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| On Bullshit | | Date Created: Apr 18, 2005, 10:20 PM |
No bull. That's the title. No Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt.
About the Author:
Harry G. Frankfurt, renowned moral philosopher, is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University. His books include The Reasons of Love (Princeton), Necessity, Volition, and Love, and The Importance of What We Care About.
67 very small and short pages long, it's supposed to be based on a lecture given at an academic convention. But maybe that's bullshit. Buying and reading this would suggest you've been bullshitted. Frankfurt defines his subject matter in classic philosophical and academic terms throwing in some great words like "procrustean" and "pleonastic", but you get the distinct impression as you read it that it's a load of bullshit. It even meets the author's definition of not quite humbug, not quite lying, not a bull session, and not quite bluffing.
"Why is there so much bullshit? Of course it is impossible to be sure that there is relatively more of it nowadays than at other times...Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about...The contemporary proliferation of bullshit also has deeper sources, in various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality, and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are...Facts about ourselves are not peculiarly solid and resistant to skeptical dissolution. Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial -- notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit."
So if you want to support a bullshitter, buy this book. Or you could give it to someone who deserves it...
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