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 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. ( )

Two words: it's bullshit. ( )

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. ( )

http://rivkat.livejournal.com/206695.... ( )

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 ( )

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

Very short, but wonderfully profound book.

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 worse than a person who lies because a liar has a relationship with the truth" ( )

If you think a book devoted solely to bullshit couldn't possibly be boring...you'd be wrong. ( )

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 "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. ( )

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. ( )

On Bullshit by Harry Frankfurt,,.tries to ask some of the preliminary questions--to define the nature of a thing recognized by all but understood by none. He explores the cultural impact of bullshit and its difference from outright lies. He looks at the philosophical implications of it and how its left the citizenry cynical of those who specialize in it: advertisers, public relations, and politicians.

more @ http://toogood2read.blogspot.com/2006...

exactly

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 anti-postmodernism argument that closes the book being particularly unwelcome). ( )

What a self-referential title! ( )

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. ( )

I don't agree at all with the reviewer who describes this as a good parsing of bullshit. I do, however, think it's an enjoyable read as long as it isn't taken too seriously. While Dr. Frankfurt makes a point of telling us this essay is not meant to address the rhetorical qualities of bullshit, his introductory sentences make clear that this essay is precisely that, a working example of the rhetoric of bullshit (sweeping generalities relying purely on anecdotal evidence): "One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this." Laugh with him lest he laugh at you. ( )

The philosophy of bullshit, by someone not ashamed to be playful in his thinking. ( )

How can you say too much about this little book. Frankfurt makes a good stab at parsing the characteristics that define bullshit. ( )

Quite an entertaining essay on the nature of bullshit. Definitely recommended to kill an hour of free time. ( )

Even if, like everyone else in the world, I only bought the book because of the title, it's still a decent treatise on the topic in question. ( )