Heidegger’s inaugural lecture opened with a surprising deadpan joke

Evidence

A few months after the Davos meeting, on 24 July 1929, Heidegger followed it up with a brilliant inaugural lecture in Freiburg, under the title ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ — the text Sartre and Beauvoir would see in translation in 1931 without understanding it. This time Husserl himself was among the huge crowd who gathered to hear the university’s new professor perform. Heidegger did not disappoint. ‘What Is Metaphysics?’ was a crowd-pleaser, containing the most dramatic ideas from Being and Time combined with some new ones. It even starts with what sounds like a deadpan joke, a surprise coming from Heidegger: … ‘What is metaphysics?’ The question awakens expectations of a discussion about metaphysics. This we will forego. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 246

Categorization

• CANDY: Heidegger — the least funny-sounding philosopher — opening a lecture with a joke is a light, tweetable fact.
• XREF: connects to: Heidegger staged his lectures as controlled theatre and derided spontaneous discussion — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 191; Heidegger appeared to lack character rather than possess bad character — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 307; Heidegger’s 1929 lecture could induce near-ecstatic states in listeners. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 249

Broader Connections

• Heidegger staged his lectures as controlled theatre and derided spontaneous discussion #qualifies (0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 191
• Heidegger’s 1929 lecture could induce near-ecstatic states in listeners. #expands (0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 249
• Heidegger appeared to lack character rather than possess bad character #complicates (0.72) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 307