Under Communist rule in Czechoslovakia, Benda and his wife were rare in that they were devout Roman Catholics among the leadership of the anti-communist dissident organization Charter 77.

The ideas expressed in Benda's iconic essay A Parallel Polis influenced the thought of other dissidents like Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa.

The son of a lawyer, Benda was president of the Students' Academic Council and obtained a doctorate of Philosophy at Charles University in Prague at age 24.

[2] As a result of his political activities he experienced harassment from the government and economic exclusion, being forced to work for brief periods in a large number of different jobs.

He was a defender, with qualifications, of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, a position widely shared in Czech liberal and conservative elite circles.

[6][7] In his 2017 book The Benedict Option, author Rod Dreher praised the ideas expressed in Benda's essays and recommended them to American Christians as an example of how to preserve and live their faith in a culture increasingly hostile to it.