by Steve Gimbel and Gwydion Suilebhan
Harry Frankfurt, who died of congestive heart failure this July, was a rare academic philosopher whose work managed to shape popular discourse. During the Trump years, his explication of bullshit became a much used lens through which to view Trump’s post-truth political rhetoric, eventually becoming deeply associated with liberal politics.
Ironically, the original target of Frankfurt’s argument was an earlier “post-truth” movement: postmodernism, which became the heart of liberal political correctness in the 1980s and 1990s. Interestingly, that shift from a liberal to a conservative target illustrates the way in which postmodern machinery has infiltrated politics.
On “On Bullshit”
Frankfurt had an illustrious career as a philosopher, but his immortality rests on a cute and clever argument he published in his most famous piece, “On Bullshit.” In it, Frankfurt distinguishes between lying and bullshitting. Liars intentionally deceive, believing they know the truth and working to keep ownership of it to themselves. Bullshitters, on the other hand, are perfectly happy to convey the truth… as long as doing so serves their pragmatic rhetorical goals. Bullshitters want you to believe something and are comfortable using either truth OR lies to shape your views.
Given that distinction, it seems at first glance that bullshitters are preferable to liars because they sometimes speak truthfully. In a clever twist, however, Frankfurt argues that bullshitters are actually worse than liars. While liars are wrong to try to deceive people, the fact that they hoard the truth for themselves illustrates that they understand and are committed to its value. Bullshitters, on the other hand—who treat truth and lies the same—deny the privileged status we ought to afford the truth. As such, “On Bullshit” makes clear, we overlook the danger of bullshitters at our peril.
During the Trump years, Frankfurt’s technical use of the otherwise crude term bullshit became the stuff of mainstream journalism. The application of Frankfurt’s argument to the claims of the former President appeared in discussions in the Washington Post, Atlantic, New Republic, Time, CNN, Vox, Daily Beast, and even Psychology Today.
Truth in the Public Sphere
Jürgen Habermas argued that for democracy to work, there needs to be a public sphere in which the population comes together to rationally set out the needs of the society and openly debate the best way to address them. Democracy does not need agreement; acrimonious debate is natural and healthy. We want a range of different viewpoints on how to take the truths of the world and use them to shape policy to create a better society. Unless we can agree on those truths of the world, however, a good faith discussion isn’t possible.
When administration spokesperson Kellyanne Conway tried to justify the fact that White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer lied during a press briefing by saying he was simply providing “alternative facts,” she wasn’t just defending Spicer. She was establishing an official stance on the nature of truth. Conway was acting as a bullshitter, and thanks to Frankfurt, we knew why. He was rightly celebrated for his insight, and in short order, that celebration cemented in the public mind an association between liberal accusations of bullshit and conservative political rhetoric.
Old School Bullshit
While the shoe may have fit during the Trump administration, Frankfurt cobbled together his conceptual scheme much earlier, during the mid-1980s: the heyday of postmodernism and the dawn of the age of political correctness. At that time, philosophy was experiencing a civil war between two rival approaches: analytic and Continental philosophy.
Analytic philosophers, like Frankfurt, argued in favor of a scientific approach to understanding the world, one in which objective truth can be uncovered by a combination of logic and science. The job of the philosopher, in this worldview, is to provide a rigorous analysis of language and of the ways of reasoning that allow us to differentiate between truth and falsity. “On Bullshit” is a classic example of this approach, wherein terms (like “bullshit”) that have slippery meanings in ordinary language are rigorously defined and then shown to have the power to help more clearly understand the world.
Continental philosophy, by contrast, doubted the existence of objective truth, arguing that reality is constructed by political power. The reason we wrongly believe some claims are objectively true, their reasoning goes, is not because they are true but because we are forced to believe they are by the powers that be.
