Zaslepená společnost - Eseje z doby těsně před koncem – Bělohradský Václav (2025)

This Czech-language collection of essays by Václav Bělohradský explores what ethics, political culture and form of government are appropriate to the Anthropocene, the age of human responsibility for planet Earth. Democracy can be understood as a form of government that maximizes the likelihood that people will choose change rather than catastrophe. In every free society, those seeking to accelerate change to avert an impending catastrophe compete in the public sphere with those who call its advocates dangerous radicals frightening “ordinary people” and stubbornly defend the status quo, as illustrated by the dispute over climate change. The essays examine how public intellectuals draw attention to decisive questions and how majority and minority opinion groups are formed through the public use of reason. A central issue of the Anthropocene is the struggle over the Nomos of the Earth: whether humanity can establish planetary limits in a “constitution of all the inhabitants of Earth” that must not be crossed if the habitability of our home planet is not to be irreparably threatened. The transformation of the slow public sphere into a fast media sphere also raises the danger that disinformation and conspiracy theories will significantly influence electoral majorities. The collection considers the resulting democratic paradox and defends the tradition of free-minded, critical public reasoning against conformity and distrust of all systems being dismissed as pathological civic consciousness.