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    On Bullshit
    On Bullshit
    On Bullshit
    Audiobook1 hour

    On Bullshit

    Written by Harry G. Frankfurt

    Narrated by George Wilson

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Written by Harry G. Frankfurt, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University-one of the world's most influential moral philosophers-On Bullshit has to be heard to be believed! This best-seller describes the unique situation in our culture in which the truth is overwhelmed by wave after wave of nonsense and misrepresentation. Faced with no clearly articulated theory of this condition, what function it serves, or what it means to us, Frankfurt enters his own brilliant theory.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMar 10, 2008
    ISBN9781436101028
    On Bullshit

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    Reviews for On Bullshit

    3.5/5

    638 ratings37 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Sincerity without reference to objective truth is still bullshit.

      That was my takeaway from this succinct philosophical read.
    • 3/5
      This is an interesting little book, but it felt like it stopped just as it was getting interesting.
    • 1/5
      Been meaning to review this little free library find. Areg and I were hoping for a quick, funny read on a long drive...instead, this is a dense, academic, dry-as-the-desert essay that made no effort to meat lay readers halfway and did not lend itself to reading aloud. I had a little bit of a sneaking suspicion that the joke is on the reader--is this essay, perhaps, itself just bullshit? I can't be bothered to find out.
    • 4/5
      I first read this book a little over ten years ago. I can't recall what I took from it the first time around, but I'm glad I found it on my shelf today. It's a great, short read about a subject that's all around us.
    • 4/5
      Early in December on of my goodreads friends recommended this book, I finally got a copy today and enjoyed reading it very much. Bullshit, humbug, post truth and fake news are very much in my mind lately as are politicians and hucksters. This book won't exactly protect you from said Ad men or politicians but at least you'll know where they are coming from.
    • 4/5
      A beautiful little book I read semi-regularly to remind myself how much I love philosophy.

      This is a book that endeavours to understand the concept of bullshit without emitting any in itself. In a different context it could have been a top-tier Medium post given its brevity and clarity.

      The book does something very simple: It attempts to distinguish the difference between bullshit and lying, given that both things are utterances that are untrue. The conclusion is ultimately that a falsehood is something the speaker knows to be true, whereas the bullshitter doesn't care at all whether the statement is true or false, it is being said for reasons thta are completely orthogonal to whether the thing is true or not (to be pretentious, or to simply be a voice in the room, for example.)

      The book begins questioning, although it doesn't come to any grand conclusion, whether a person who _doesn't care_ about the truth/falsity of their statement is morally worse than someone who is very concerned with misleading the listenever away from a truth. The latter at least is concerned with the truthness of a thing even if they have a different agenda.
      The book also starts to but doesn't really go into why our society is so tolerant of bullshit, which is somewhat of a bitter read now that we've allowed people to take ultimate power in politics who everyone, _everyone_, knew were only performers and had no interest in all about the truths and falsenesses of running a government.

