Leadership and the ethics of hope

Václav Havel and the Charter 77 human rights movement in Czechoslovakia

Bibliographic Data

ID12883259
AuthorsJ Michael Hayden (0009-0007-0946-7917, Anglo-American University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume20
Issue5
Pages314-333
Publication date2024-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLeadership (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1742-7150 • E-ISSN: 1742-7169
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/17427150241256160
OpenAlexW4403462195
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited29

Hope as a feature in both authentic and spiritual leadership theory has become a diminished moral concept, departing from its philosophical and theological roots, and distorted by excessive positivity, success, instrumentalization, cultural bias, and ideology. Following Ciulla’s (2014) assertion that biography can do much to inform leadership theory, this paper contributes a richer understanding of hope through the though case of Václav Havel and the Charter 77 human rights movement in Czechoslovakia using French existentialist Gabriel Marcel’s ethics of hope. Five elements of Marcel’s philosophy demonstrate hope’s transforming vulnerability amidst technological control, relationship with despair, active presence, creative fidelity, and transcending power in love. Examining Czechoslovakia’s human rights movement through the lens of Marcellian ethics provides insight into the role of absurdity and truth-telling as a precursor to hope, taking responsibility for failure, overcoming fear through the “solidarity of the shaken,” creative fidelity through living in truth and using humor, and love manifesting as sacrifice and openness to seeing one’s contribution to the moral contamination of society under totalitarianism

Aesthetics · Charter · Engineering ethics · Environmental ethics · Human rights · Movement (music · Political science · Sociology · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · Engineering · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law · Philosophy

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