Hedonè et paideia . Le théâtre de Brecht ou le plaisir sauvegardé

The opposition between these two fundamental categories of theatre aesthetics is based on Aristotle, who gives primacy to Hedone, and on Friedrich Schiller, who proposes an idealistic synthesis of the two. During his Scandinavian exile, Brecht addressed this dilemma in his essay Vergnügungstheater oder Lehrtheater? (1935/1936) and later in his very Aristotelian Prologue to Kleines Organon für das Theater (1949). His view of social reality as influenced by the process of consciousness affecting the role of the audience lends a new basis to this relationship, which changes with the historical situation. “Shifts of emphasis” (Akzentverschiebungen) on the one hand, and a ridge line on the other: These are the attempts to do justice to what the Diary (28 December 1952) defines as the means of education and the end of art.