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The great critical theorist Walter Benjamin once said, “Bert Brecht is a difficult phenomenon” (Benjamin, 1973, 27). This is not an overstatement. Bertolt Brecht was many things—playwright, poet, lyricist, director, philosopher, etc. Brecht was each of these things. However, for Brecht these roles were not disparate. While doing them, he was directing the world toward a new social order. Brecht took up all these vocations because they allowed him to perform the tasks he felt were needed for the advent of universal human emancipation. Brecht’s whole professional life and much of his private life as well was devoted to ending social antagonism and the emancipation of humanity from material suffering. What made him a ‘difficult phenomenon’ was that nearly his whole life and everything he did constituted either a praxis element or theory element of his complex social philosophy. But, what makes him difficult is also what makes him interesting. The difficulties offer possibilities into new inquires.

One difficulty of Brecht’s work is locating an ethics in it. His epic theatre was not interested in moralizing. True, Brecht himself referred many times to the instructive nature of epic theatre; but, Brecht never intended epic theatre to instruct its audience in moral behavior. He intended it to instruct them in a particular weltanschauung or worldview. As Brecht himself says, “[m]any people…attacked the epic theatre, claiming it was too moralistic. Yet moral utterances were secondary in epic theatre. Its intention was less to moralize than to study” (Martin and Bial, 2000, 29). This is not to suggest that there was no ethical imperative to the epic theatre, though. Instead of presenting moralistic arguments, Brecht designed epic theatre to alter the weltanschauung of the audience. That was its imperative. That is, Brecht’s ethical imperative was to alter the worldview of the audience not their moral center. This was critical for Brecht because by altering the audiences’ weltanschauung he was trying to create the necessary conditions for human emancipation. Epic theatre, then, was ethical not in its text but in its agenda (i.e. creating the necessary conditions for human emancipation.) In this way, we can say that Brecht’s ethic was an ethic of praxis in the Marxian sense. In other words, the ethic can be found in Brecht’s philosophy of praxis.

This article seeks to draw Brecht’s aesthetic theory into the larger discourse of Marxian praxis philosophy and social/political philosophy more broadly. In it, I will that Brecht’s thought constitutes a Marxian philosophy of praxis and outline the specifics of his praxis-theory in order to demonstrate that the entire project of epic theatre was deeply rooted in Brecht’s ethical concern for human emancipation.

Marxian Praxis-theories (or philosophies of praxis) are philosophies where Marxian theory is practically applied to one's actions. They are philosophies where Marxian theory directs one’s actions. That is, Marxian philosophies of praxis are philosophies where progressive (i.e. materially emancipatory) action (understood in Marxist terms) forms a central tenet of the theory. Specifically, Marxian philosophies of praxis posit some form of action as being necessary for the fulfillment of the theory. In other words, Marxian praxis theories stress the necessity for some action to occur in order to ensure that the predictions of the theory come to fruition. In Marxian praxis-theories, theory is only predictably valid when action is applied to it.

As Haug (2001) points out, the concept of Marxian praxis-theory can be traced back to Marx himself. In its simplest form it is found in the often quoted “Theses on Feuerbach” where Marx states that “philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways, the point, however, is to change it” (Marx and Engels, 1972, 109). Although this work was not published during Marx’s lifetime it nevertheless became an influential aspect of Marx’s thought for twentieth century Marxists. This influence was evident in Italian Marxism. Antonio Labriola, for example, was the first to use the term “philosophy of praxis” calling it the “nucleus of Historical Materialism” (Haug, 2001, 69). It was most clearly worked out, though, by Antonio Gramsci who advocated counter-hegemonic action intended to destroy the so called ‘common sense’ understanding of subaltern social groups. This ‘common sense’ understanding is quite similar to Brecht’s notion of the working class weltanschauung. Both are meant to imply an uncritical acceptance of mechanisms of truth production which are dominated by the bourgeoisie. That is, both thinkers see reality being constructed in bourgeois society with particular biases that reinforce the domination of the bourgeoisie.[1]

