the second one version Contradictory interpretations were utilized to history-making occasions that ended in the top of the chilly struggle: Václav Havel, utilizing Kierkegaardian phrases, known as the dying of totalitarianism in East-Central Europe an “existential revolution” (i.e. an awakening of human accountability, spirit, and reason), whereas others hailed it as a victory for the “New global Order.” despite one's standpoint, notwithstanding, it truly is transparent that the worldwide panorama has been dramatically altered. the place as soon as the contest among capitalism and communism supplied a foundation for constructing political- and self-identity, this present day the damaging forces of nationalist identification and spiritual and secular fundamentalism are filling the void. supplying the main huge exam of Habermas’s and Kierkegaard's evaluations of nationalist id to be had, Postnational identification dramatically confronts the normal view of existential philosophy as delinquent and uncritical. This publication exhibits how Kierkegaardian thought and perform of considerably sincere verbal exchange permits us to reconsider the existential by way of Habermas’s communicative motion, and vice versa. because the writer explains, the principles of his paintings within the severe conception and existential philosophy, introduced jointly during this ebook, engender different types of suspicion of the current age. The severe theorist, akin to Jürgen Habermas, unmasks the kinds within which social and cultural existence develop into systema-tically distorted by means of the imperatives of political strength and monetary achieve. The existential critic, like Søren Kierkegaard and Václav Havel, is suspicious of a few of the ways that contributors misinform themselves or people. This research goals to combine Kierkegaard's and Havel’s existential critique of explanations informing human id formation with Habermas’s critique of the colonialization of fragmented, anomic sleek existence via structures of strength and funds… The author’s argument is that existential critique and social critique supplement one another and conquer their respective obstacles. one of many first works to regard heavily the existential considered Havel, the e-book will carry huge, immense attraction for college students and pros occupied with existential philosophy, severe idea, philosophy, and, extra regularly, political technological know-how, literary conception, communications, and cultural studies.