Everyone lies, for many psychological reasons , it’s just a question of how, when and why , in this book Harry G. Frankfurt demonstrates, through argument and example, the difference between  lying  and  bullshit, A liar is the one who knows the truth but tell something else, A bullshitter "does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up to suit his purpose." This is a perfect description of politicians

While liars say things they know are untrue, bullshitters say whatever they think will work best and have no interest in whether their statements are true or not.



"Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about".

you know what they say “dance like nobody's watching” I feel like bullshitters/Liars and especially politicians hear this “lie like no one is fact-checking you” and the perfect example of pathological liar is Donald trump !

Yes, the subject is a funny word. But the text is dry, and the substance is suspect. Frankfurt spends most of his (admirably few) pages examining causes for bullshitting, in very dry and highly speculative fashion. While it is interesting to read exactly how "bullshit" is different from "nonsense," "lies," and "deception," the term can be used to mean just those things. Like other popular swears, it's a broad word. Frankfurt is more interested in a phenomenon that he believes can only be described under this word, though, which hurts a treatise that ought to encapsulate the word entirely. This book could easily be used to condemn all art and human emotion as "bullshit," and while that might make you or Mr. Frankfurt feel clever, it's not useful. His speculation on precisely what makes people bullshit is useful, though it misses the gravity of the biggest cause: that people don't care.

I feel like for a book on bullshit, it was way too short.

I picked this up because I had to teach my 14 year old how to bullshit her English essays. She was writing one or two word answers and getting B’s even though she’s basically the only kid who reads the entire book. I taught her how to fill a paragraph where a one word answer is technically correct but there’s a lot of room and you have to fill it because English teachers can be lazy.

At the request of someone here on GR (forgive me but I cannot remember who, I am sure you'll let me know in the comments though), I read this short masterpiece On Bullshit and thoroughly enjoyed it. As others on GR have remarked, we have entered into a political era in the US of pure, unadulterated bullshit with the election of Drumpf and so it is quite the timely read. Mr. Frankfurt starts by looking at dictionary definitions of "humbug" and "bull session" and compares them to the concept of bullshit: the line to be drawn semantically between lying and bullshitting is quite a convoluted one as it turns out. He has one animated story about a certain Pascal who is castigated by a certain Wittgenstein for using the phrase "I feel like a dog that got run over" as an example where W calls her out on bullshit. I thought that line was a bit thin and that expressions such as this are purely allegorical and do not really fall into the bullshit category and that Wittgenstein was annoying splitting hairs over it. The author also quotes the amazing Ezra Pound, where the poet does not want to be bullshitted. (I laughed out loud at that one.) But most importantly, just before the conclusion of this short 65-page essay, he makes a valid point that bullshitting is a greater enemy to the truth than lies - precisely because it is manipulative and never benevolent. Putting that in the perspective of the nightly flood of excrement on CNN and Fox seems very apt to me. The essay ends with a facetious but humorous point about all sincerity being bullshit. OK, that may be true, it does not undermine he previous points.

So, take a shot at this little marvel and see where you stand On Bullshit!
Thanks for all the comments and Likes! Who'd've thought that Bullshit could be so popular? Oh, I forgot about my CNN/Fox comment, of COURSE it is! :)
In case you missed it, Frankfurt published an article on Drumpf and bullshit in May 2016 in Time Magazine: here

Frankfurt discusses the difference between bullshit and lies. Lying is a conscious act of deception, while BSing is distinguished by its indifference to how things really are. The liar, in order to lie, must know what he thinks is true, whereas the BSer doesn’t care what is true. So in a sense bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

Frankfurt says that the reason BS is so common is because people are convinced that they are obligated to have opinions on everything, and so they pretend to understand issues they know very little about.

He goes on to suggest that one source of the influence of bullshit in public discourse comes from an attitude that rejects a concern with objective reality in favor of being true to ourselves. "Convinced that reality has no inherent nature, which he might hope to identify as the truth about things, [the individual] devotes himself to being true to his own nature." But what makes us think that our "true selves" are any more stable or determinate than facts about the world around us? It’s a good question, really.