Although largely developed independently of the Italian versions, Marxian praxis-theory was also influential in Germany, most notably in the work that came out of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, to which Brecht’s friend and intellectual companion Walter Benjamin was associated. While there are differences between the Italian and German formulations of Marxian praxis-theory as well as differences within the two schools, all formulations maintain some common elements. For example, they all adopt, in some form, Marx’s dialectical epistemology and theory of historical progression (i.e. historical materialism). In short, Marx’s theory of historical progression posits that history advances when the contradictions inherent within a particular mode of production are reconciled. These contradictions manifest, materially, in the form of antagonistic social forces between the producers of wealth (the exploited) and those who get to enjoy it (the exploiter). However, according to the conventional interpretation of Marx, the reconciliation of these antagonisms cannot happen until certain conditions are met. Particularly, this reconciliation cannot occur until the exploited class becomes conscious of their social position and the exploitation that it entails. For reasons explored later, only then can the exploited class act as a social force for change. The development of this so-called ‘class consciousness’ is the first and an essential condition that needs to be met before world historical progress can happen. So, for example, in bourgeois society, historical progress can only be achieved when the proletariat realizes it is an exploited social class. Only then can they act as a unified progressive force. Helping the proletariat achieve their class consciousness and thus become a progressive social force is the first task of the Marxian praxis-theorist. This task also forms the basic driving principle behind Brecht’s epic theatre and his ethical imperative.

According to Brecht, the difficulties of social change “are not mastered by keeping silent about them”(Brecht, 1992, 29). They are mastered by exposing them. To Brecht, in order to expose these difficulties one must first be able to depict the empirical realities of the present day. Once these realities are understood, once one understands the social environment, one can begin to alter social relations or the relations of social forces. Brecht argues that as history progresses, new social relationships are created and it is the job of the artist to depict these new relationships. This understanding is what he had in mind when he says, for example, that “art follows reality” (Brecht, 1992, 29). Reality (i.e., conditions in the material life-world) springs from the social superstructure which is in turn determined by the mode of production. In essence, the mode of production creates the conditions of the material life-world. Changes in the mode of production create new material conditions. Art, then, depicts these new conditions and relationships.

However, according to Brecht the depiction of the new relationships that were created by the advent of the capitalistic mode of production is not possible in bourgeois forms of art. He offers two interrelated reasons for this. First, bourgeois art is unscientific. That is, it does not incorporate what Brecht believed to be the major advancement in the science of human relations, dialectical materialism. He says, for example, that representations in theatre, “cannot work out satisfactorily without knowledge of dialectics—and without making dialectics known” (Brecht, 1992, 279). Bourgeois theatre is conspicuously lacking this, according to Brecht. Furthermore, he argues that the reason science is lacking in bourgeois art is that “[t]he bourgeois class…knows very well that its rule would come to an end if the scientific eye were turned on its own understanding” (Brecht, 1992, 185). According to Brecht, “[t]he reason why the new way of thinking and feeling [i.e. dialectical materialism] has not yet penetrated the great mass of men is that the sciences, for all their success in exploiting and dominating nature, have been stopped by the class which they brought to power—the bourgeoisie—from operating in another field where darkness still reigns, namely that of the relations which people have to one another during the exploiting and dominating process” (Brecht, 1992, 184). In Brecht’s mind, the bourgeoisie have a vested interest in keeping this type of science out of the theatre. Dialectical materialism will demonstrate to the worker the realities of their social position. That is, it will show them that they are being exploited. It will show them that their labor is producing wealth that they are unable to enjoy—wealth that the bourgeoisie is enjoying instead.

While he is not clear about the actual mechanisms the bourgeoisie are using, Brecht argues that the bourgeoisie have suppressed dialectical materialism in art to protect their own interests. In Brecht’s understanding, then, they have also suppressed the social truth which can only be divined through that particular weltanschauung. As I argue elsewhere[2], Brecht’s understanding of dialectical materialism is that of a specific epistemology that is both essentialist and rationalistic. By essentialist I mean that it seeks a unified, objective truth. That is, it seeks to divine the essential, necessary and undeniable characteristics of the object being investigated. As a rationalistic epistemology, truth is to be found by understanding the essence of philosophical or scientific inquiry. In Resnick’s and Wolff’s words, a rationalistic epistemology tries to express “the conceptual essence of reality” (Resnick and Wolff, 1987, 9). In other words, rationalists believe that they have the correct, essential way of viewing the world. This then allows them to see the world in its essential nature i.e. as unified, objective truth. If one is unable to see the world through the material dialectical weltanschauung, they are unable to see true reality according to Brecht. He states for example that “[t]he intensified class struggle, the legality of competition, unrestrained exploitation, the accumulation of misery via the accumulation of capital—it all means that dialectics more and more becomes the only possible aid to orientation” (Brecht, 1993, 47).

