Class Year
2023
Document Type
Student Research Paper
Date of Creation
Fall 2020
Department 1
Philosophy
Abstract
This article examines Václav Havel’s The Power of the Powerless in the context of a broader ideation of dissent, primarily using Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism and William Connolly’s The Fragility of Things as supplements. Havel’s argument remains relevant over thirty years after its initial publication, and his ideas regarding dissent as a fundamental challenge to authoritarian untruth are valuable and deserve further exploration. From this conceptualization, a “politics of dissent” is proposed as a means to express dissatisfaction with authoritarian government and to reevaluate democratic social and political discourse.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Copyright Note
This is the author's version of the work. This publication appears in Gettysburg College's institutional repository by permission of the copyright owner for personal use, not for redistribution.
Recommended Citation
Hanson, Carter A., "The Politics of Dissent: How Living Within the Truth Threatens Autocracy and Catalyzes Democratic Progress" (2020). Student Publications. 892.
https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/student_scholarship/892
Comments
Written for PHIL 252: Social and Political Philosophy