On Bullshit

by Harry G. Frankfurt

Hardcover, 2005

Call number

177.3 FRA

Collection

Publication

Princeton University Press (2005), Edition: 1, 67 pages

Description

Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it, yet we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves--and we lack a conscientious appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "we have no theory." Frankfurt, one of the world's most influential moral philosophers, attempts to build such a theory here. With his characteristic combination of philosophical acuity, psychological insight, and wry humor, he argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims. Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member jcbrunner
A Bush aide, probably Karl Rove himself, famously called the reality-based community a thing of the past: "we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things
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will sort out." This is the art of bullshitting, as defined in Harry Frankfurter's too short essay.

In the current "He said, she said", "teach the controversy" and "Lets leave it at that" media environment, truth is the first casualty. Slain not by its old opponent, the lie but by bullshit. A lie takes some effort to craft and maintain. Bullshitters don't care about cleaning up the mess they create. They don't care about the truth or the lie. The only object they have is to bullshit themselves past their audience's expectations so that they accept the bullshitter's consequences. TARP and the debt ceiling debate are recent examples of the deployment of massive bullshit. Bullshit is the opposite of the Popperian falsifiability. The bullshitter gets away with his act because revealing the truth takes too much time and effort. As long as the bullshitter refrains from complying with a test ("Hic Rhodos, hic salta."), he can continue in his anti-Wittgensteinian path. Wittgenstein proclaimed: "About what one can not speak, one must remain silent." The bullshitter answers: "How dare you!" The only solution is to reinstate the fairness doctrine on TV.

To increase the incendiary notion of this booklet, I wish the author had applied his concept to the fertile fields of bullshit. Religion, the revealed truth that is anything but the truth. The stories of the liar-Baron Münchhausen and Joseph Smith cry out for a profound bullshit analysis. Advertising with its mantra "if you have nothing to say, sing it" and politics would be prime candidates as well. Keeping the text to his short foundational essay is quite lazy.
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LibraryThing member paradoxosalpha
Emeritus moral philosopher Frankfurt wrote a light magazine article disguised as a scholarly paper, which Princeton University Press proceeded to issue as a duodecimo hardcover with an austere, treatise-like cover styling. Surely there is an element of bullshitting involved in the very production
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of this enormously successful object. It has been through many printings since 2005, and is almost certainly far more owned than read -- despite the fact that it can be polished off in less than a half hour.

Frankfurt claims to offer a "theoretical understanding" of bullshit, commencing with a study of "the structure of its concept." In practice, nearly the whole book -- everything up to the final seven or eight short pages -- consists of lexical comparisons and fussing over various denotative and connotative approaches to the term "bullshit." In the end, however, a couple of significant issues are raised, or at least implied. Is bullshitting an appropriate implementation of an antirealist intellectual agenda? Does the bullshitter affirm or degrade his self-worth by his disregard for verity? Under conditions of sufficient ignorance, can sincerity and honesty be completely non-intersecting?
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LibraryThing member dtn620
Short as hell, but a bit of a yawner.
LibraryThing member Auntie-Nanuuq
Oh this was very dry and rather pompous. The author likened B.S. to "Humbug" and expounded on the writings of others. As it was, I'm not sure what the author was trying to prove.

The narrator read the book with a flat and boring voice. What struck me as odd was the fact that the narrator is known as
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a founder of Broadway Local, "an improvisational comedy group", so I was expecting a more interesting fluctuating voice.

All I can say is: Humbug, don't bother......
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LibraryThing member JohnGrant1
I read this (very) little book some years ago, when it first came out, and confess I gained little from it. Its subject matter does, however, have relevance to the book of my own I'm currently working on, so I decided to reread it. I enjoyed it far more this time around, although, with the
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exception of one or two vivid insights (the analysis of the motives and nature of the bull session I found especially valuable, while the dismissal of the fundamentals of poststructuralism in just a few paragraphs at the end [without even naming it:] was masterly), my enjoyment was more at the level of entertainment than anything else. There were longueurs, too: the protracted definitional discussions (is bullshit really the same as humbug, or is there a subtle yet integral difference?) are plainly a lot more important to Frankfurt than they are to me. Yet I did like the tone of the book, with its occasional reminders that Frankfurt, even while being serious, isn't taking himself too seriously: "The notion of carefully wrought bullshit involves, then, a certain inner strain." Quite.
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LibraryThing member Lesliel
What a self-referential title!
LibraryThing member TheAmpersand
Just about as good, as illuminating, and as dryly humorous as a philosophical treatise called "On Bullshit" should be. An exercise in ironic description, Frankfurt takes pains to distinguish bullshitting from ordinary lying, though his book is often as good as the sources he picks. Longfellow and
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St. Augustine and telling anecdotes about Wittgenstein seem like good sources, but he leans on the OED much more than is advisable. c'mon Harry, you're a professor! You should know that that's a freshman blunder!