It is for these reasons Brecht argues for the abandonment of bourgeois forms of art. According to Brecht, they are unable to depict truth (because of its lack of proper science) and therefore depict untruths. These unrealistic depictions presented in bourgeois art have negative effects on the proletariat. For example, Brecht refers to bourgeois theatre as producing “hypnosis [and] sordid intoxication” (Brecht, 1992, 38). He also states that bourgeois or what he also defines as ‘dramatic theatre’ has turned people “into a cowed, credulous, hypnotized mass” (Brecht, 1992, 188). Though not articulated in these words, Brecht is saying that bourgeois theatre creates and reinforces an uncritical weltanschauung, a worldview which is not self-critical and unable to provide a meta-critique of itself. Since the weltanschauung cannot critique itself, empirical illusions have no way of being exposed as such. They are uncritically accepted as reality and thus the possibility of their change is eliminated. It is for this reason Brecht is so critical of bourgeois art. He believes it discourages the material conditions necessary for class conflict to be reconciled and thus retards the progress towards his social ideal of human emancipation.

Brecht discusses this uncritical worldview in his A Short Organum for the Theatre. Here, he argues that for the worker “it seems impossible to alter what has long not been altered. [They] are always coming on things that are too obvious for [them] to bother to understand them…A child, living in a world of old men, learns how things work there. He knows the run of things before he can walk. If anyone is bold enough to want something further, he only wants to have it as an exception” (Brecht, 1992, 192). This theme is also found in Brecht’s unfinished Messingkauf Dialogues: “Many of us…find the exploitation that takes place between men just as natural as that by which we master nature: men being treated like soil or like cattle. Countless people approach great wars like earthquakes, as if instead of human beings natural forces lay behind them against with the human race is powerless. Perhaps what seems most natural of all to us is the way we earn a living” (Brecht, 1965, 42).

What Brecht is saying is that people develop an uncritical and unconscious way of perceiving, interpreting and understanding their environment. They internalize the common, accepted manner of truth production and the truths produced through that manner without considering the possibility an alternate manner of truth production could exist. In other words, they uncritically accept the dominant weltanschauung and all their understandings of their environment (i.e. all the truths they perceive) are created within the limits of that weltanschauung. Bourgeois theatre, then reinforces this uncritical weltanschauung.

Since bourgeois theatre is presented in the bourgeois weltanschauung, it depicts life in a way which prevents the working class from seeing that the conditions they live under are mutable. For example, bourgeois theatre presents human nature as a limit to social progression. In the bourgeois weltanschauung, human nature is seen as something that prevents the possibility of change. It intones Hobbes’ essentialistic (i.e. permanent, unalterable) bellum omnium contra omnes view of human nature—a human nature which is believed to be relentlessly and perpetually competitive and hostile toward others. If one accepts the bourgeois weltanschauung’s view of human nature then they will also see social antagonism as being immutable and reconciliation of social antagonism as being impossible.

Moreover, bourgeois theatre also obstructs the proletariat’s ability to see the position of their class in historical terms. That is, they are unable to see that their class is a progressive force. In short, what Brecht sees as the bourgeoisie’s perverse portrayal of reality stands as an obstacle to proletarian class consciousness.

Since bourgeois art is coupled with so many impediments to proletariat class consciousness, innovations in art are necessary if art is to help advance the progressive cause of human emancipation. The existing forms could not be used, according to Brecht. He states, for example, “it is not at all our job to renovate ideological institutions on the basis of the existing social order by means of innovations. Instead our innovations must force them to surrender that basis. So: For innovations, against renovations” (Brecht, 1992, 53). As was highlighted earlier, Brecht clearly saw bourgeois art as being too entrenched in the reproduction of bourgeois hegemony. Therefore, if he was going to use art for the progressive social cause of proletarian and human emancipation, he needed to be innovative. The result was his epic theatre which, he asserted, makes the “progress towards conscious experience…possible” for the working class (Brecht, 1992, 276).

Brecht developed epic theatre to change the consciousness of the proletariat. That is, he developed it as an instrument to alter the weltanschauung of the people. By altering the weltanschauung, I mean changing the epistemic center or the particular epistemological orientation one uses to validate their claims of truth.

