I got about 25% through this book before I finally said, "Enough."

Two issues primarily influenced my decision:
1) I've graded enough essays to know when someone is utilizing a preponderance of unnecessary verbiage in an attempt to obfuscate an apparent dearth of meaning.
2) This quote: "Thus someone who lies about how much money he has in his pocket both gives an account of the amount of money in his pocket and conveys that he believes this account" (13). If I may be influenced by the title of the book, I must call bullshit. In order to lie, one must be aware of the truth. A lie is intentional. If I say that I have twenty dollars in my pocket while I only have ten dollars, I do not believe that I have twenty.

It is possible that this book does go on to contain useful information and intelligent observations, but I just didn't have the patience to get there. If someone tells me it's worth it to continue, I might push on.

A very quick read. The book is a mere 67 pages and the pages are very small. It's a pocket book.

Well, I have to say it was a fun read but hardly worth buying. I would have rather bought another of the many books I have lined up and would like to own. Worth reading, but don't pay for it. You could read it in the bookstore in about 20-30 minutes. I read it while waiting for the bus tonight. I now know the difference between lying and bullshitting and really don't care all that much. I still look forward to reading more substantial works of Frankfurt's though. I like his style. I hear Reasons of Love and On Truth are rather good. Shoulda bought one of those instead.

This slim, elegant little book looks at first like an elaborate joke, but I think it is actually quite serious. What is "bullshit"? asks the author, a distinguished moral philosopher. He examines and discards various plausible hypotheses, for example that bullshit is merely lying or careless use of language. As he points out, the bullshit artist often lies, but need not do so: some bullshit is, more or less by accident, perfectly true. And similarly, although much bullshit is hasty or careless, some of the worst bullshit around is crafted with exquisite care and attention to detail; one need only think of commercial advertising and political campaigns.

The rest of this review is available elsewhere (the location cannot be given for Goodreads policy reasons)

A sincere three-star rating for not once mentioning an actual bull.

On Bullshit, by Harry G. Frankfurt is an in depth (maybe?) philosophical examination of bullshit. Its definition, use, and relation to the world and humanity are examined in detail. Frankfurt looks at the definitions and concepts of lying, humbug, bull session, and so on, to compare various forms of "hot air" to bullshit. He examines our need as humans to seem knowledgeable on various subjects, and therefore "bluff our way through" to try and seem knowledgeable to others. Why do we do this? Frankfurt tries to differentiate bullshit from lies, where lies are deliberate attempts to hide a fact, and bullshit is less concerned with truth or fiction. Bullshit can be seen as an attempt to explore subjects intellectually, by teasing out definitions, and "muddling through" the idea in question by exploring the known and unknown of the particular topic or concept. It can also be a way to try and deceive others into thinking one knows more about a subject than they actually do.

Frankfurt's short little book is illuminating and humorous. In an age where we need to sell ourselves at job interviews or on a date, or where we enjoy sitting down and "shooting the shit" with our friends both on and offline, where politicians flaunt facts and figures with no value, and where marketers and PR firms white wash their products for our consumption, Frankfurt's little treatise is interesting and highly relevant. It is also very humorous, and not necessarily meant to be taken seriously. It is, as much is, a load of hot air, and I personally enjoyed it immensely.

Even though we own this book I ignored it for many years because I thought it was a joke book. After reading Schur's book I realized this one was written by an actual philosopher. It's a short essay and I find it startling and accidentally persuasive that I should try to speak less bullshit in my own life. My brand usually results from a similar cause to this quote: "Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstance require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about." Except, in my case, replace "require someone" with "I desire." Sometimes I even previously had the relevant information in my brain but I have now forgotten. This is why writing can be so much better than talking- plenty of time to look up the facts.

This is a book that presents a theory of bullshit that defines the concept and analyzes the applications of bullshit in the context of communication. The author argues that bullshit is speech intended to persuade without regard for truth, and that bullshitters are more dangerous than liars because they don't care about the truth at all.

