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The Good Soul Of Szechuan
''The Good Person of Szechwan'' (german: Der gute Mensch von Sezuan, first translated less literally as ''The Good Man of Setzuan'') is a play written by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, in collaboration with Margarete Steffin and Ruth Berlau. The play was begun in 1938 but not completed until 1941, while the author was in exile in the United States. It was first performed in 1943 at the Zürich Schauspielhaus in Switzerland, with a musical score and songs by Swiss composer Huldreich Georg Früh. Today, Paul Dessau's composition of the songs from 1947–48, also authorized by Brecht, is the better-known version. The play is an example of Brecht's "non-Aristotelian drama", a dramatic form intended to be staged with the methods of epic theatre. The play is a parable set in the Chinese "city of Sichuan". Themes Originally, Brecht planned to call the play ''The Product Love'' (''Die Ware Liebe''), meaning "love as a commodity". This title was a play on words, since the German ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Willett
John William Mills Willett, MBE (24 June 1917 – 20 August 2002) was a British translator and a scholar who is remembered for translating the work of Bertolt Brecht into English. Early life Willett was born in Hampstead and was educated at Winchester and Christ Church, Oxford. He went on to the Manchester College of Art and Dance, and then to Vienna, where he studied music (Willett played the cello) and stage design. Willett began his career as a theatre designer. However, this career was cut short by World War II. He served in Intelligence and the Eighth Army, in North Africa and Italy. Beginning his war in July 1940 as a second lieutenant in the British Army, he ended it just over five years later as a lieutenant colonel. In August 1942 he was transferred to the Intelligence Corps, in April 1944 he was mentioned in dispatches and in June 1945 he was made an Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). After being demobilised, Willett worked first for the ''Manche ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parable
A parable is a succinct, didactic story, in prose or verse, that illustrates one or more instructive lessons or principles. It differs from a fable in that fables employ animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature as characters, whereas parables have human characters. A parable is a type of metaphorical analogy. Some scholars of the canonical gospels and the New Testament apply the term "parable" only to the parables of Jesus, although that is not a common restriction of the term. Parables such as the parable of the Prodigal Son are important to Jesus's teaching method. Etymology The word ''parable'' comes from the Greek παραβολή (''parabolē''), literally "throwing" (''bolē'') "alongside" (''para-''), by extension meaning "comparison, illustration, analogy." It was the name given by Greek rhetoricians to an illustration in the form of a brief fictional narrative. History The Bible contains numerous parables in the Gospels of the New Testament ( Jesus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carrying Pole
A carrying pole, also called a shoulder pole or a milkmaid's yoke, is a yoke of wood or bamboo, used by people to carry a load. This piece of equipment is used in one of two basic ways: *A single person balances the yoke over one shoulder, with an evenly distributed load being suspended from each end. *Two people support the yoke by resting it on a shoulder, with the load suspended from the centre of the yoke. It is still widely used in East Asia, and was once also used in Europe and the Western World, in particular by milkmaids. It has been used in the United States, Australia, and Europe. It was also commonly used in Sri Lanka, where it was called ''Pingo''. There are early 19th century postcards from Ceylon with ''Pingo Carriers''. The basic design is a wood or bamboo yoke, usually tapered. From each end of the yoke, a load of equal mass is suspended. The load may be a basket of goods, pail of milk, water or other liquid, suspended on rope. The load may be hung directly fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charity (virtue)
In Christian theology, charity ( Latin: ''caritas'') is considered one of the seven virtues and is understood by Thomas Aquinas as "the friendship of man for God", which "unites us to God". He holds it as "the most excellent of the virtues". Further, Aquinas holds that "the habit of charity extends not only to the love of God, but also to the love of our neighbor". The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines "charity" as "the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for His own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God". Caritas: the altruistic love The phrase ''Deus caritas est'' from —or ''Θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν'' (Theos agapē estin) in the original Greek is translated in the King James Version as: "God is love", and in the Douay-Rheims bible as: "God is charity" (). Thomas Aquinas does not simply equate charity with " love", which he holds as a passion, not a virtue. The King James Version uses both the words ''charity'' and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deity
A deity or god is a supernatural being who is considered divine or sacred. The ''Oxford Dictionary of English'' defines deity as a god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greater than those of ordinary humans, but who interacts with humans, positively or negatively, in ways that carry humans to new levels of consciousness, beyond the grounded preoccupations of ordinary life". Religions can be categorized by how many deities they worship. Monotheistic religions accept only one deity (predominantly referred to as " God"), whereas polytheistic religions accept multiple deities. Henotheistic religions accept one supreme deity without denying other deities, considering them as aspects of the same divine principle. Nontheistic religions deny any supreme eternal creator deity, but may accept a pantheon of deities which live, die and may be reborn like any other being. Although most monotheistic religions traditio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Base And Superstructure
