On Bullshit (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

Surprising as it may seem, a seventy-page essay by a moral philosopher from Princeton has become something of a bestseller. Originally a paper presented at a Yale faculty seminar twenty years ago, Harry G. Frankfurt's "On Bullshit" eventually made its appearance in a journal, then in a 1988 collection of Frankfurt's work, The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays, and now as a handsomely bound pamphlet. It can be found almost anywhere the printed word is held in high regard.
As a brief reprieve from the endless reams of ChickLit, Harry Potterisms, DaVinci Code-itis and this week's masterful dissection of militant Islam, its calm, clear-headed deconstruction of everyday deceit is without parallel, unless you'd care to throw in my uncle Jim's all-purpose "an acute case 'o nae brains" as a counterbalance. The perfect antidote to our culture's daily dose of garish scandal and scatterbrained ideology, it can be happily devoured in an hour or so and its insights mulled over for weeks.
For a western intellectual, a clan not often noted for clear diction and straightforward thought, Frankfurt performs small miracles of deft deliberation. He introduces bullshit as that which folks used to call humbug, and moves smoothly from there to the notion that the bullshitter is not, per se, a liar, seeking to deceive us about "the facts", but is concerned about "concealing the nature of his enterprise", toward a radically smart denouement concerning the modern world's loss of faith in any absolutes and the resultant retreat from 'truth' to the embrace of mere sincerity. Since for Frankfurt our natures are "elusively insubstantial", we cannot actually come up with honest representations of ourselves, and hence our ideal of "sincerity itself is bullshit". It's a lovely tour-de-force, despite the uncredited reliance on dear old David Hume. Bravo!
Almost as incisive as Frankfurt's tiny diamond is Jim Holt's recent New Yorker essay on the whole shebang, "Say Anything", which not only includes a discussion of a little-known critique by G. A. Cohen of Oxford, "Deeper Into Bullshit", but also a slew of historically relevant chatter, from St. Augustine to Wittgenstein. If you like "On Bullshit", I urge you to seek out Holt's piece. Unfortunately for idealists of the sincerity school, there is no actual ground-floor agreement amongst all participants on the parameters of honest and ethical banter. The endeavour to detach the false from the true (or the willful exaggeration from the plain spoken) has been a global one, and has had, predictably, a lacklustre history of temporary consensus salvaged from the wrecks of previous years' much-vaunted paradigms.
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto in his 1997 Truth: A History and a Guide for the Perplexed does as fine a job as I've seen (terms like "marvellously compact" and "brilliantly incisive" come to mind) tracking this elusive treasure through the fields of anthropology, theology, philosophy, history and science, yet he can come no closer to his Grail than suggesting that despite all language being caught in some self-referential trap, the subjective limitations of perspectives can be overcome in the craft of rigorous compilation, which would bring us at least "a little closer to the truth". Only a little closer? Perhaps the compilation of all partial truths is a task fit only for a non-sectarian god and those who would subsume themselves in his speechless being.
Gordon Phinn (Books in Canada)