Heidegger staged his lectures as controlled theatre and derided spontaneous discussion

Evidence

His lectures were a form of theatre, ‘masterfully staged’. Heidegger urged his students to think, but not necessarily to answer back. ‘He thought that saying the first unthought-out thing that came to mind, which is called “discussion” today, was empty chitchat.’ He liked students to be respectful, but never sycophantic. ‘When a student once read out the minutes, peppered with Heidegger’s own phraseology, he interrupted her: “We do not Heideggerize here! Let’s move on to the matter in hand.” ’ Picht suspected that some of this Heideggerian rudeness was a defensive reaction: he felt threatened, both by others and from within himself. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 191

Categorization

• XREF: Heidegger’s hostility to ‘discussion’ as empty chitchat prefigures later critiques of the degraded public sphere and talk-based pedagogy. — connects to: Heidegger’s inaugural lecture opened with a surprising deadpan joke — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 246; Heidegger’s 1929 lecture could induce near-ecstatic states in listeners. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 249; Heidegger deliberately writes obscurely to produce an estrangement akin to Brecht’s theatre — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 204 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Heidegger deliberately writes obscurely to produce an estrangement akin to Brecht’s theatre #corroborates (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 204
• Heidegger’s 1929 lecture could induce near-ecstatic states in listeners. #expands (0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 249
• Heidegger framed being as a question meant to astonish rather than to be answered #expands (0.75) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 173
• Foucault’s lectures grew spontaneously from problem-questions rather than plans #contradicts (0.75) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 302