Best of all, the book itself is a masterful example of bullshit. It is not a book that will teach you anything about bullshit, but rather show you how much bullshit there is in the world of philosophy. It deliberately violates the author's own standards of clarity, rigor, and honesty. He does not offer any practical advice or solutions on how to deal with bullshit, or how to avoid becoming a bullshitter oneself. In the process, he contradicts himself, he repeats himself, he bores himself, but it is still enjoyable.

Even without knowing the author, I can identify the author is a highly educated person. But please don't be intimidated by author's career in academic. Just read this book alone we can have a glimpse of author's mind. The descriptions are so pristine and sharp reflects author's mind, for example you will learn to distinct between bullshit and lie. But then the average rating of this book when I read it is pretty low (3.50) and some reviewers cannot determine to like it or not, so I wonder why.

I want to propose a hypothesis: the readers (unconsciously) feel the book has a lot of nonsense. Yes, the book that discussing about bullshit is dragging the readers with a lot of hot-air tenses/paragraphs. This book has both qualities: an enlightening work with a lot of bullshits. Some people rate based on the nonsense content what do you expect for the majority of this book, full illuminating knowledge in each tense? , some people rate based on the knowledge gems in the book.

I enjoyed reading this book, and I imagine the author enjoyed and had fun writing this book.

ADDITION: I choose this book as the most fun read for year 2016.

Hey! Nice to read my own review from 2019 on this book. It seems there were far too many words that I could not understand. That’s not the case now. Progress! I am keeping my rating the same but with a much deeper understanding of the subject matter. Frankfurt’s important essay on bullshit is one that I believe to be crucial reading, but one that also meanders quite a bit. At its core, it’s a topic that many philosophers touch on at some point or another, using slightly different words and producing slightly different hues. Good faith, virtue, honesty, sophism, whatever you want to say. Here is the key portion of the essay:

“Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. 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.”

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[2019 Review]

I can't help but to feel terrified when I pick up a work of philosophy such as this one - there are way too many words I can't understand, the concepts are blurry, and I constantly have to go back and re-read the previous paragraph. But with this one, it is worth it. The distinction between lies and bullshit is absolutely real, and it is playing itself out in society over and over again.

9/22/2024 addendum: Another important book one should add to your "TBR" list prior to November...

Due to a politically apathetic populace, a Democratic party so intent on electing the first woman president that it completely overlooked and ignored a largely white working-class rural demographic that was---at one point---its own base, and a Republican party so overrun with politicians in the pockets of big-money special interests, an orange tiny-handed reality show host with a face permanently set in a scowl and/or in the throes of chronic constipation was, amazingly, elected to the highest office in the U.S. government.

How this happened would probably take several “War and Peace”-length volumes to adequately dissect and explain, but suffice it to say that a significant portion of the explanation can be linked back to the fact that a large voting bloc of the American public simply grew sick and tired of all the bullshit.

This is why voters in 2016 were attracted to candidates like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump: nontraditional, irreverent, disinterested in playing by the rules.

Whereas Sanders had experience in Washington, D.C. and a lengthy tenure in both the House and Senate, his progressive Independent ideals that he maintained consistently for 30 years were refreshing to voters sick and tired of the flip-flopping of politicians in both parties based less on crises of conscience than on poll numbers and the amount of money they were receiving from special interest groups.

Whereas Trump had a history of being a showy billionaire whose only real talent apart from his self-fashioned “business deal negotiator extraordinaire” persona was perhaps his utterly shameless but brilliantly skillful self-promotion, voters seemed to like his no-nonsense “tell it like it is” anti-political correctness.

One candidate came across as genuine and authentic. The other was a spoiled rich kid with the vocabulary of a 12-year-old. One was honest, the other was a blatant bullshitter.

Ironically, the people who were tired of the bullshit of Washington, D.C. elected the bullshitter.

Go figure.

Now, thanks to President Trump, we are living in a post-truth world in which the very nature of truth and lies has seemingly been altered at the molecular level and rearranged. As someone in Trump’s entourage recently said, there is no such thing, anymore, as facts.

Facts have become bullshit and bullshit has become truth.

This may seem like some incomprehensibly insane alternate dimension plot of the TV show “Fringe”, but it makes complete sense after reading Harry G. Frankfurt’s book “On Bullshit”.

