Egils Levits reflected on the role of Greek philosophers and Shakespeare in painting various personality traits in their works and underlined that Macbethian-type characters, authoritarian leaders and tyrants, can still be found in modern politics. ‘We are influenced by realities of our life, our experiences, environment and culture in which we have grown up. These are elements that shape our personalities. However, as history shows us, the nature of human psyche has remained the same throughout centuries. Conditions that unleash our good or bad sides, however, have changed.’ President Levits recalled Hannah Arendt’s works and views on the banality of evil that remind us that it is difficult to predict what our response in different extreme circumstances will be. ‘Literature helps politicians realise how human nature works and how policies need to be designed to unleash the good and prevent evil in people,’ said the President.
Egils Levits and Stephen Greenblatt both mentioned the need to promote self-awareness, critical thinking and media literacy. ‘Given the tremendous speed at which technologies develop today and how technology can be abused to spread fake news, manipulate information, our world needs media literacy and Latvia is actively integrating it into its compulsory school education,’ emphasised Egils Levits. Stephen Greenblatt pointed out that Shakespeare used theatre as the medium of his time to promote media literacy and openly potrayed the characteristics of tyranny and power.
According to the President of Latvia, it is crucial for national democracies to create institutional safeguards to protect democratic values and prevent the devastation brought about by authoritarian leaders.
President Levits urged to contemplate whether two democratic nations can engage in military conflict: ‘People’s lives, peace and economic prosperity, and other similar values prevail in democracies, while authoritarian regimes often resort to war to perpetuate their interests.’ Therefore, according to Egils Levits, strengthening of democracy is very important: ‘Robust state institutions and constitution are the two democratic safeguards that form the government framework of democratic countries. After the fall of authoritarian regimes, many countries used German constitution as a benchmark because these safeguards were integrated into German constitution after all its historic experiences,’ said Egils Levits. The advantage of big democracies is that people are not faced with moral dilemmas that are characteristic to authoritarian regimes.
This discussion was also important in the context of Latvia’s possible participation in 2025 and 2026 Frankfurt Book Fairs as a partner country.