Dialectical materialism is a unique epistemology. That is, the dialectician has fundamentally unique way of understanding, interpreting and validating the conceptions of the world around them. For example, the material dialectical epistemology assumes everything as interrelated and interacting with everything else. To the dialectician, nothing exists in isolation. Everything exists within specific relations of everything else. That is, there is a definite and specific interconnection between all things and processes according to dialectical materialism.

Furthermore, dialecticians assume contradictions to be universally present or existent in all things. That is, contradictions exist in every process and object. The struggle between contradictory aspects of a thing determines the essence and development of that thing. Although contradictory aspects are in conflict, they are also interdependent. To illustrate, one could look at the example of a war which is comprised of the conflicting forces of offence and defense. Offence and defense are the two contradictory elements by which a war is comprised. They form its essence and define it. Moreover, it is impossible to have one without the other. There is a unity of opposites. Without offense, there can be no defense and while an offensive action may occur without a responding defensive action, it is simply an aggressive action not a war. These two contradicting forces in war—offense and defense—drive the development forward toward a conclusion or in dialectical terms a ‘reconciliation.’ Furthermore, they persist in the process of a war until the contradictory forces have been fully reconciled. That is, they persist until the old unity (offense and defense) yields to a new unity (e.g. domination, destruction, peace) meaning that new contradictions are formed and a new process emerges.

Just as war contains a specific contradiction so too does every other process or object. The particular contradiction of a process or a thing constitutes the essence which distinguishes one thing from another. In order to reveal the essence of a process or a thing, one must understand the particularities of the contradiction. That is, one needs to know the essence of both sides of the contradiction. This is the only way to understand the totality of what one is studying and thus the only way to understand reality.

Dialectical materialism is, of course, a different way of viewing the world than most people, at least in bourgeois society, view it. It is a different weltanschauung. For example, most in bourgeois society do not hold the assumption of a unity of opposites as does the dialectician. However, according to Brecht, it is the only weltanschauung by which one can divine reality or truth. Brecht’s quote above about dialectical materialism being the only possible aid to orientation illustrates this point. In short, according to Brecht, if one does not view the world with the material dialectical weltanschauung, they are living in illusion.

The question then becomes for Brecht “How does one move someone out of this sort of Platonic cave of illusion into the world of reality?” That is, how does one get someone else to think dialectically? Epic theatre was an experiment in this. It attempted to convert people to the material dialectical weltanschauung and guide them out of their world of illusion, their false consciousness.

In Brecht’s theory of epic theatre, this process entails two things. First, the viewer is given clear presentations of the contradictions of bourgeois society. Brecht’s use of dialectical contradictions is well documented in the literature. For example, Ernst Schumacher (2000) thoroughly outlines the dialectic contradictions found in Galileo. The second part in this process of conversion, for Brecht was to show the present reality in ways which make it seem unnatural and impermanent. This was crucial according to Brecht’s thought. His epic theatre needed to demonstrate that the present reality was not immutable. He wanted epic theatre to demonstrate to the audience that things can change, that conditions are not unalterable by nature. To Brecht, the present reality is historically determined. The social relations that exist in a particular period are determined by the particular mode of production found in that particular period. As history progresses through the changes in the mode of production, so too do social relations. Brecht states, “social existence is continually developing” (Brecht, 1965, 35) and discusses humans as “shifting raw material, unformed and undefined” (Brecht, 1965, 54). Thus, Brecht’s social ontology is one of constant flux. He did not believe social relations can be defined by any essential traits. They are dependent on the mode of production in society and thus impermanent and transforming. Brecht states, for example, “we must leave [different historical social structures] their distinguishing marks and keep their impermanence always before our eyes, so that our own period can be seen to be impermanent too” (Brecht, 1992, 190).

The reason that demonstrating the impermanence of present conditions is so critical, for Brecht, is that if the workers thought that their efforts to alter their conditions were Sisyphean, they would not bother trying to change them. For example, Brecht states, “[l]earning means something very different to people in different strata of society [i.e the proletariat]. There are people who cannot conceive of any improvement in conditions” (Martin and Bial, 2000, 27).

