& he would be wrong, w/all due respect to Brecht. maybe "a degree of manipulation is unavoidable" would be more agreeable. b/c even if the goal is to inspire critical thinking rather than elicit an emotional response there is still a manipulation going on. I suppose Brecht's - & I don't know a great deal about him, tbc - answer might be that it's a more honest manipulation & one done for more noble purposes. which may or may not be right, I dunno, it's subjective I guess.
I think what you are saying is true to the extent that every experience we are involvd in is emotional to some extent. As I sit and type this I'm maybe a bit bored, hungry, thinking about last weekend yada yada.
But I think the point Brecht seems to make is that leading an audience on to generate a specific emotion response is the exact opposite aim in his work, any emotion that is encountered is thus not 'supposed' to be thus, a critical response on the part of the audience is, which IMO is different from simple emotional response. Is philosophizing an emotional/manipulative experience? Or an intellectual/academic experience?
Of course the boundaries are not so clean cut as I said earlier, but they have to exist for functional reasons.
Simple theatrical devices to get an audience relating to characters is different from showing examples of how a particular set of possible circumstances function in order that an audience may have some food for thought. If every type of art is just emotional manipulation then where is the room for reflection, where is the room for true politics?
Any emotions encountered in such a work is just run-off.