Heidegger deliberately writes obscurely to produce an estrangement akin to Brecht’s theatre

Evidence

The fact is that he does not want to be ordinary, and he may not even want to communicate in the usual sense. He wants to make the familiar obscure, and to vex us. George Steiner thought that Heidegger’s purpose was less to be understood than to be experienced through a ‘felt strangeness’. It is something like the ‘alienation’ or estrangement effect used by Bertholt Brecht in his theatre, which is designed to block you from becoming too caught up in the story and falling for the delusion of familiarity. Heidegger’s language keeps you on edge. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 204

Categorization

• XREF: Connects Heidegger’s stylistic obscurity to Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt — a cross-domain kinship worth probing. — connects to: Brecht’s epic theatre is fundamentally enlightenment-oriented and cannot fit a Postmodernist canon — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 122; Heidegger’s obscure style reflects an aim to overturn all of metaphysics — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 210; Heidegger staged his lectures as controlled theatre and derided spontaneous discussion — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 191 (+4 more)
• QUESTION: How do we distinguish deliberate estrangement-language from mere poor writing? Bakewell raises the question but doesn’t fully resolve it.

Broader Connections

• Heidegger’s Nazi past and obscure late prose drove away former admirers #exemplifies (0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 603
• Heidegger framed being as a question meant to astonish rather than to be answered #expands (0.74) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 173
• Adorno judged both Benjamin and Brecht ignorant of core Marxian theory #corroborates (0.72) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 226