video of a philosopher thinking
So I am watching this lecture on Heidegger, in French, by François Fédier.
This is from Fédier's Khâgne class, which prepares students aspiring to sit the entrance exam for the literary section of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, training grounds for writers and thinkers from Sartre to Foucault.
It is a very unusual teaching style for me, but maybe French students are used to it? Basically the teacher dictates verbatim the notes that the students take, down to the punctuation-- "comma"... "dash"... "question mark"
He breaks from dictation to give clarifications and asides, and to answer questions. But he always comes back to the dictation, which forms the backbone around which he improvises the rest of the lecture.
The content is interesting, but the process seems so time-consuming; I'm 25 minutes into the lecture, and he has spent all this time so far answering one question: why does Heidegger put "is" in quotation marks?
This lecture lasts for two hours, and there are 26 lectures total, all devoted to one work: Heidegger's Letter on Humanism. I think it's rare to come across such close reading-- I certainly never experienced this in my education. And his students are only about 18 years old.
There is something hypnotic about this slow pace. He basically creates this steady pulse of thought in all his listeners. He shows us the process of a philosopher at work, thinking.
This is from Fédier's Khâgne class, which prepares students aspiring to sit the entrance exam for the literary section of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, training grounds for writers and thinkers from Sartre to Foucault.
It is a very unusual teaching style for me, but maybe French students are used to it? Basically the teacher dictates verbatim the notes that the students take, down to the punctuation-- "comma"... "dash"... "question mark"
He breaks from dictation to give clarifications and asides, and to answer questions. But he always comes back to the dictation, which forms the backbone around which he improvises the rest of the lecture.
The content is interesting, but the process seems so time-consuming; I'm 25 minutes into the lecture, and he has spent all this time so far answering one question: why does Heidegger put "is" in quotation marks?
This lecture lasts for two hours, and there are 26 lectures total, all devoted to one work: Heidegger's Letter on Humanism. I think it's rare to come across such close reading-- I certainly never experienced this in my education. And his students are only about 18 years old.
There is something hypnotic about this slow pace. He basically creates this steady pulse of thought in all his listeners. He shows us the process of a philosopher at work, thinking.