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Abstract
Brecht was one of the European writers who consistently viewed man's identity in its relation with death. His inspiration on this score consisted of basic philosophical writings on the problem, both from the Eastern and from the Western cultural domain. From the beginning an essential element of Brecht's conception of death is doubt of the personality as a temporal continuum, including the epistemological and ethical implications of such doubt. This anti-religious and anti-metaphysical starting-point offers possibilities of development in various directions: towards a Western atheist-materialist view of death and the individual as well as towards an a-metaphysical Eastern one. In his early works (1913-1922) the influence of Nietzsche is obvious. In Mann ist Mann (1926) Brecht "secularises" the Buddhist denial of the unity and indivisibility and imperishability of individual personality and the conception of rebirth. Some parts of the Badener Lehrstück vom Einverständnis (1929) show a striking resemblance to Lao-tzu. The eastern representations are still present in the background of Brecht's "rectifications" of Lucretius' and Epicurus' descriptions of the fear of the death (1939-1956). In this "Lucretius aggregate" Brecht tries to bring classical materialism up to date by making it shade off into historical and dialectical materialism.