In his extremely short (a surprisingly deep 67 pages that even the notoriously bibliophobic Trump might actually be able to read if it weren’t so erudite and had pictures in it) dissertation on the definition and nature of bullshit, Frankfurt posits that most people incorrectly mistake lying with bullshit and vice versa. Bullshit’s relationship with truth and lies is not so easily apparent.

According to Frank, while similar and with often similar outcomes, lying and bullshitting are not the same.

Both actions stem from the truth and one’s relationship to it.

Liars respect the truth in that they, at least, acknowledge that something is true. A lie can’t be considered a lie if the liar doesn’t believe in the truth, which is the opposite of what he is trying to convey. “A person who lies,” writes Frankfurt, “is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. (p.56)”

Bullshitters, on the other hand, don’t give a shit if something is true or false. They simply want to convince everyone of their own perceived reality: “[The bullshitter] is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose. (p.56)”

When Trump tweeted that his inauguration had the largest attendance of any inauguration in history, despite all evidence to the contrary, he wasn’t lying. He was bullshitting. He didn’t care if his statement conformed to the truth. He was simply trying to convince everyone of the reality that he was seeing in his own mind, as opposed to the reality of Reality.

When Trump claimed that he won the popular vote, once one eliminated the five million or so “illegal” voters, he wasn’t lying. He was bullshitting. He couldn’t care less that his statements flew in the face of all evidence that voter fraud and malfeasance simply did not exist to the extent that he claimed. He was simply trying to convince everyone of his own reality.

Bullshitters like Trump are more dangerous than liars because liars can eventually be called out on their lies. At some point, a liar must admit defeat and acknowledge the very truth that they, in their hearts, know is true.

Bullshitters like Trump don’t need to admit defeat because they don’t care if what they are saying is true or not. They just need to say it loud enough and often enough that people become so inured to it that they eventually accept it as their own reality.

If Trump keeps bullshitting, and if enough people do nothing to countermand his bullshit---if his own party members cowtow to his every whim, if the media refuses to challenge him, if enough bored citizens sit around with their laissez faire “I don’t really follow politics” apathy and disinterest---the minority of those who refuse to buy his bullshit will be too powerless to stop him.

That’s no bullshit...

I can imagine a parallel universe where the Gideons pass this around instead of the Bible.

Short & sweet. Opens with the premise that “one of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes our share” (1). This is reminiscent of Sloterdijk’s notion of enlightened false consciousness:

Cynicism is enlightened false consciousness. It is that modernized, unhappy consciousness, on which enlightenment has labored both successfully and in vain. It has learned its lessons in enlightenment, but it has not, and probably was not able to, put them into practice. Well-off and miserable at the same time, this consciousness no longer feels affected by any critique of ideology; its falseness is already reflexively buffered.

Critique of Cynical Reason at 5. Works through definitional material, much of it comparative with related terms (‘humbug,’ ‘hot air,’ &c.) as well as dishonesty proper. It is RSB’s viramsata insofar as “the realms of advertising and or public relations, and the nowadays closely related realm of politics, are replete with instances of bullshit so unmitigated that they can serve among the most indisputable and classic paradigms of the concept” (22).

An anecdote of surly Wittgenstein taking issue with an improperly deployed simile leads to the inference that bullshit may be a form of discourse “unconnected to a concern with the truth” (30), as opposed to knowing misrepresentation. That is, Wittgenstein was troubled by “a description of a certain state of affairs without genuinely submitting to the constraints which the endeavor to provide an accurate representation of reality imposes” (32). It is a matter of “enjoying a certain irresponsibility” (37), which implies a sort of ethical analysis.

BS is likened to “bluff” (46), and then the argument contends that “although it is produced without concern for the truth, it need not be false. The bullshitter is faking things. But this does not mean that he necessarily gets them wrong” (48). The liar by contrast “is unmistakenly concerned with truth-values. In order to invent a lie at all, he must think he knows what is true” (51), which is Kant’s antecedent position of choice, as I recall it. For the bullshitter, “the truth-values of his statements are of no central importance” (55)—it is the rhetorical performance that matters. Anyway, Fareed Zakaria thought this text applied very much to Trump back before the awful election. No doubt there.