Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal Volume 22, Number 2, 2001 The Essence of Dissidence Aviezer Tucker with Marian Kiss, Sarka Mokra, Ondrej Stefek, Martina Vyrkova, and Vera Zatopkova Introduction This article offers a philosophic understanding of dissidence. We present a conceptual analysis of dissidence as connected to a net of other philosophic concepts such as 'virtue' and 'truth'. 'Dissidence', like 'right' and 'liberty', is used both in precise philosophic discourse and with greater variations of meaning in ordinary language. Our discus- sion springs from a philosophic discourse of dissidence that flourished in Czechoslovakia in the seventies and eighties, during the 'normaliza- tion' period between the Soviet invasion of 1968 and the Velvet Revolution of 1989. During that period, a small section of Czechoslovak society found itself in a situation that was commonly referred to by the word 'dissidence'. Since some dissidents were philosophers by inclina- tion, education, or approach (though of course not professionally), they understood their situation by drawing on their philosophic background. The towering figure of dissident philosophy was Jan Patocka (1907- 1977), one of the first spokespersons of Charter 77 on human rights and a student of HusserI. Of his students, Vaclav Havel (b. 1936) and Petr Rezek (b. 1948) made significant contributions to the philosophical discourse of the meaning of dissidence. Though emerging out of a par- ticular historical context, post-Stalinist Communism, the discourse This article presents the conclusions of Aviezer Tucker's 1997 seminar on polit- ical philosophy given at Palacky University in Olomouc, The Czech Republic. The division of labor was as follows: Marian wrote on Rezek; Sarka and Martina wrote on Weber and Jaspers; Vera and Ondrej wrote on Patocka and Socrates; and Aviezer presented the thesis of the article and put it together. Aviezer Tucker thanks the department of philosophy of the University of Durham, and Berry Gower and David Cooper in particular for their hospitality while he was collecting bibliographic materials for this paper. He also thanks the Curriculum Resource Center of the Central European University in Budapest for underwriting a short research stay there. 59