Brecht's Philosophical Tales (I)

PalmThe writer Bertolt Brecht maintained a close relationship with philosophy, both with his questioning and reflective intellectual attitude, and through the selection of themes and content of his works, and his personal friendship with the philosopher Walter Benjamin, to whom he dedicated a poem upon receiving the news of Benjamin's suicide.

Brecht uses literature to express himself philosophically, specifically writing a series of short stories that invite the reader to make the effort to think for themselves, and not be carried away by the most anecdotal details, in such a way that they focus their attention on the hidden philosophical and ethical issues.

Among the stories written by Brecht, there are three dedicated to very representative philosophical figures, entitled The wound of Socrates, The Heretic's Coat and The experiment, and which feature Socrates, Giordano Bruno, and Francis Bacon as their protagonists.

Literary license

In the story The wound of Socrates, dedicated to the German playwright Georg Kaiser, Brecht questions the conventional account of the Athenian philosopher's courageous conduct at the Battle of Delion, a military confrontation that took place within the context of the Peloponnesian War, and which pitted Athens against Sparta and its respective allies in order to take from the latter those narrated about it.

Brecht presents Socrates as a philosopher, a writer of dialogues, the son of a matron, an expert in applying the maieutic method, the most intelligent of the Greeks, with his own thoughts and a justified reputation for not being afraid of death because he drank hemlock with serenity and tranquility, but curious. Perhaps this lie was useful to justify his status as a common soldier without resources. And he ends this short presentation by warning the reader that he will talk about Socrates' courage on the battlefield.

Very briefly, the story places Socrates at the front of the battle, as a hoplite, part of the light infantry troops, and explains that when he is about to enter into combat, and faced with the enemy's attack, frightened, he begins to run with the intention of deserting, but with "the bad luck" he sticks a sharp thorn in his foot. This deep wound forces him to stop, and sitting down, he has the idea, before the enemy approached, to begin to scream in pain, bellow and shout as if giving orders to attack an entire phalanx. According to the story, he did it so horribly that it confused the enemy, who retreated fearing an ambush. However, tradition says that during the Athenian retreat he was protected by Alcibiades, a young aristocrat who served as a horseman, and who, incidentally, was not the general of the troops as Brecht notes. It is also important to note that, contrary to what Brecht says, Athens lost the battle.

In the second part of the story, Socrates must face the scrutiny of his wife, Xantippe, about what really happened. She is characterized, following the canons of tradition, as full of cunning and distrust of her husband. She was convinced that his friends had protected him and assigned him a safe place in the rearguard. Earlier, seeing him limping, she had asked him if he was drunk. The persistent questioning places Socrates before the dilemma of telling the truth or lying. If he tells the truth, he will lose his credibility, his fame, his good reputation, and will be repudiated. If he lies, on the other hand, he will be treated as a hero in the eyes of his fellow citizens and will go down in history. For a time, Socrates chooses the middle ground of remaining silent about the incident to avoid being labeled a coward. He neither denies the official version circulating on the streets of Athens nor denies the courage and bravery attributed to him by the young disciples and friends who visited him, such as Antisthenes. Socrates' attitude invites us to reflect on whether remaining silent is the same as lying, and whether fear of the consequences should influence our decisions. Finally, Socrates dares to tell the truth in response to Alcibiades' insistence that he accompany him to the Areopagus to receive the city's recognition, which, in the eyes of the distinguished soldier and politician, was a show of courage.

Brecht demystifies the figure of Socrates, refutes his military merits, and more specifically, his heroism, an extra-philosophical conduct that at the time gave him fame, highlighted by his disciple Plato, and Xenophon, and transmitted by the philosophical tradition, and by which it still is. Thus, the Socrates imagined by Brecht is popona and cowardly, incapable of fighting against the enemy, and therefore plays the power he has as a narrator to remake history and construct a lie that leads to some truth.

Chance, coincidence and luck

Brecht invents this story with the primary purpose of showing the influence of chance, coincidence, and luck in human life and their ability to transform an act of cowardice, driven by fear and the instinct for survival, into something worthy of being remembered, praised, and glorified. Above all, it serves to illustrate the idea that there is no such thing as a human essence, that changing social and historical conditions explain human behavior.

In the second story, Bruno is presented as a great man, a martyr unjustly condemned to death by the Inquisition and burned for his religious and cosmological ideas. The introductory paragraph also reproduces this iconic phrase that the nolá says when he learns of the sentence: "You pronounce the sentence against me perhaps with more fear than when I hear it," reaffirming his courageous attitude.

Brecht recounts that Bruno was denounced to the Inquisition by a Venetian patrician named Mocenigo, who had previously hired him to teach him physics and the art of memory, in exchange for hosting him for a few months. The motive was his dissatisfaction with Bruno for having only given him physics lessons and not shared the mnemonic knowledge, which he believed would have allowed him to profit. Mocenigo denounced him in a letter and wrote that Bruno speaks ill of Christ and the Church, and defends the plurality of worlds, for which he requests that he be tried for blasphemy, infamy, and heresy.

The bulk of Bruno's story takes place during his year of confinement in a Venetian prison, before being transferred to Rome and continuing the long inquisitorial process. Its central theme is a supposed debt for a coat, contracted by the philosopher with a tailor named Gabriele Zunto. Naturally, this is an anecdote invented by the author, which gives rise to the story of the tailor's wife's unsuccessful attempts to collect the debt, during which she meets with officials of the Holy Office and with Bruno himself, from whom she immediately obtained a commitment to move heaven and earth to settle the debt. Brecht recounts that Bruno tried to obtain wages from the sale of his books, even suggesting selling his belongings and returning his coat, but that it was impossible because Mocenigo had kept everything for himself. According to Brecht, Bruno devoted all his energies to obtaining this money instead of focusing on his defense, even though his life was at stake, while the tailor's wife put herself in danger, since associating with someone imprisoned for heresy was frowned upon. Finally, the philosopher manages to recover the coat after filing a petition.