- Frankfurt, Harry G.
On Bullshit.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.
ISBN 0-691-12294-6.
-
This tiny book (just 67 9½×15 cm pages—I'd
estimate about 7300 words) illustrates that there is no topic, however
mundane or vulgar, which a first-rate philosopher cannot make so
complicated and abstruse that it appears profound. The author, a
professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University, first
published this essay in 1986 in the
Raritan Review.
In it, he tackles the momentous conundrum of what distinguishes
bullshit from lies. Citing authorities including Wittgenstein
and Saint Augustine, he concludes that while the liar is ultimately
grounded in the truth (being aware that what he is saying is
counterfactual and crafting a lie to make the person to whom he
tells it believe that), the bullshitter is entirely
decoupled (or, perhaps in his own estimation, liberated) from
truth and falsehood, and is simply saying whatever it takes to
have the desired effect upon the audience.
Throughout, it's obvious that we're in the presence of a
phil-oss-o-pher doing phil-oss-o-phy
right out in the open. For example, on p. 33 we
have:
It is in this sense that Pascal's (Fania Pascal, an
acquaintance of Wittgenstein in the 1930s, not
Blaise—JW) statement is unconnected to a concern with the
truth; she is not concerned with the truth-value of what
she says. That is why she cannot be regarded as lying; for
she does not presume that she knows the truth, and therefore
she cannot be deliberately promulgating a proposition that she
presumes to be false: Her statement is grounded neither in a
belief that it is true nor, as a lie must be, in a belief that
it is not true.
(The Punctuator
applauds the use of colons and semicolons in the passage quoted above!)
All of this is fine, but it seems to me that the author misses an
important aspect of bullshit: the fact that in many
cases—perhaps the overwhelming majority—the bulshittee is
perfectly aware of being bullshitted by the bullshitter, and the
bullshitter is conversely aware that the figurative bovid excrement
emitted is being dismissed as such by those whose ears it befouls.
Now, this isn't always the case: sometimes you find yourself in a
tight situation faced with a difficult question and manage to bullshit
your way through, but in the context of a “bull session”,
only the most naïve would assume that what was said was sincere
and indicative of the participants' true beliefs: the author cites
bull sessions as a venue in which people can try on beliefs other than
their own in a non-threatening environment.
July 2007 