“It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.”
― Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit



Sometimes what is natural still deserves a little study. What is exactly is bullshit? How is bullshit different from a lie? How is bullshit different than humbug? If these questions plague you or you are just seeking a philosopher's take on the nature, design, function, and theory of bullshit -- well do I have a book (a short book) for you.

In the current election year especially, this title deserves a bit more attention. Upon reflection, this book might suggest that Trump is, at heart, more of a bullshitter than a prevaricator. He isn't saying things he knowingly KNOWS false (although he probably does that too), but rather he just talks without knowing about the things he talks about.

I've got a good friend who is a ghostwriter for Trump. At dinner a few weeks ago, he suggested that most people underestimate just how little Trump actually knows. So perhaps, (and this is certainly no excuse and NO REASON to elect the man) Trump isn't a liar but a well-formed, well-practiced, toxic bullshit artist. He is just the guy on the corner selling bullshit. I guess, now that he looks to be almost unelectable, I'm more concerned really about the people standing in line STILL to buy some of that bullshit.

Frankfurt capitalizes on the potential for absurdity inherant in 'philosophical' texts. What philosophy sometimes comes down to, or rather, what critiqing it comes down to, is how well you can dissect what someone is actually saying, moving past all of the bullshit of language. The language used in this book is so dense at times that you might find it to be bullshit. The funny thing is, that's the point. He uses the language against itself. He describes how something can be bullshit if it sounds legit. More to the point, he proves that what may sound like bullshit is actually truth. Dig.

I found this tiny book both illuminating and useful when I first read it in 2005. Now, amidst the bullshit-crammed tweet storms of Dear Leader Trump, I find it central to understanding the devolution of our political discourse.

Frankfurt demonstrates, through argument and example, the difference between lying and bullshit: the liar knows what is true (or else he would not be lying), whereas the bullshitter cares nothing about truth or lies. The bullshitter really does not give a damn.

I find this distinction useful when dealing with any instance of political bloviating or religious propaganda. I used to look at each jeremiad as a fabric of lies, and I would isolate each untruthful or illogical thread, refuting and dismantling it bit by bit. This of course took up much of my time, which would be better spent writing Goodreads reviews or working on my novel.

But now, since reading Harry G. Frankfurt, I just recognize the thing for the pile of bullshit it is, sweep it up, and dump it in the trash. (Why the trash? Unlike other forms of shit, this shit does not make good fertilizer.)

Pretentious, tedious word play with a topic and title to guarantee more book sales than a bound essay would ever accrue on its own merits. Having been sprung from doing time in academia my tolerance for this type of entitled, 'more-intellectual-than-thou' pomposity has grown thin enough that I skimmed the last half of the essay and even that felt like too much attention.

Frankfurt's cleverness is drowned by his intellectual masturbation, he created a work more of bullshit that on bullshit: one wonders if that was the point? To take a scalpel to another writer's musing on 'humbug' but ignore exaggeration and deflection as illustrated by the 45th president of the US entirely seems to point to either his own self-delusion or that this essay is, in fact, a deliberate act of bullshit itself.

Regardless of intent, Frankfurt says nothing new and nothing not better and far more concisely (and amusingly) conveyed in stand-up comedy, decades ago, by the likes of George Carlin and Robin Williams.

I didn't finish the book, so my review is bullshit anyway.

As pleasant a rainy Saturday morning read it all in one sitting book as I can ever remember experiencing. You might suspect from the title that the overall purpose of the book is to in some way appeal to the readers' sense of humor, but it is quite serious. Not that things serious are not without their appeals to a healthy sense of humor.

Enthusiastically recommended.

A look at the BS we face everyday. We have all met a person who has to 'one up' everyone with their BS. The interesting thing that I have noticed is that people who like to BS a lot can't stand it if they think someone is trying to BS them; they become hyper sensitive to the BS of other people. Great book on a little examined subject.