      In that way this book is stilll deeply relevant, even moreso now than it was when it was written. It is unfortunate the author decided to leave certain areas unexplored; the author clearly has the authorship skill to do it justice even if the book would have become larger and not the accessible handbook that it is right now.
    • 5/5
      A narrow topic but expertly done and succinct to boot.
    • 5/5
      A delightful little treatise on the semantics of the word and how it differs from other words used to describe mendacity. The author, a Princeton Professor, argues that there are key differences between a lie and bullshit. A liar and a truth-teller play on different sides of the same game. A liar must acknowledge that truth exists in order to defy it. A bullshitter, on the other hand, has no interest in the truth and is only interested in furthering his own agenda. He could just as likely tell a truth without knowing it as a lie. If and unnamed American president were to swear to the Canadian prime minister that something is true that he doesn't know for sure just to win an argument, then that president would be a bullshitter. That's a pretty poor example, though, as no American president would ever do such a thing.
    • 5/5
      "One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share."In “On Bullshit” by Harry G. Frankfurt"’a person who undertakes to bullshit his way through has much more freedom. His focus is panoramic rather than particular. He does not limit himself to inserting a certain falsehood at a specific point, and thus he is not constrained by the truths surrounding that point or intersecting it. He is prepared to take the context as well, so far as need requires. This freedom from the constraints to which the liar must submit does not necessarily mean, of course, that his task is easier than the task of the liar. But the mode of creativity upon which it relies is less analytical and less deliberate than that which is mobilized in lying. It is more expansive and independent with more spacious opportunities for improvisation, color, and imaginative play. This is less a matter of craft than of art. Hence the familiar notion of the 'bullshit artist'"In “On Bullshit” by Harry G. FrankfurtThe current state-of-affairs (I won't name any more names) is not b... s... It is elephant shit! Or is it chicken shit? I know! It's Brontosaurus shit! Let's start by dropping the euphemisms. Not bullshit, not alternative facts, nor post-truth - but lies. Lies, lies, lies, lies. That's all we know how to do. The difference is important between a liar and a bullshitter. All politicians for instance, bend or interpret their own version of the truth but it is possible for us to take a view on their reasoning and motives. A bullshitter like Trump, Johnston, Socrates (a former Portuguese Prime-Minister) literally couldn't care less and will say absolutely anything to anyone to get what they want and pivot 180º in an instant. Whatever it is you wish to measure, intelligence or other key parameters, half the population is below average. Yes, I know the difference between mean and median. Many are simply not capable of the intellectual rigor required to analyze carefully the output of our former Prime-Minister Socrates. Like Trump, they are at the mercy of the last thing they heard that appealed to their prejudices or their emotions. It used to be, in the US, in Portugal, that party higher-ups would limit the choices faced in general elections to two candidates who were not too far from the middle ideologically, and not terribly incompetent, in general. That system has broken down, and wealthy individuals who buy themselves a place in the spotlight can overcome party leadership and wrest the nomination away from party regulars. I read a story a day or two ago pitting Donald Trump against The Rock in a presidential preference poll. I better retire to a desert island then, because the phenomenon I accurately describe above, is not going anywhere. At least not unless and until the population wakes up. Which is unlikely, as long as all they do is watch TV all night.I don't know what the fix is, but if it doesn't come soon, Trump and Socrates could be the tip of the iceberg. Mass and social media are competing with each other to feed the monster. I am not optimistic.Most of the problem is short attention spans and poor education. People can't be bothered doing the laborious reading to find out the facts. Part of it is the fall in the quality of journalism. When did you last read an in-depth article in a journal on the one thousand-year history of relations between Ukraine and Russia? Or a comparison of those relations to those between Scotland and England, for instance? When did you see an analysis of the vital importance of Sevastopol in Russian history? Without that kind of detailed historical background no intelligent judgments can be made about current events. Nobody apparently has time for it, not even journalists who are paid to do it. A tiny handful of academics are privy to the facts, most other people are wallowing in ignorance. The other major problem is the need to simplify in order to get your argument across within very limited space. This means making a selection of facts, and leaving other facts out. Almost all arguments are between two people adducing different sets of facts to support their case. The facts may all be correct. But there are in a sense two "alternative sets of facts." Each person is emphasizing the facts that support their case. Nobody is lying. They are merely leaving things out. They are not giving the whole picture. This degradation of the level of journalism and political argument is simply the consequence of the world we live in: no time, no appetite for reading in depth, too much distraction, and who cares? Nobody can be bothered reading a ten-page refutation of a politician's stupid argument: so why not just insult him instead? It's quicker. It gets more hits and likes. More people understand it. It gives instant satisfaction. That's the age we live in. Heinlein used to say: “What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? […] Get the facts!” In this day and age, the question is not how to get the facts, but the get the “right” facts…Bottom-Line: I am going to try to give up bullshit now. But first I must quit bullshitting.NB: I think there is only one solution to this problem: make sure a sufficient number of the population receive an education in enlightenment values. Including such novel things as:- Absolute truth exists;- Striving for the truth has intrinsic (and perhaps ultimate) moral virtue;- Lying & deception is bad;- Discourse & debate is how to resolve problems;And I'd add for good measure:- Life doesn't revolve around politics, go out and have fun.That's the only way to do this without falling back to some sort of explicit class system which denies the "little people" from political engagement or visibility in the press. We quite correctly realised a wee while ago that such an authoritarian measure is unacceptable. Post-modernism has a lot to answer for.
    • 4/5
       A short treatise on the philosophy of language, in this sense, on the philosophical importance of words like "bullshit," and "humbug." Read it in one sitting.
    • 4/5
      Entertaining, original, and pretty useful, if a little meandering. Pretty short, too.
    • 3/5
      Just about as good, as illuminating, and as dryly humorous as a philosophical treatise called "On Bullshit" should be. An exercise in ironic description, Frankfurt takes pains to distinguish bullshitting from ordinary lying, though his book is often as good as the sources he picks. Longfellow and St. Augustine and telling anecdotes about Wittgenstein seem like good sources, but he leans on the OED much more than is advisable. c'mon Harry, you're a professor! You should know that that's a freshman blunder!But the book itself, whose most important argument might be that liars, despised though they are, have more respect for truth than mere bullshit artists, who tend to disregard the distinction between truth and falsehood more-or-less entirely, is both interesting and thought provoking. This one was written back in 2005, but you could say that it's really more relevant than ever now that you-know-who is leading the free world. A fun, recommendable read, but it might make you feel a bit nauseous for reasons that the author couldn't have foreseen.
    • 1/5
      Typical philosopher's writing dissecting the minutia. Really wasn't worth the time or price. Thought it might be a better essay.
    • 2/5
      Oh this was very dry and rather pompous. The author likened B.S. to "Humbug" and expounded on the writings of others. As it was, I'm not sure what the author was trying to prove.