Brecht stresses the impermanence of social conditions. However, not only does he stress that social conditions can change, he also tries to demonstrate the human role in creating those conditions. He states, “[man] does not have to stay the way he is now, nor does he have to be seen only as he is now, but also as he might become” (Brecht, 1992, 193). But he further states that historical conditions “are created and maintained by men (and will in due course be altered by them)” (Brecht, 1992, 190) and “[t]he smallest social unit is not the single person but two people. In life too we develop one another” (Brecht, 1992, 197).

Once conditions are no longer seen as natural, permanent, unalterable realities and are seen instead as relative, mutable and temporary the audiences’ reaction to seeing them portrayed changes, according to Brecht. Instead of uncritically accepting their life conditions, they will say, in Brecht’s words, “[t]his person’s suffering shocks me, because there might be a way out for him” (Martin and Bial, 2000, 26). That is, the way people view suffering will change. No longer will they view suffering as a regrettable but fixed fact of life. They will see it as something which can and should be done away with.

The goal of epic theatre for Brecht was to make theatre where, “[n]othing permitted the audience any more to lose itself through simple empathy, uncritically…in the experiences of the characters…The presentation exposed the subject matter and the happenings to a process of de-familiarization. De-familiarization was required to make things understood. When things are ‘self-evident,’ understanding is simply dispensed with. The ‘natural’ had to be given an element of the conspicuous. Only in this way could the laws of cause and effect become plain” (Martin and Bial, 2000, 25). What Brecht means by the ‘laws of cause and effect’ is the laws of dialectics. De-familiarization then meant the de-familiarization of the bourgeois weltanschauung. This de-familiarization would make the bourgeois weltanschauung seem unnatural and allow for the material dialectical weltanschauung to seem natural, which to Brecht it was.

Brecht tries to achieve this ‘de-familiarization’ through his much discussed ‘alienation effects’ (verfremdungseffekte). According to Brecht, “[a] representation that alienates is one which allows us to recognize its subject, but at the same time makes it seem unfamiliar” (Brecht, 1992, 192). That is, alienation effects are designed to knock the spectator off balance cognitively and thus alter their perception of what they are seeing. They are attempts at creating a cognitive change where the granted is no longer taken for granted. Brecht’s alienation effects are meant to alienate the spectator from their present reality. With them Brecht tries to cause unease or questionability in the validity of that reality. Common examples of Brecht’s ‘alienation’ effects are the use of projections, various lighting effects and loudspeaker commentary. But epic performance needed to contribute as well. Brecht experimented by altering the relation of music to dance, to dialogue, to gestus, etc. and all the relations each held to each other. By doing so he tried to deconstruct the relationship between them. He takes apart the pieces (the music, gestus, dialogue, etc), manipulates them, alters them and puts them back in new, unexpected ways. Thus, the expected can no longer be expected. Brecht does this because “[g]enuine understanding and criticism are only possible if the part and the whole and the varying relations between the part and the whole can all be understood and criticized” (Brecht, 1965, 91).

Epic theatre also alienates the spectators by altering their perception of time. Brecht’s epic theatre breaks the continuity of time. Whereas, in Brecht’s words, “[t]he dramatic is characterized by a certain passion in the tone of the exposition and a working out of the collision of forces” that relies on continuity, epic theatre is different (Martin and Bial, 2000, 24). According to Brecht, “[t]he epic writer, Döblin, gave an excellent description when he said that the epic in contrast to the dramatic, could practically be cut up with a scissors into single pieces, each of which could stand alone” (Martin and Bial, 2000, 24). In Brecht’s epic theatre he deconstructs time. That is, he breaks it apart to analyze it part by part, period by period, contradiction by contradiction. He shows the viewer the forces at play in each fragment. What he attempts to show is that these forces are both material (i.e. they are found in the life-world as opposed to the mind) and that they work dialectically. This can only happen when time is broken into its component parts, according to Brecht. Just as a physicist studies the component parts of an atom (e.g. protons, neutrons, etc.) in order to provide a complete picture of the atom, Brecht wanted to study the component pieces of time in order to provide a complete picture of history. In epic theatre, Brecht breaks history down into its component parts to demonstrate that there is a logic to how it progresses. Epic theatre in this regard is supposed to be a scientific lesson in history. It is supposed to give the viewer an understanding of how social relations work throughout history. It is supposed to demonstrate how social relations are determined by the particular mode of production in society. If people understood this, according to Brecht’s thought, they would also see that a change in the mode of production will cause a change in social relations. Those desiring change were working with, not against the laws of nature, according to Brecht. That is, the proletarian revolution was the next step in world historical progression. Brecht and epic theatre were just trying to help that process along to end the current suffering. Brecht states that “all history is a mere construction” (Brecht, 1993, 132). Epic theatre deconstructs that ‘mere construction’. It demonstrates its relativity and thus opens the doors to creating a better construction, a better