In Marxist theory, society consists of two parts: the base (or substructure) and superstructure. The base refers to the mode of production which includes the forces and relations of production (e.g. employer–employee work conditions, the technical division of labour, and property relations) into which people enter to produce the necessities and amenities of life. The superstructure refers to society's other relationships and ideas not directly relating to production including its culture, institutions, political power structures, roles, rituals, religion, media, and state. The relation of the two parts is not strictly unidirectional. The superstructure can affect the base. However the influence of the base is predominant. Model and qualification In developing Alexis de Tocqueville's observations, Marx identified civil society as the economic base and political society as the political superstructure. Marx postulated the essentials of the base–superstructure concept ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exploitation Of Labour
Exploitation of labour (also known as labor) is a concept defined as, in its broadest sense, one agent taking unfair advantage of another agent. It denotes an unjust social relationship based on an asymmetry of power or unequal exchange of value between workers and their employers. When speaking about exploitation, there is a direct affiliation with consumption in social theory and traditionally this would label exploitation as unfairly taking advantage of another person because of their inferior position, giving the exploiter the power.Dowding, Keith (2011). "Exploitation". ''Encyclopedia of Power''. SAGE Publications. pp. 232–235. . Karl Marx's theory of exploitation has been described in the '' Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' as the most influential theory of exploitation. In analyzing exploitation, economists are split on the explanation of the exploitation of labour given by Marx and Adam Smith. Smith did not see exploitation as an inherent systematic phenomenon in spe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private property, property rights recognition, voluntary exchange, and wage labor. In a market economy, decision-making and investments are determined by owners of wealth, property, or ability to maneuver capital or production ability in capital and financial markets—whereas prices and the distribution of goods and services are mainly determined by competition in goods and services markets. Economists, historians, political economists and sociologists have adopted different perspectives in their analyses of capitalism and have recognized various forms of it in practice. These include ''laissez-faire'' or free-market capitalism, anarcho-capitalism, state capitalism and welfare capitalism. Different forms of capitalism feature varying ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Altruism
Altruism is the principle and moral practice of concern for the welfare and/or happiness of other human beings or animals, resulting in a quality of life both material and spiritual. It is a traditional virtue in many cultures and a core aspect of various religious and secular worldviews. However, the object(s) of concern vary among cultures and religions. In an extreme case, altruism may become a synonym of selflessness, which is the opposite of selfishness. The word "altruism" was popularized (and possibly coined) by the French philosopher Auguste Comte in French, as ''altruisme'', for an antonym of egoism. He derived it from the Italian ''altrui'', which in turn was derived from Latin ''alteri'', meaning " other people" or "somebody else". Altruism in biological observations in field populations of the day organisms is an individual performing an action which is at a cost to themselves (e.g., pleasure and quality of life, time, probability of survival or reproductio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Historical Materialism
Historical materialism is the term used to describe Karl Marx's theory of history. Marx locates historical change in the rise of class societies and the way humans labor together to make their livelihoods. For Marx and his lifetime collaborator, Friedrich Engels, the ultimate cause and moving power of historical events are to be found in the economic development of society and the social and political upheavals wrought by changes to the mode of production. Historical materialism provides a challenge to the view that historical processes have come to a close and that capitalism is the end of history. Although Marx never brought together a formal or comprehensive description of historical materialism in one published work, his key ideas are woven into a variety of works from the 1840s onward. Since Marx's time, the theory has been modified and expanded. It now has many Marxist and non-Marxist variants. Enlightenment views of history Marx's view of history is shaped by his eng ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Goodness And Value Theory
In ethics and the social sciences, value theory involves various approaches that examine how, why, and to what degree humans value things and whether the object or subject of valuing is a person, idea, object, or anything else. Within philosophy, it is also known as ethics or axiology. Traditionally, philosophical investigations in value theory have sought to understand the concept of "the good". Today, some work in value theory has trended more towards empirical sciences, recording what people do value and attempting to understand why they value it in the context of psychology, sociology, and economics. In ecological economics, value theory is separated into two types: donor-type value and receiver-type value. Ecological economists tend to believe that 'real wealth' needs an accrual-determined value as a measure of what things were needed to make an item or generate a service ( H. T. Odum, ''Environmental Accounting: Emergy and environmental decision-making'', 1996). In othe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alter Ego
An alter ego (Latin for "other I", "doppelgänger") means an alternate self, which is believed to be distinct from a person's normal or true original personality. Finding one's alter ego will require finding one's other self, one with a different personality. The altered states of the ego may themselves be referred to as ''alterations''. A distinct meaning of ''alter ego'' is found in the literary analysis used when referring to fictional literature and other narrative forms, describing a key character in a story who is perceived to be intentionally representative of the work's author (or creator), by oblique similarities, in terms of psychology, behavior, speech, or thoughts, often used to convey the author's thoughts. The term is also sometimes, but less frequently, used to designate a hypothetical "twin" or "best friend" to a character in a story. Similarly, the term ''alter ego'' may be applied to the role or persona taken on by an actor or by other types of performers. Ori ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
