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Video interview with
Harry G. Frankfurt
at
Princeton University
Dial-up | Broadband |
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Excerpt from Chapter 1
at Princeton University Press - "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, nor attracted much sustained inquiry.
In consequence, 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, we have no theory. I propose to
begin the development of a theoretical understanding of
bullshit, mainly by providing some tentative and exploratory
philosophical analysis. I shall not consider the rhetorical uses
and misuses of bullshit. My aim is simply to give a rough
account of what bullshit is and how it differs from what it is
not--or (putting it somewhat differently) to articulate, more or
less sketchily, the structure of its concept..."
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- * Frankfurt, Harry G.
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On Bullshit
Hardcover: 80 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press (January 10, 2005)
ISBN: 0691122946
* indicates link to
Amazon.com
online bookshop
"Our natures are, indeed, elusively
insubstantial - notoriously less stable and less inherent
than the natures of other things.
And insofar as this is the
case, sincerity itself is bullshit."
From Editorial Review at Amazon.com
"One of the most salient features of our culture is that
there is so much bullshit," Harry G. Frankfurt writes, in what
must surely be the most eyebrow-raising opener in modern
philosophical prose. "Everyone knows this. Each of us
contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for
granted." .. Bullshitting, as he notes, is not exactly lying,
and bullshit remains bullshit whether it's true or false.
The difference lies in the bullshitter's complete disregard
for whether what he's saying corresponds to facts in the
physical world: he "does not reject the authority of the truth,
as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention
to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of
the truth than lies are." .. he points to one source of
bullshit's unprecedented expansion in recent years, the
postmodern skepticism of objective truth in favor of sincerity,
or as he defines it, staying true to subjective experience. But
what makes us think that anything in our nature is more stable
or inherent than what lies outside it? Thus, Frankfurt
concludes, with an observation as tiny and perfect as the rest
of this exquisite book, "sincerity itself is bullshit." -- Mary
Park
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Defining Bullshit -
Timothy Noah
"..But what is bullshit, exactly? By which I
mean: What are its defining characteristics? What is its
Platonic essence? How does bullshit differ from such precursors
as humbug, poppycock, tommyrot, hooey, twaddle, balderdash,
claptrap, palaver, hogwash, buncombe (or "bunk"), hokum, drivel,
flapdoodle, bullpucky, and all the other pejoratives* favored by
H.L. Mencken and his many imitators? The scholar who answers the
question, "What is bullshit?" bids boldly to define the spirit
of the present age..."
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On The Bullshit Guy -
Gary Younge in the London Guardian
"Twenty years ago a Yale philosopher gave a
little-noticed lecture on the improbable subject of bullshit.
Now, republished as a 67-page pamphlet, it has become a
publishing sensation and its author is being feted as a guru.
How did that happen? ...
There are some dissonant images that the
public can't resist. Such as the sight of a nun breakdancing in
her habit in the film Sister Act, or elderly rural women
casually remarking on which locals "like a bit of cock" in
Little Britain's village shop. Their incongruity holds a
particular appeal. We like them not just because they don't
happen but because they shouldn't happen and secretly we wish
that they would. So when a septuagenarian philosophy professor
brings out a book called On Bullshit and it goes into its 10th
reprint in just a few months, maybe we shouldn't be too
surprised." |
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