But the book itself, whose most important argument might be that liars, despised though they are, have more respect for truth than mere bullshit artists, who tend to disregard the distinction between truth and falsehood more-or-less entirely, is both interesting and thought provoking. This one was written back in 2005, but you could say that it's really more relevant than ever now that you-know-who is leading the free world. A fun, recommendable read, but it might make you feel a bit nauseous for reasons that the author couldn't have foreseen.
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LibraryThing member Heduanna
This is a fairly dry academic essay (or was Frankfurt trying to overplay that a little for comic effect? If so, I'm afraid he failed) packaged as a fun little volume. It seems like that should have made it easier to read (breaking up the text into smaller pieces), but in fact it felt harder: the
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book says "light & easy", but it isn't. (Someone call Marshall McLuhan!)

I wanted to like it, but in truth: I really don't, much. But it's such a quick read that if the impulse to try it hits you: go for it! You can't lose much time to the endeavour.
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LibraryThing member rwmsn
How can you say too musch about this little book. Frankfurt makes a good stab at parsing the characteristics that define bullshit.
LibraryThing member dvf1976
A book (more like a hardcover pamphlet) that tries to provide a theory for BS.

While I like the concept (and the attempt to fill the vaccuum that I didn't even know existed), the book seemed a bit more pretentious than it needed to be.

Heck, it could've been boiled down to:

"Someone who shovels BS is
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worse than a person who lies because a liar has a relationship with the truth"
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LibraryThing member FPdC
''One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit.'' This opening phrase of Frankfurt's essay can well become as famous as some openings that have acquired myth status (I think of García Márquez in Cien Años de Soledad, or (why not?) of Marx and Engels in The
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Communist Manifesto.) In this short essay, the emeritus moral philosopher at Princeton dissects the term, its meaning, its usage, the possible reasons for its widespread usage in contemporary society. And ends this brilliant essay in an equaly brilliant way: ''Our nature are, indeed, elusively insubstancial (...). And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit''. No further words needed.
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LibraryThing member stephaniechase
Two words: it's bullshit.
LibraryThing member MillieHennessy
I purchased this little book in a used bookstore, simply because of the title. I'm not a big non-fiction reader, but how could I pass up a book titled "On Bullshit"? I really enjoyed Frankfurt's essay, and it definitely made me think about the current use of some words, and what they really mean.
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I'm not sure if his analysis of the term bullshit was supposed to be amusing, but I found it to be. This is definitely one of the more unique books in my collection and I'm glad I found it!
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LibraryThing member bexaplex
A tongue-in-cheek investigation of the phenomenon of bullshit. So, so clever.
LibraryThing member detailmuse
The first time I sat down with On Bullshit, the book's tiny size fooled me into assuming the essay inside was a light read. When I found myself halfway through but without much interest in what I'd read, I regrouped. I moved to a room with fewer distractions, turned back to the first page and
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approached the work with a little more respect.

And an hour later, I finished Frankfurt's readable and insightful (albeit at times tedious) thesis on the definition and motivation for contemporary society's BS. I was especially drawn to his deconstruction of lying vs BS-ing (lying recognizes the truth -- and then ignores it; BS is sloppier). And the most useful revelation: "[BS] is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about."

I do regret that the author didn't adapt the essay to a general audience by including a preface and some background about the people he quotes. And the publisher could have assisted the reader by formatting the text with some space on the page, or a chapter break, in the several places where Frankfurt makes sudden transitions.

Overall, a recommended read on a growing aspect of communication.
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LibraryThing member mhgatti
Frankfurt passes up the perfect opportunity to have a little fun with the subject, never veering from his dry and overly earnest look at an extremely silly word. Somewhat interesting, but ultimately not very enjoyable.
LibraryThing member sszkutak
This was a very short and light-hearted essay, which was a little disappointing. Frankfurt is able to only bring up the subject of Bullshit before his essay comes to an end. What he is able to do is express how we all use bull-shit but we do so without a proper definition, sadly he doesn't have a
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definition for you until half way through.
As a user of bullshit, I am perfectly fine not having an exact definition to go by, it leaves more lee-way for its use how-ever and when-ever necessary.
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LibraryThing member BraveKelso
The Princeton University Press has released Harry Frankfurt's paper "On Bullshit" as a bound pamphlet, and it looks like Frankfurt is going to be on The Daily Show on March 14. Blog news about that at Crooked Timber. Some professional philosophers are turning up their noses, and some are applauding
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Frankfurt's move to talk about truth, bullshit and lies on television. Some of them are nitpicking about whether this paper says anything new. That's easy for them to say - I think a little publicity for this paper may give people some help in thinking about why we can't believe a lot of what people try to tell and sell us.