According to Continental philosophy, those so-called objective truths are the basis of a world built to reify the power of the powerful. They are only considered objective to make sure no one challenges them. They’re a tool to ensure that the voices of women, people of color, LGBTQ scholars, and the members of religious minorities continue to be suppressed, their truths denied. Continental philosophers rejected science and objectivity to create an intellectual foundation for their liberation. They considered the sort of linguistic analysis Frankfurt trafficked in to be a weapon of systemic oppression.
Finding meaning in life, according to the Continentals, requires an aesthetic sensibility, not a scientific one. During the 1980s and 1990s, their intellectual approach migrated from the philosophy department to sociology, political science, history, and eventually most of the humanities and social sciences as well. Social constructivism—the postmodernist position that truths are created by social structures, rather than objective facts discovered by observation—became the most important buzz phrase in literary criticism.
Frankfurt’s Radical Decision
That shift explains why Frankfurt’s decision to publish his essay in Raritan, a literary journal—rather than in a traditional philosophical outlet, safe in his analytic homeland—was such a radical act. Frankfurt’s piece was playful enough that it seemed innocuous, but “On Bullshit” was a work of analytic philosophy deployed behind enemy lines.
Moreover, it wasn’t just a random work of linguistic analysis. It cut to the heart of the disagreement between analytic and Continental thought. It attacked those who did not believe in the power of truth, objective truth. Frankfurt walked straight into a Continental stronghold and called the foundation of Continental philosophy bullshit.
By defending the value of objective truth in a literary journal, Frankfurt was risking being called a collaborator with right-wing revolutionaries. During the Trump years, his argument was considered liberal, but back in the 1980s and 90s, that same argument was seen as conservative because it was attacking political correctness, which began as an effort to fight racism, sexism, and homophobia.
To be clear, though, Frankfurt didn’t devalue that fight. To the contrary, like so many other analytic philosophers, he was afraid of where the rejection of objective truth might lead. Indeed, there was a good reason analytic philosophers—especially Jews like Frankfurt–-might be nervous about championing the elevation of power over truth.
Beating Swords into Stock Shares
In the 1980s and 1990s, political correctness—the instantiation of the postmodern presumption that language creates the world—became a dominant social phenomenon. As a movement, the goal of political correctness was to generate social justice by cleansing corrupted language from everyday use. The basic notion of political correctness is that words retain the power of the social structures that create them, so liberating oppressed people requires fresh words free of harmful connotative baggage. Political correctness gave rise to many neologisms. “Colored people,” for example, became “African Americans,” then “people of color,” and then (more recently) BIPOC, or “Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.”
The ubiquity of those new terms and the speed with which they adapted made some people–even those whose good intentions led them to support political correctness—hesitant to speak, fearing they might use obsolete terms and commit what felt like a language crime. They didn’t want to offend anyone, and they wanted to be on the right side of history, but linguistic reconstruction moved so fast they were never sure they knew the latest lingo.
Conservatives seized on this insecurity and mocked it. Being “politically incorrect” became a medal of honor, a verification (in their minds) that they spoke the truth, not fashionable nonsense. Initially, the political right initially vilified the rejection of objective truth as a rejection of God and morality. Postmodernism, as the basis for political correctness, became the enemy, until conservatives had a collective realization–that they, too, could start transforming language to suit their purposes—and a change of heart. A man named Frank Luntz—a Republican communications consultant and pollster—led the charge. Under his guidance, the estate tax became the “death tax.” Global warming became “climate change.” Torture became “enhanced interrogation.”
In 2004, an unnamed Bush administration official accused reporter Ron Suskind of being part of “the reality-based community” who believe in objective truth. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” the official continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, 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. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” While the left was using Jacques Derrida’s notion of deconstruction—which works to expose the power relations contained within the concepts we use—the right was using it to “pre-construct” truth, using their power to make non-facts into facts.
The right’s mirror image of political correctness came to its logical conclusion during the Trump years, becoming Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts”. Usefully, Frankfurt’s argument has a sort of reflective invariance. It doesn’t care who the rejection of objective truth serves. Bullshit from the left AND the right is pernicious because it rejects objective truth, which explains how Frankfurt’s notion of bullshit changed sides without changing sides at all.