According to Brecht, alienation effects also needed to have an experimental quality. He states, “[t]he new school of play-writing must systematically see to it that its form includes ‘experiment’” (Brecht, 1992, 46). If effects did not work, they needed to be changed or altered. In Brecht’s mind, praxis modifies theory and theory modifies praxis. Theory and praxis were intertwined. There was a total connection between theory and praxis because theory and praxis exist together as a dialectical unity. They are the dialectical elements of historical progress. They are the antagonistic elements that comprise historical progress. But, according to Brecht’s thought history is still progressing and this contradiction has not been reconciled. Theory does not square with the empirics of praxis and the empirics of praxis do not square with the expectations of the theory. What Brecht wanted to do, then, was alter the relation theory had to praxis. By altering this relation, Brecht hoped to come across the proper relation between the two which he felt was necessary for their reconciliation. For Brecht, theory needed to be constantly reconciling praxis and, simultaneously, praxis had to be continually reconciling theory. They would interact in a pas de deux of mutual reconciliation of each other. Eventually, he believed this would lead to a complete reconciling of the two to each other—a perfect action dictated by a perfect theory, a perfect theory altered to perfection by the empirical data collected in praxis. Praxis would constantly reaffirm theory and theory would constantly reaffirm praxis. There would be no discrepancies between the two. They would be perfectly reconciled and the process of historical progression could finally move to its teleological end—a classless society.

Epic theatre was especially catered to the proletariat. This was to make the altering of their weltanschauung possible. Brecht states, for example, “[o]ur representations of human social life are designed for river-dwellers, fruit farmers, builders of vehicles and upturners of society, whom we invite into our theatres and beg not to forget their cheerful occupations while we hand the world over to their minds and hearts for them to change as they think fit” (Brecht, 1992, 185). Clearly, Brecht saw this group as the historically progressive force and the key to actual progression. Brecht believed that worker involvement in a social movement was essential for progressive change because only they were able to generate enough force to counterbalance the bourgeoisie and shift the dialectical union toward reconciliation. The reconciliation, of course would mean the communistic period of history where the means for production would be owned collectively, eliminating the source of social antagonism.

While Brecht’s epic theatre was in many ways designed for the proletariat, its purpose of shifting the viewers’ epistemic center to the material dialectical weltanschauung was by no means limited to workers. Brecht also saw a role for the bourgeois intellectual in the human emancipation he worked for. In his essay, “Intellectuals and Class Struggle,” for example, he says that “the proletariat can use all kinds of intellectuals” and recognizes the role of the bourgeois intellectual as one of leadership (Brecht, 1973, 19-21). Brecht was of course a bourgeois intellectual. However, he, like Benjamin, Adorno, Lukács, and Korsch was an intellectual who was critical of the bourgeois order and, thus philosophically allied to the progressive force of the proletariat.

Brecht was interested in “the conversion of the maximum number of readers or spectators into experts” (Brecht, 1992, 43). What he hoped for was “a theatre full of experts, just as one has sporting arenas full of experts” (Brecht, 1992, 44). That is, he hoped to have experts on society and history and thus turn his audience into “statesmen, thinkers and engineers [of society]” (Brecht, 1965, 100). This, of course, meant individuals who viewed the world through what Brecht saw as the only possible way to get at true reality—the material dialectical weltanschauung. Once an individual had this particular weltanschauung, that is, once they had the ability to conceive truth they could become teachers to those without the means of accessing truth. In his discussion on radio as an apparatus of communication, for example, this idea comes out when he talks of “the prime objective of turning the audience not only into pupils but into teachers” (Brecht, 1992, 52). Seemingly, Brecht envisioned an exponential growth in the number of weltanschauung conversions based on the premise that the converted would themselves become converters.