      The narrator read the book with a flat and boring voice. What struck me as odd was the fact that the narrator is known as a founder of Broadway Local, "an improvisational comedy group", so I was expecting a more interesting fluctuating voice.

      All I can say is: Humbug, don't bother......
    • 4/5
      Boy I hope this book was meant as a tongue-in-cheek essay, because that's the way I took it. It was simply hilarious to me, and incidentally smacked of truth and definitional accuracy. Frankfurt would be the most double-edged appointee for creating a dictionary. On the one hand, his ruminations would mean it would take him 6,000 years to write, but my oh my, would it be absolutely precise!
    • 2/5
      This is a fairly dry academic essay (or was Frankfurt trying to overplay that a little for comic effect? If so, I'm afraid he failed) packaged as a fun little volume. It seems like that should have made it easier to read (breaking up the text into smaller pieces), but in fact it felt harder: the book says "light & easy", but it isn't. (Someone call Marshall McLuhan!)I wanted to like it, but in truth: I really don't, much. But it's such a quick read that if the impulse to try it hits you: go for it! You can't lose much time to the endeavour.
    • 2/5
      Short as hell, but a bit of a yawner.
    • 3/5
      I read this (very) little book some years ago, when it first came out, and confess I gained little from it. Its subject matter does, however, have relevance to the book of my own I'm currently working on, so I decided to reread it. I enjoyed it far more this time around, although, with the exception of one or two vivid insights (the analysis of the motives and nature of the bull session I found especially valuable, while the dismissal of the fundamentals of poststructuralism in just a few paragraphs at the end [without even naming it:] was masterly), my enjoyment was more at the level of entertainment than anything else. There were longueurs, too: the protracted definitional discussions (is bullshit really the same as humbug, or is there a subtle yet integral difference?) are plainly a lot more important to Frankfurt than they are to me. Yet I did like the tone of the book, with its occasional reminders that Frankfurt, even while being serious, isn't taking himself too seriously: "The notion of carefully wrought bullshit involves, then, a certain inner strain." Quite.
    • 3/5
      Common sense mixed in with some interesting thoughts and a provocative title. Ho-hum.
    • 3/5
      This light book is a characterization of the nature of bullshitting, in contrast of lying. It makes a clear distinction between the two, although it perhaps fails to make a good definition which is easily usable to distinguish between them. The proposed one depends on the intention of the liar/bullshitter, and this can be a hard thing to know.The book doesn't go farther than that. I really missed some analysis on the implications of bullshitting or how to deal with it, for instance.At the end of the assay, the author asks himself if there's more bullshitting nowadays than there used to be. It mostly leaves this question open, and just comments it briefly. He concludes it does and thinks this may be because our concept of truth is different, and there's an "skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality".I think there's another important point the author doesn't consider. Frankfurt talks very much about the truth of facts. But most statements are made about the relationships about these facts. This different concept of truth Frankfurt mentions, has a lot of importance here. But, also, nowadays the analysis these relationships can get very complicated and only in the reach of specialists. Additionally, the discussion of a very particular subject can have many levels and registries (academic, media, public....). This environment is a breeding ground for bullshit.(I try to review books in the same language I read them, but I lack the linguistic tools to write a nice review in English. Sorry for that)
    • 5/5
      I don't know how he does it. (10/10)
    • 4/5
