This book is bullshit. Philosophical bullshit, but bullshit.
Harry G. Frankfurt’s book, On Bullshit, is an account of truth, lies, language, and, of course, bullshit. In this slim volume, Frankfurt compiles definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary and scraps from other philosophers, like St. Augustine and Ludgwig Wittgenstein, to determine just what, exactly, bullshit is.
It might be a stroke of genius that the book itself feels like a joke, an exercise in bullshit. I think everyone has some intuitive understanding of the core concept, so to spend 80 pages defining it in grandiose terms and elevating it to the status of a high concept, with lengthy discussions, definitions, and meanderings, feels like an exercise in enacting the concept itself. It reminds me of J.L. Austin’s book How to Do Things with Words, which demonstrates locutionary and illocutionary acts and performs the concepts in question (he does do things with words, after all!).
After providing a methodology for his exploration, Frankfurt then goes on to discuss the definitions for a range of words that mean, essentially, the same thing as bullshit. He begins with “humbug,” noting that the words are not interchangeable but that the difference is essentially one of gentility (i.e. it is more polite and less intense than to say humbug, balderdash, claptrap, hokum, bunkum, imposture, quackery, etc.). When considering the definition offered in another essay, written by Max Black, called “On the Prevalence of Humbug”: humbug is “deceptive misrepresentation, short of lying, especially by pretentious word or deed, of somebody’s own thoughts, feelings, or attitudes.”
At its core, the book is an exploration of what kind of speech act bullshit is, as opposed to a regular lie. Frankfurt notes that bullshit is “deceptive misrepresentation” since it is designed or intended to deceive. It’s not a mistake; it is deliberate. The intention to deceive is critical, which then means that the standard for assessment is a comparison to the speaker’s state of mind: their motives and the properties of the statement work in conjunction. So, both humbug (b.s.) and lying are at least in this the same: the speaker’s mind intends to deceive.
Frankfurt then tries to add nuance to the discussion of a lie. For instance, if someone knows they have five dollars in their pocket and they claim to have ten, they have lied about the reality of things. He gives a survey of some other accounts of lying which suggest that someone could lie even if the statement is true. Once again, he relates this to the speaker’s state of mind: they think they are not reporting the truth but actually they are. For instance, they imagine they have five dollars in their pocket, claim to have ten, but then actually do have ten. As long as the speaker believes the statement is false, it is a lie—even if the statement is factually true.
If the utterer’s heart is in the right place, there are other characteristics that must be considered. Humbug is “short of lying” in that it has some characteristics of lies, but not all of them. Returning to Max Black’s definition that humbug appears “pretentious by word or deed,” it alerts Frankfurt’s ear to the fact that “pretentious bullshit” is a common phrase. He justifies this connection with the idea that pretentiousness is the motive of the utterer, not the nature of the utterance. So, bullshit need not necessarily always be pretentious, and again it depends on intention.
Frankfurt really targets the notion that the perpetrator of humbug is misrepresenting himself and most of the book’s details can be traced back to that idea. A bullshitter misrepresents their state of mind (e.g. pretending to have a desire or feeling that isn’t there), but they might also misrepresent something else in addition. He misrepresents what he is talking about, but also his own state of mind towards it. Frankfurt claims that that is unavoidable, which seems a fundamental distinction between lies and bullshit. The other consideration is the purpose of lying or the purpose of “talking shit.” A liar might misrepresent what is in his mind in order to persuade someone to do something. A bullshitter might have other motives, like experimentation (more on that later).
One of the things that defines bullshit, irrespective of its truth value, is its shape. A lie, for example, might be well-crafted in order to be disseminated. Bullshit is supposedly not well-crafted. It does not have thoughtful attention to detail. It is subject to impulse and whim. If anything, Frankfurt notes, bullshit is an indifference to how things really are. Indifference is not the same, quite, as the well-structured lie. Yet, Frankfurt notes that in practice there are all kinds of bullshit that exist in marketing and politics that are extremely calculated. Both liars and bullshit craftsman are a little lax, but are both trying to get away with something.
Thus, we continue.
Frankfurt gives an anecdote, possibly apocryphal, of Wittgenstein speaking to his friend Pascal, who had had a tonsillectomy. Pascal says she felt like a dog that had been run over, and reportedly Wittgenstein says she doesn’t know what a dog that’s been run over feels like. There’s a certain consistency in truth-value that Wittgenstein demands. The whole exercise makes me think back to J.L. Austin’s notion of statements that, when spoken, might be true but lack context and thus misfire. Frankfurt suggests that this may be an instance of bullshit—of speculation, perhaps. (Or, as Maebe Fünke says refers to it in Arrested Development: “I was just specu-lying.”) Elsewhere, Frankfurt suggests that bullshit is more like a bluff than a lie. A liar deliberately suggests a falsehood, but bluffing is not false so much as fake. Bullshit isn’t false, it is phoney—and that which is not genuine doesn’t mean it’s less true. Essentially, again, it all comes down to the idea of intention.
Much is made of this Wittgenstein story, but what I find more important is the notion of sincerity. Part of what Frankfurt suggests is that bull has a different relationship to sincerity than a lie. A bullshit artist might not be sincere, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are wrong. If bullshit is sincere, Frankfurt says, it means that it cannot be produced inadvertently. One cannot be inadvertently insincere. Thus, they might simply put forward something that is phoney in intention, but qualitatively the same as the real deal (i.e. fake it ‘till you make it!). A bullshitter can be fake while not getting things wrong.
Perhaps one of the more useful explorations of language is when Frankfurt discusses the idea of “bull sessions”---that is, informal discussions, often among men (though Frankfurt notes that this gendered aspect seems unnecessary). What is of value is the discussion that bull sessions are characterized as being “not for real.” The circumstances are such that people do not speak openly if they think they’ll be taken too seriously, so bull sessions allow them to see how it feels to say things and discover how others respond without having to commit to their purported position. It’s an experimental approach. Thus, if we think about the purpose of a lie, it seems to be to convince. If we think about the purpose of bullshit, it is to explore, to test, to experiment.
To me, there’s the important component that a bullshitter is an artist of sorts. They do not care about the relationship between truth. The truth value of statements are not of interest to him. He is not trying to report or conceal the truth. As a result, a bullshit artist can be more free to play.
All of this is a little abstract. Especially since our world seems to be full of bullshit, there’s the question of why all of this matters. Frankfurt notes that there is a higher propensity for bullshit today because people are required to speak on any number of topics while lacking the expertise. We are all compelled towards discourse we cannot actually be a part of in a meaningful way. In that respect, much of this review is probably bullshit—I’m just trying to give an account, fake my expertise, and explain ideas I’m trying to grapple with.
I think the conversation could be continued, actually, with the full implications of intentionality. Modern discourse, especially in social justice spaces, has taken an anti-intentionalist approach to language. Misfires of language (e.g. making a racist remark) is judged by its impact rather than the intention guiding it. At one point, Frankfurt comments on how we are much harsher in doling out consequences to liars than to bullshitters. I wonder how this rubric might be applied to mismatches of language and intention.
When closing the book, Frankfurt returns once again to the idea of sincerity and posits the issue that we cannot possibly be sincere because sincerity requires a degree of self-knowledge that we rarely, if ever, have. We cannot be sincere because we can’t isolate understanding of ourselves from our context. It’s a controversial claim to end the book on—if we can’t ground what we’re saying in our self-understanding, the idea of intentions, and the idea of motivations, the book seems to end on the note that everything is bullshit.
So, there we go. Everything is bullshit.
Happy reading, I guess?
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