As was illustrated above, Brecht’s theory of epic theatre constituted a specific philosophy of praxis which was intent on converting the epistemic center of the working class to the material dialectical weltanschauung. This, Brecht believed would set the progressive force of the proletariat loose which would in turn alter the dialectical relations between the bourgeois and proletariat and create the conditions necessary for the reconciliation of that antagonism. The reconciliation of the bourgeois-proletarian antagonism meant the collective ownership of the means of production and, thus, the end of social antagonism for Brecht. This was the normative goal for Brecht. It was his ethical concern and the goal he directed his actions toward achieving.

While largely devoid of moralistic utterances, epic theatre forms a well worked out ethics, based on the praxis element of Brecht’s praxis-theory. The praxis in Brecht’s theory was the energies he employed in trying to alter the weltanschauung of the working class and bourgeois intellectuals. Changing the weltanschauung of the proletariat in particular was a necessary precondition for social change to happen, according to Brecht. In other words, if social change was to happen, the proletariat needed to become aware of itself as a capable, coherent historically progressive force.

Undoubtedly, Brecht was troubled by the conditions found in bourgeois society. For example he states, “there [are] painful discrepancies in the world around us, conditions that [are] hard to bear…[h]unger, cold and hardship...” (Martin and Bial, 2000, 29). Brecht believed that these conditions were by no means a permanent reality. He believed that under the right conditions things could be changed. Epic theatre was an attempt to create the necessary conditions for such change to happen. As Brecht states, “the purpose of our investigation was not merely to arouse moral misgivings about certain conditions…The purpose of our investigation was to make visible the means by which those onerous conditions could be done away with” (Martin and Bial, 2000, 29). Brecht was not content to simply complain about the conditions of economic exploitation. His ethical imperative lay in trying to create the necessary groundwork for them to change. Theory was not enough for Brecht. He needed praxis. As Brecht put it, “ideas are extremely useful when they form the basis for action” (Brecht, 1973, 19).

In this way, then, we can say that Brecht’s ethic was found in his philosophy of praxis. That is, Brecht’s ethic was to change the worldview of the proletariat and help set the conditions necessary for the end of social antagonisms and universal human emancipation. In Brecht’s words, this “road leads over capitalism’s dead body, but…the road is a good one” (Brecht, 1992, 50).

According to Brecht, with the advent of epic theatre, “[t]he theatre entered the province of the philosophers—at any rate, the sort of philosophers who wanted not only to explain the world but also to change it” (Martin and Bial, 2000, 26). Epic theatre was Brecht’s attempt to change the world. Epic theatre is also one of the most thorough articulations of Marxian theory-praxis and highlights Brecht’s deep-seated ethical concerns.

This paper has shown how epic theatre is a particular form of Marxian praxis theory and forms the basis of Brecht’s ethics. I have made the argument that Brecht was normatively discontent with bourgeois society and had an imperative to create the conditions for the development of what he saw as a better world. For Brecht this necessarily entailed altering the weltanschauung or epistemic center of the working class. Ethically, this was what needed to be done, according to Brecht.

As Wolfgang Haug points out, “behind Brecht's world fame as a playwright and poet it is still a widely kept secret that he was one of the most outstanding Marxist philosophers”(Haug, 1999, 113) The theoretical underpinnings and normative basis of Brecht’s epic theatre are largely political and represent a well worked out and comprehensive philosophical worldview and agenda. As the great critical theorist Walter Benjamin said “[o]ne may regard epic theatre as more dramatic than the dialogue [e.g. Plato]…but epic theatre need not, for that reason, be any the less philosophical” (Benjamin, 1973, 6). More can certainly be gathered from examining Brecht within the larger context of Marxism and social/political philosophy.

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Bentley, E. (1955). The playwright as thinker: A study of drama in modern times, Wagner, Ibsen, Strindberg, Shaw, Pirandello, Satre, Brecht. New York: Meridian Books.

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[1] Wolfgang Fritz Haug illustrates this point as well as other similarities between Brecht’s Marxian praxis-theory and that of Gramsci. See Haug (1999) and (2001) Wolfgang Fritz Haug. (1996) Philosophieren mit Brecht und Gramsci Hamburg: Argument Verlag.

[2] See “On Contradiction: A Philosophical Analysis of Mao Tse Tung’s Influence on Bertolt Brecht,” a paper presented to the 13th Symposium of the International Brecht Society 2010.