On Bullshit (2005)

The title is no irony, it's what it says it is. BS. It's one long mental wank lecture by a college professor of the word and its meanings in every possible boring, mildly-interesting, wow, I didn't know that, kind of way. It's intellectual humour done not to amuse an audience as its first aim but because the professor is amusing himself that he can do this sort of thing, and well.

All this sounds like I didn't enjoy it, but you know when it comes to stars I'm wavering between 1.5 and a 4.5, I can't decide. You can read the paragraph above in a slightly negative tone of voice and then it also reads in an ironic kind of way that I kind of admire the professor and had also quite enjoyed both his work and why he did it. I just can't decide so three stars it will have to be. ( )

Living with the biggest bullshitter I've ever known distracted me somewhat from reading this impersonally. However, I've now a handy-dandy little argument in my pocket which supports my experience that bullshit is in its insidiousness far more unwieldy and destructive than lies. Liars, at least, respect that there is a truth which they withhold or obscure, and their lies are vulnerable to confession or exposure and therefore defeat; bullshitters are careless shape-shifters, to communicate with them is to engage in shadow-boxing. They are therefore impossible for a person who values truth and honesty to deal with. I appreciate Frankfurt's assertion that bullshitters, for having an eroded or entirely lost ability to recognise or even care about the truth, are greater enemies of the truth than those who tell lies. Think about gender, think about race, think about any specifically defined group of people in the world-- and all the bullshit generated about them by television and movies, artists, scientists, "experts", or any ol' group of dumbasses at work, the bar, on the internet. It's hard to defeat bullshit. It feels right in the hearts of those who perpetuate (or buy into) it, because they don't care if what comes out of their mouths is true or not; you can't hold them accountable and their consciences won't needle them a bit, because to them it's a matter not of truth (a fact-seeking activity) but "sincerity", a slippery category of self-knowledge, which itself is an unattainable objective. If it's true that good things come in little packages, the ideas and conclusions put forth in this bitty book are no exception. ( )

Common sense mixed in with some interesting thoughts and a provocative title. Ho-hum. ( )

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 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) ( )

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 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?