Straight up philosophical musing about the nature of BS, without a trace of irony or snark. This was a brief essay, made into a smart little hardback pocket book for some inexplicable reason. Harry argues that those who simply do not care about the truth, and are most practiced in this art, are able to turn it to their advantage (this is in vogue today, ala George Santos and a former president creating a new world out of the lust of their hearts). Outright lying is rare, argues Frankfort, since it carries risk of exposure and humiliation. But the BS master runs amuck, confident and free. Lord, please let this pass, turn the hearts of your people to a love for truth. A friend at work gave me this tiny tome, which had the pleasant unintended outcome of assisting my annual reading goal after a slow start this year.

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.

Šūdas. Čia šūdas, ne knyga. Pinigų švaistymas visiems:

1) valstybei (per kultūros tarybą finansuotas leidimas);
2) spaustuvei (kodėl reikėjo ~2000 žodžių ilgio esė sudėti į „knygą“, su 30 pt dydžio šriftu, lyg būtų skirta vaikučiams, dvigubais ar trigubais tarpais tarp eilučių, vidutiniškai 20 žodžių per puslapį!?);
3) pirkėjams (nes čia net ne apie šūdmalą kūrinys!).

Paskutinė dalis papiktino mane labiausiai. Šūdmala lietuvių kalboje tipiškai yra ne šūdo, nesąmonių kalbėjimas, o kažkokio veiksmo darymas (tipiškai prastai, beprasmiškai). Dėl to pavadinimas tiesiog meluoja. Meluoja ir visas knygos turinys.

Žodžiu, jei įdomi filosofija apie blevyzgas, pezalus - neskaitykite šios knygos, nes yra kitų ir yra geresnių, tikrų knygų, ne tokių kūrybiškų lėšų įsisavinimų.
O jei įdomi filosofija apie darbą ir jo prasmę - tuo labiau neskaitykite.

Aš papiktintas. :-D

I hate to say this... but this book was sad. It was a C+ college paper at best, where the topic had potential and the author failed to go anywhere or make any reasonable conclusions, or really, even come to a deinition of Bullshit (and the part about men bullshitting and women henning was SUCH a stretch and I think was contradictory to the rest of the "argument")... He compares it to humbug, but not to exaggeration, and then pulls the most irrelevant literary topics to be discussed.

If you really want to read it, download it. The book is barely bigger than my palm and still less than 100 pages.

and PS, the summary of this book is much better than the book. If it were written like the above it would have been more interesting.

Nuostabus filosofinis veikalas. Patariu perskaityti visiems savigalbos popieriukų skaitytojams - gal suvoksite, kokią šūdmalą, ar tiksliau tariant, oro pardavinėjimą skaitote ir kad tik švaistote savo brangų laiką bei paleidžiate jį vėjais.

When setting out to read a scholarly philosophical work on the nature of "bullshit," I expected some degree of humor. But I thought that this humor would solely come from the process of reading a boring essay where I happen to get to read the word bullshit regularly. But this essay was funny, like really really funny. At first I thought it was unintentional, but as I went along I started thinking that it was just too perfectly crafted to be unintentional humor. And yet, at the same time, Frankfurt elucidates a really import feature of human communication. The conceptual issues surrounding the nature of bullshit end up being far more important than you ever imagined.

This was a fantastic little book, and I promise, I'm not bullshitting you when I say that.

Wow, this was terrible. I should have listened to the other reviewers. Frankfurt spent a good deal of time just deciding what "bullshit" is. I hope he never tries to write a dictionairy. We'd have international ink shortages before he made it through the As. "Asshole" would probably hang him up for volumes.

This was a quick read. Frankfurt starts by explaining why Bullshit has become so rampant. He blamed the proliferation of bullshit on the growing level of scepticism towards realistic knowledge of facts or evidence. This scepticism, he argues, has made people increasingly disinterested in identifying facts, and even falsehood.

As a concept, bullshit is difficult to explain succinctly. Because there's no universally accepted meaning of the word. Furthermore, what bullshit represent is difficult to pinpoint especially because there are myriad of words or phrases in use that seems to be confused with Bullshit. But Frankfurt did a wonderful job by explaining and comparing and contrasting Bullshit with such confusing terms like lying, humbug, bluffing, etc. Bullshitting is faking things. The bullshitter makes general claims with an intended falsehood rather than being particular. The bullshit art is about misrepresenting oneself with the intention to deceive his listener to gain a specific purpose. The person telling a bullshit knows the listener is disinterested in the truth or the falsehood, so the intent is to achieve a general purpose of deception.

It would be fair to say that this brief philosophical treatise on lies that are only peripherally lies is completely full of shit. Funny in places, erroneous in others, this tiny essay put me to sleep three times while revealing nothing--not even a fair definition of terms--about its subject. Yawn.

If you can get through this without a dictionary, you are a professor. I just took to circling the words and sighing and looking them up in a fell swoop at the end. So much on bullshit vs. humbug, that he lost me. Also it seemed to be a meta essay, like philosophical bullshitting about bullshitting. I encourage someone to create at least three one man shows from this text. Here are some great ideas:

a) Being Harry G. Frankfurt writing this book.
b) Three different people attempting to read it a la the three bears from Goldilocks.
c) Someone on a desert island with only this book.

"Pleonastic" was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Kant said that Hume had awoken him from his ‘dogmatic slumbers’. “Bullshit” managed to put me to sleep. One expects so much from such a well-known philosopher like Frankfurt, but this is so dry and uninspiring. Somewhere along the road, we have to start realizing that having clarity of thought and excellent reasoning powers do not necessarily mean that you are saying something important or meaningful. The best thing about the book was that it’s only 67 pages long. The worst thing was that I had to pay for it.

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