the future should be able to explain without seeking to seduce; he should humbly look for the truth of this world without claiming to be its professional owner; he should alert people to the good qualities in themselves, including a sense of the values and interests which transcend the personal, without giving himself an air of superiority and imposing anything on his fellow humans; he should not yield to the dictate of public moods or of the mass media, while never hindering a constant scrutiny of his actions.

In the realm of such future politics, intellectuals should, to my mind, make their presence felt in one of two possible ways: They could - without finding it shameful or demeaning - accept a political office and use that position to do what they deem right, not just to hold on to power. Or they could be the ones who constantly hold up a mirror to those in authority, to make sure that the latter truly serve a good thing and that they do not begin to use fine words as a cloak for evil deeds, as happened to so many intellectuals in politics in the past centuries.

Dear friends,

Oxford is the home and the workplace of a brilliant intellectual with whom I have been debating the subject of "the intellectual and politics" for years. I am sure you will understand that this, among other things, has led me to raise this question once again today.

I thank you for the great honour you have accorded me today, as well as for the attention you have given to these remarks despite the fact that my pronunciation is a far cry from Oxford standards.