The tyranny of truth and the preservation of human happiness à la Bertolt Brecht and Paul Feyerabend

In this chapter, I explore the influence of German theatre maker Bertolt Brecht on philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend’s conception of human (scientific) inquiry. Looking at Brecht’s and Feyerabend’s shared Anti-Aristotelian viewpoint, I will show how Brecht’s theatre/theory of estrangement and Feyerabend’s epistemological anarchism both question the ideal of the role of myth (including drama and science) to reproduce specific metaphysical theories, in order to preserve the cultural unity of a closed society. Instead, Brecht and Feyerabend entertain a more practical ideal as to the role of artistic and scientific story-telling in a modern, pluralistic society. Rather than re-producing specific norms and values, it is to sustain the more practical ideal of nourishing individual human productivity in its manifoldness. In short: Theatre and science are to preserve human happiness (and life, more generally). They are to embrace, and bring forth, the pleasure that resides in people’s (individual) acts of knowledge production (in the arts and sciences) - as producers, speculators and critics