Abstract

This essay investigates the evolving presidential rhetoric of former playwright, dissident, political prisoner, and State President, Václav Havel. The focus is on his first TV speech as newly elected President of Czechoslovakia on January 1, 1990, thus paying special attention to the use of rhetoric in a political period of transition. In doing so, the article refutes Martin Bermeiser’s misleading assumption about Havel’s allegedly “holistic rhetoric” (2017). In contrast to the ethical evaluation of “holism,” a genuinely rhetorical conceptualization is proposed by demonstrating Havel’s use of concessio as an anti-antagonistic figura sententiae. This leads to a general hypothesis of an implicit mode of “concessivity” prevailing in presidential rhetoric in transition periods that broadens the perspective for further quantitative “corpus-rhetorical” research.