Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt

Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt

What is the difference between a liar and a bullshitter? According to On Bullshit, Princeton philosophy professor Harry G. Frankfurt's bluntly titled book, bullshitting is a performance, more than outright deception. The bullshitter does not care if he is believed or not, very often he does not care. What matters is his ability to speak as an accepted authority, whether what he says should be taken seriously or not in a factual manner. A liar deliberately conceals the truth and seeks to deceive; a bullshitter has no regard for truth. An example of this from daily life might be seen within one's family -- rich Uncle Chester, a known bullshitter, loves to tell Korean War stories, and everyone listens to his exaggerations politely because they are afraid of being left out of his will. However, sister Lisa sneaks out to see her boyfriend and night, and lies, saying she was at a friend's house. The need to tell a lie reveals the liar's lack of power while the ability to force the audience to pretend the bullshit is real shows the storyteller's power. The chronic bullshitter misrepresents himself, not the truth, like a liar. Frankfurt discusses an essay on 'humbug' which he considers a synonym for bullshit, in his analysis and it is interesting that one of the most famous frauds in fiction, the Wizard of Oz, calls himself a 'humbug' when he pretends to be more powerful than he is.

Bombast is inherent to bullshit -- the exaggerated emotion and posturing are often the most obvious red flags of bullshit: "Consider a Fourth of July orator, who goes on bombastically about 'our great and blessed country, whose Founding-Fathers under divine guidance created a new beginning for mankind.' This is surely humbug...the orator is not lying. He would be lying only if it were his intention to bring about in his audience beliefs which he himself regards as false…But the orator does not really care what his audience thinks about the Founding Fathers…it is not an interest in what anyone thinks about these matters that motivates his speech…the orator intends these statements to convey a certain impression of himself" (Frankfurt 16-17).

"People do tend to be more tolerant of bullshit" than lies given the stigma put upon obvious untruths (Frankfurt 51). But bullshit is still negative, a sloppy disregard for the truth, and self-indulgent -- the bullshitter is trying to get away with something, to put something over on his audience about his character. The bullshitter is trying to conceal his or her real intentions and enterprise -- one reason why politicians are often said to be bullshitters, given that even when they might be speaking intelligently about healthcare, their real intention is likely to get reelected, not to change the world. Truth is of little interest to the bullshitter. This is the danger of bullshit -- unlike a lie which can be proven factually false, it is almost impossible to prove that someone's intentions are entirely self-serving and corrupt. That is why bullshit seems to be so rife today: "where people are frequently impelled -- whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others -- to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant" and when they must speak about important issues they care little about, but can rhetorically use those issues to further their own ends (Frankfurt 63).