      A Bush aide, probably Karl Rove himself, famously called the reality-based community a thing of the past: "we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out." This is the art of bullshitting, as defined in Harry Frankfurter's too short essay.In the current "He said, she said", "teach the controversy" and "Lets leave it at that" media environment, truth is the first casualty. Slain not by its old opponent, the lie but by bullshit. A lie takes some effort to craft and maintain. Bullshitters don't care about cleaning up the mess they create. They don't care about the truth or the lie. The only object they have is to bullshit themselves past their audience's expectations so that they accept the bullshitter's consequences. TARP and the debt ceiling debate are recent examples of the deployment of massive bullshit. Bullshit is the opposite of the Popperian falsifiability. The bullshitter gets away with his act because revealing the truth takes too much time and effort. As long as the bullshitter refrains from complying with a test ("Hic Rhodos, hic salta."), he can continue in his anti-Wittgensteinian path. Wittgenstein proclaimed: "About what one can not speak, one must remain silent." The bullshitter answers: "How dare you!" The only solution is to reinstate the fairness doctrine on TV.To increase the incendiary notion of this booklet, I wish the author had applied his concept to the fertile fields of bullshit. Religion, the revealed truth that is anything but the truth. The stories of the liar-Baron Münchhausen and Joseph Smith cry out for a profound bullshit analysis. Advertising with its mantra "if you have nothing to say, sing it" and politics would be prime candidates as well. Keeping the text to his short foundational essay is quite lazy.
    • 4/5
      I purchased this little book in a used bookstore, simply because of the title. I'm not a big non-fiction reader, but how could I pass up a book titled "On Bullshit"? I really enjoyed Frankfurt's essay, and it definitely made me think about the current use of some words, and what they really mean. I'm not sure if his analysis of the term bullshit was supposed to be amusing, but I found it to be. This is definitely one of the more unique books in my collection and I'm glad I found it!
    • 4/5
      A tongue-in-cheek investigation of the phenomenon of bullshit. So, so clever.
    • 3/5
      The first time I sat down with On Bullshit, the book's tiny size fooled me into assuming the essay inside was a light read. When I found myself halfway through but without much interest in what I'd read, I regrouped. I moved to a room with fewer distractions, turned back to the first page and approached the work with a little more respect. And an hour later, I finished Frankfurt's readable and insightful (albeit at times tedious) thesis on the definition and motivation for contemporary society's BS. I was especially drawn to his deconstruction of lying vs BS-ing (lying recognizes the truth -- and then ignores it; BS is sloppier). And the most useful revelation: "[BS] is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about." I do regret that the author didn't adapt the essay to a general audience by including a preface and some background about the people he quotes. And the publisher could have assisted the reader by formatting the text with some space on the page, or a chapter break, in the several places where Frankfurt makes sudden transitions. Overall, a recommended read on a growing aspect of communication.
    • 4/5
      ''One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit.'' This opening phrase of Frankfurt's essay can well become as famous as some openings that have acquired myth status (I think of García Márquez in Cien Años de Soledad, or (why not?) of Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto.) In this short essay, the emeritus moral philosopher at Princeton dissects the term, its meaning, its usage, the possible reasons for its widespread usage in contemporary society. And ends this brilliant essay in an equaly brilliant way: ''Our nature are, indeed, elusively insubstancial (...). And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit''. No further words needed.
    • 2/5
      This was a very short and light-hearted essay, which was a little disappointing. Frankfurt is able to only bring up the subject of Bullshit before his essay comes to an end. What he is able to do is express how we all use bull-shit but we do so without a proper definition, sadly he doesn't have a definition for you until half way through.As a user of bullshit, I am perfectly fine not having an exact definition to go by, it leaves more lee-way for its use how-ever and when-ever necessary.
    • 2/5
      Two words: it's bullshit.
    • 5/5
      Harry Frankfurt's "On Bullshit" is a fun, light-hearted little essay, and serves as a good introduction to the concepts of logic and reason to those who weren't philosophy majors. I'd recommend "Crimes Against Logic" by Jamie Whyte to anyone who enjoyed this book, and also to those who were disappointed by it.
    • 4/5
      A book (more like a hardcover pamphlet) that tries to provide a theory for BS.While I like the concept (and the attempt to fill the vaccuum that I didn't even know existed), the book seemed a bit more pretentious than it needed to be.Heck, it could've been boiled down to: "Someone who shovels BS is worse than a person who lies because a liar has a relationship with the truth"