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"For bullshit artistry demands our complicity. It is, in its own way, a demonstration of power" New Republic
Princeton University Press
January 2005
80 pages
ISBN: 0691122946
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
One of the most salient features of our culture is that
there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us
contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation
for granted. Most people are rather confident of their
ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in
by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate
concern. 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 conscientiously developed
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, Frankfurt proceeds by
exploring how bullshit and the related concept of humbug
are distinct from lying. He argues that bullshitters
misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do,
that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is
true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all. 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
their end of 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.
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