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Loading... On Bullshitby Harry G. Frankfurt
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Two words: it's bullshit. (  )stephaniechase | Mar 30, 2009 |   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 disappointed by it. (  )stypulkoski | Nov 9, 2008 | rivkat | Oct 30, 2008 | 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 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 (  )BraveKelso | Oct 26, 2008 | This may sound all too familiar to those of use who still live in the "reality-based community" and must deal with a world convulsed by those who do not. But Frankfurt leaves such political implications to his readers. Instead, 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 hero4444 | Sep 4, 2008 |  0.054 seconds to build listing  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0691122946, Hardcover)"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." This compact little book, as pungent as the phenomenon it explores, attempts to articulate a theory of this contemporary scourge--what it is, what it does, and why there's so much of it. The result is entertaining and enlightening in almost equal measure. It can't be denied; part of the book's charm is the puerile pleasure of reading classic academic discourse punctuated at regular intervals by the word "bullshit." More pertinent is Frankfurt's focus on intentions--the practice of bullshit, rather than its end result. 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."This may sound all too familiar to those of use who still live in the "reality-based community" and must deal with a world convulsed by those who do not. But Frankfurt leaves such political implications to his readers. Instead, 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 (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:24 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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