by Laurence Peterson
When I started as a Monday columnist at 3 Quarks Daily in July of last year, my debut piece consisted of an updated and revised version of a longer, never published essay I had written pretty much at the time the late Princeton Professor Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit appeared in book form in 2005. Back then, literary references to bullshit almost always took on a still cheeky, irreverent undertone at the very least, and I adopted the sentiment in the beginning and conclusion of my 3QD contribution. But now, I will suggest, bullshit is serious business.
Before I elaborate on that claim, allow me to, as concisely as I can, summarize the argument I put forth in the July article. Frankfurt made the case that the essence of bullshit involved, more than anything else, a distinction between bullshit and lying: that the bullshitter, unlike the liar, does not misrepresent the truth; s/he merely adopts an attitude of indifference towards it. Clearly, this definition allows us to appreciate the vast latitude that allows the bullshitter to, if you will allow me to use a word that has become fashionable in certain circles recently, “weave” between layers of reality (and, of course unreality) in a far less restricted way than is generally afforded the potential liar. But from the moment I read Frankfurt’s essay, I thought his definition left something utterly essential out of a proper conception of bullshit, something whose incorporation into discussions of the notion of bullshit would go a long way towards accounting for the visceral emotional states that tend to accompany its appearance in ordinary usage. And it would confront something Frankfurt didn’t even seem to believe constituted a problem, namely, what the phenomenon of bullshit revealed about social relations in which employing bullshit often made so much sense.
What I thought Frankfurt was missing was, going beyond the mere intention of the bullshitter, a place for a sentiment on the part of those subjected to bullshit that no effective means exist to challenge the statement, implied proposition or even deed being expressed, put forward, implied, relied upon, or whatever by the bullshitter. Inclusion of this place in the account would, in turn, shed light on the social relations in which lack of means to such challenges can be enforced in the first place. It would also account for the unique sense of frustration, and even rage that characterizes the experience of being, or at least feeling, bullshitted. Frankfurt’s definition didn’t seem to me to imply or address any of these things in an important way. Yet it remained, as far as I could see, the sole, almost canonical reference in literary and philosophical discussions of bullshit, even after twenty years. Read more »