It discusses truth and bullshit in ordinary talk, advertising, and politics. Bullshit is what we hear from people who don't care about the truth. Liars care about the truth. Liars say things they know aren't true. Bullshitters don't care about the truth. It's not that they are careless about their story - their presentation may be elaborate, beautiful, and even true in some measure. But the bullshitter isn't trying to tell the truth. The bullshitter is a story-teller. Bullshitters believe in themselves, sincerely. They want you to listen to them and like them, and they want you to believe them. The problem is that their stories aren't reliable.

It's a nice piece of work, which has inspired a lot of thought
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LibraryThing member stypulkoski
Harry Frankfurt's "On Bullshit" is a fun, light-hearted little essay, and serves as a good introduction to the concepts of logic and reason to those who weren't philosophy majors. I'd recommend "Crimes Against Logic" by Jamie Whyte to anyone who enjoyed this book, and also to those who were
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disappointed by it.
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LibraryThing member MeditationesMartini
How wonderful. I didn't expect as much from this book as I got. I was taken in by the deductive reasoning-speak, and initially felt like he was playing at public philosopher with phraseology by Plato. But in a very non-bullshit way, Frankfurt lays it open - and I really appreciate that the idea of
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"finely-wrought bullshit," the commonplace paradox, can be the royal road into what makes bullshit (and I be with him on this) panoramic not particular and often psychopathically aimless (not that he uses the word, and I guess it's the psycho part that distinguishes real bullshit for simple "bull" along the lines in this essay), as opposed to the discrete goal-orientation of the lie-teller. And then he brings it around back to the existentialists all twinkle in eye and says "Sincerity itself is bullshit." And who can gainsay him? I wish this had been the beginning of a large-scale literary or philosophical or historical survey of bullshit, but that's kind of a bullshit project in itself, isn't it? When we start again, this book should be required not only for the Hegels (per my previous review) but also for the ** ******* and *** ******** and some other guys I could name.
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LibraryThing member jmones
This light book is a characterization of the nature of bullshitting, in contrast of lying. It makes a clear distinction between the two, although it perhaps fails to make a good definition which is easily usable to distinguish between them. The proposed one depends on the intention of the
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liar/bullshitter, and this can be a hard thing to know.

The book doesn't go farther than that. I really missed some analysis on the implications of bullshitting or how to deal with it, for instance.

At the end of the assay, the author asks himself if there's more bullshitting nowadays than there used to be. It mostly leaves this question open, and just comments it briefly. He concludes it does and thinks this may be because our concept of truth is different, and there's an "skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality".

I think there's another important point the author doesn't consider. Frankfurt talks very much about the truth of facts. But most statements are made about the relationships about these facts. This different concept of truth Frankfurt mentions, has a lot of importance here. But, also, nowadays the analysis these relationships can get very complicated and only in the reach of specialists. Additionally, the discussion of a very particular subject can have many levels and registries (academic, media, public....). This environment is a breeding ground for bullshit.

(I try to review books in the same language I read them, but I lack the linguistic tools to write a nice review in English. Sorry for that)
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LibraryThing member jbushnell
This slim volume attempts to develop a theory which will position bullshit in the framework of moral philosophy, and along the way answers questions like: how does bullshit differ from the lie? A blast to read, although I disagree with almost every major conclusion Frankfurt makes (with the
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anti-postmodernism argument that closes the book being particularly unwelcome).
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LibraryThing member disneypope
Professor Emeritus Frankfurt from Princeton writes a philosopical treatise on our culture's propensity to , well, bullshit all the time instead of speaking the truth as things are. Entertaining read.
LibraryThing member Tullius22
I don't know how he does it.

(10/10)
LibraryThing member MartinBodek
Boy I hope this book was meant as a tongue-in-cheek essay, because that's the way I took it. It was simply hilarious to me, and incidentally smacked of truth and definitional accuracy. Frankfurt would be the most double-edged appointee for creating a dictionary. On the one hand, his ruminations
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would mean it would take him 6,000 years to write, but my oh my, would it be absolutely precise!
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Pages

67

ISBN

0691122946 / 9780691122946

UPC

218681122946
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