When president Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University last autumn, he devoted his acceptance speech to the subject of the intellectual and politics, explaining that Oxford is the home and workplace of an intellectual “with whom I have been debating the subject for years.” He was referring to Timothy Garton Ash. Here we print lightly edited passages from the speech, and a response to continue the debate.
Vaclav Havel: “It is my conviction that the world requires truly enlightened politicians who are broad-minded enough to consider those things which lie beyond the scope of their immediate influence… We need politicians who can rise above the horizon of their own power interests or of the interests of their parties or states and act in accordance with the interests of humanity.
“I hear the usual objection to this: a politician must be elected, and people vote for the person who thinks the way they do. So, a politician must, whether he likes it or not, be mainly an embodiment of the prevailing sentiment or of particular short-term interests. He cannot be a herald of unpopular truths or of something which may be in the interests of the future of humanity but which most of his electorate regard as a threat to their current pursuits.
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