My Amazon.com review of Harry Frankfurt’s “On Bullshit”
Frankfurt wrote this as a fairly short essay, and as such it’s not really worth it to buy it on its own (for the price). I would recommend getting “The Importance of What We Care About”, which is a collection of Frankfurt’s essays, including “On Bullshit”. Get it especially if you think you’ll be reading more Frankfurt. His style is very readable compared to other academic analytic philosophers, so I’d recommend it.
I’ve read a couple of user reviews and some people come off disappointed, either thinking this essay to be an academic joke or itself bullshit. I don’t think it’s either. If the main focus of philosophy is to love truth, then this book seriously contributes to that cause. If you’re interested in truth, you can’t ignore this book. And just Frankfurt’s name alone means, if you’re interested in contemporary philosophical discussions, you can’t ignore this book. Frankfurt is one of the leading academic philosophers today, and is famously known for his “Frankfurt counterexamples” to a particular theory of free will.
The main motivation for Frankfurt writing this essay is what he sees to be “the prevalence of bullshit” in the world today (this alone should make you think it’s a serious study, not a joke.. since why would he want to contribute to the problem of the prevalence of bullshit with more bullshit?). But what exactly is bullshit? He admits there has been no serious study of the meaning of the word. So it’s clear from the beginning this is very much an analytic essay, the focus of which will be on breaking down the meaning of bullshit and distinguishing it from what it is not.
So what is bullshit? To answer this question, the essay starts with an examination of an earlier essay by Max Black, “The Prevalence of Humbug??�, and assumes for the sake of the paper that humbug and BS are similar. Black describes two features of humbug are that 1) “it is short of lying??� and 2) “those who perpetrate it misrepresent themselves in a certain way??�. Frankfurt thinks both features to be also true of bullshit, but finds Black’s description of both to be “significantly off the mark??�. The remainder of his paper offers, along with examples of bullshit, an improved account of mainly the first of these two features.
Frankfurt’s improved account of bullshit as being “short of lying??� is that while the lier knows the truth but deceives in telling a falsity, the bullshitter has no concern for either truth or falsity – the concern of the bullshitter is just to bluff their way through, resulting in something that is not false but phony. So bullshit is not the same as lying.
Frankfurt ends the paper concluding that the increase of bullshit today is due to the increase in communication, which results in more people being required to speak on subjects they know little to nothing about. Thus these people must bluff or bullshit their way through (some user reviews here on Amazon.com support this). Frankfurt ends the paper with a short paragraph accusing skepticism in its various forms as one of the reasons there is an increase in bullshit in the world today.
I like the essay - it is something very much concerned with Truth. If I taught an introduction course in philosophy, this might even be one of the first essays I would assign. This essay on its own gives a reason to study philosophy, which is concerned with the truth, rather than simply go through life bullshitting and not being concerned with the truth at all.
What in the essay do I disagree with? As it turns out, very little. It’s hard to disagree with much in this essay (maybe others would find this easier to do than me), but I do have issues with one of the last paragraphs, where Frankfurt claims that skepticism is one of the reasons for the increase in bullshit today. I know this isn’t supposed to be a fully worked out argument, just a passing thought, but I really can’t think of any bullshit that has as its (even distant) cause skepticism. So I’m a bit suspicious of this argument.
In closing, I do recommend that anyone living in the world today who is concerned with Truth read this book. And if you think you might be interested in reading more, then instead of this $10 single essay, pick up Frankfurt’s “The Important of What We Care About”, a collection of Frankfurt’s essays, including “On Bullshit”.