ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the hypothesis that subversion by revolutionary power can offer opportunities for conversion as an existential attitude. Engaging with central aspects of the thought of Czech dissident Václav Havel and the idea of self-defence (samoobrona) of Polish dissidence, the main proposition is that obligations of the soul in pursuit of life in truth can be political ends in the making. Drawing further connections between Mohandas Gandhi’s ideas about truth-force and Heinrich Popitz’s idea of internal power as need for yardsticks of certainty I show how liminal conditions can become existential challenges that give meaning to the withdrawal from social life structured by the correct line of communist doctrine, the schismatic split of people’s minds, and the systematic de-humanisation of social relations. Dissidence recognised that evil must be measured by some good, which could satisfy people’s need for yardsticks of certainty and the restoration of a sense of reality. The crucial point is that whilst conversion was not a political strategy driven by an ideology or a project of social engineering, its anti-political spirit became a powerful threat to communism.
