Part treatise, part bathroom read, On Bullshit elegantly tackles a very messy issue.
Balderdash and baloney. Humbug, hooey, hot air, and hogwash. Poppycock. Pulling the wool. Sound and fury, signifying nothing.
However colloquial or archaic, these terms have become casually synonymous with rhetorical bullshit, but are they truly the same? Is there a distinguishing state of mind required to formulate bullshit? Why does it feel more ubiquitous than ever? Harry G. Frankfurt opens a peephole into the often-experienced but hazy domain of bullshit to address these questions in his article, reprinted in book form last January, On Bullshit.
The book has since enjoyed a stay on the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction Bestseller List, weighing in at number six this week and holding the twentieth sales rank on Amazon at the time of publication. Frankfurt, too, has remained in the limelight, most noticeably on the much-blogged about March 14th episode of The Daily Show, breaking Madonna's record on Letterman for the most swearing in a half-hour segment. (The episode may be downloaded with the B-word bleeped out—one more demonstration of the way censorship strives futilely to protect us from ourselves, even on cable.)
Interestingly, On Bullshit has received less mainstream attention and review space than its equally- and less-popular peers. Part treatise, part bathroom book, it's certainly a diminutive bestseller boasting only 67 broadly-typeset pages. To some, the article, which originally appeared in a 1986 issue of Raritan, may feel stretched—an unconvincing ploy to entertain by waxing erudite on a lowbrow, over-used word. Pithy yet insubstantial, like some forms of bullshit. Others may feel that it should be classified in the Humor section and not on the Philosophy racks and thus should not be taken too seriously.
For any genre, however, this humble book is a noteworthy success, and promises to continue to be so. Its relevance is more prescient today than almost twenty years ago, which makes it a popular contender for the long haul in the tradition of George Orwell's essays. Frankfurt is not, nor purports to be, on par with the likes of Orwell, explaining that although "very little work has been done on the subject[,] I have not taken a survey of literature, partly because I do not know how to go about it." Yet you must admire the realness of the Professor Emeritus of Princeton for being the first to call bullshit exactly what it is: a down and dirty dialectic.
Frankfurt demonstrates how this subject is problematic in a way that's reminiscent of the notorious non-definition of pornography: You know it when you see it. He cites and questions the definitions of related terms from the Oxford English Dictionary; an essay by Max Black, "The Prevalence of Humbug"; and Saint Augustine, as well as a quote attributed to Ludwig Wittgenstein, to delineate bullshit from lying. Unlike a falsehood's deliberate manipulation of truth, Frankfurt says bullshit is marked by a "lack of connection to a concern for truth—this indifference to how things really are." This disregard, conscious or not, makes it possible for one to bullshit without knowing the truth, as opposed to the liar who believes a truth and thwarts it:
"Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are."
The fact that it's not merely bullshit—indeed, that it's not just an art—but, at times, a systematized disregard for reality with countless incarnations and frightening repercussions is something you know in your bones. Frankfurt comes across as an earnest philosopher for everyone, someone who you could sit with at a bar and, well, you know.
Frankfurt appropriately leaves the application of his theory to readers. The material on the mutually-exclusive natures of lying and bullshit, however, makes an excellent addendum to recent mendacity literature, notably The Liar's Tale: A History of Falsehood by Jeremy Campbell, and warrants a more nuanced reading of Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.
Frankfurt's theory intriguingly recalls Milan Kundera, who devoted "The Great March" section of The Unbearable Lightness of Being to tracing the forces that facilitated the triumph of communism in the framework of kitsch. He intends kitsch to be understood in its original, nineteenth-century German context: "the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and the figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence." For Frankfurt, kitsch would be the starting point required for someone "unconcerned with how the things about which he speaks truly are."
Also, where Kundera discusses kitsch's exclusion of everything except the sentimental, Frankfurt says that everything has been risked and cheapened through bullshit because of, paradoxically, the cult of sincerity. Since our age has grown skeptical over objective, external truths, we have turned inward in order to be true to what is certain—self-concerned subjective truths or, politically speaking, special interests. The expense, for Frankfurt, is "the ideal of correctness," which comes with the promotion of "a feeling... a kind the multitudes can share" for Kundera. When sincerity has become sentimental, and neither one is necessarily good, we are sailing on dark waters.
No one, of course, is innocent ("Each of us contributes his share," writes Frankfurt early on), which plays a part in why bullshit is so easily recognizable and less likely to offend than a lie. Kundera even says its acknowledgment may even inspire reluctant empathy, that it's as "touching as any other human weakness... none among us is superman enough to escape kitsch completely."
But if everyone bullshits, some bullshit more than others. These perpetrators are most dangerous when trafficking in verisimilitude. For a sense of realness often trumps truth without necessarily violating it.
Case in point, Bush the Younger's reasoning for going to war with Saddam Hussein. His administration had not substantiated British intelligence that Hussein sought or acquired uranium from Niger at the time of Bush's declaration of war. But that memo was not, at the time, false. It was bullshit ("the essence of bullshit is not that it is false but that it is phony") and a persuasive form of it: 49% of voters who reelected Bush believed weapons of mass destruction were proliferated in Iraq, and the majority believed, contrary to abundant media reports, that there was a "substantial link" between Hussein and Al-Quaeda. This constitutes the most significant textbook case of mass bullshitting in recent memory.
Dick Cheney and Karl Rove understood the power of bullshit and how its appeal to sincerity could make the war not only seem plausible but make Bush's reelection seem right. If voters saw that Bush and Cheney genuinely felt that they would win reelection, then it might also prove their claim of the war going "remarkably well" was not so incredulous after all. The alternative would have been too frightening for most to bear. Not President Kerry, but that a multitude of people in the twenty-first century could be swindled by a standardized disregard for facts—that behind a simple, old-fashioned, hearth-and-home sincerity was an "attempt to deceive us about his enterprise."
I don't believe it's possible for even Bush's harshest critics to locate where Bush's incompetence, lack of understanding, and true indifference to the complications of reality begin and end. The political spin surrounding him is so thick, his (mis)representations of policies are so obviously choreographed and so rarely natural in feeling, that in press conferences he often appears trapped and downright pained ("carefully wrought bullshit involves... a certain inner strain"). Perhaps it will never be possible for even him to tell for certain when he's bullshitting.
Then again, the ability to apprehend reality and truth is ultimately a personal issue—one that philosophy has grappled with for centuries. It's an ongoing process to question and reexamine as we become ever more ourselves. So wouldn't it be fitting to purchase a copy of On Bullshit to help President Bush move toward this self-awareness, to begin to see through his own bullshit the way others do?
I seriously encourage readers to buy a copy and send it to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Frankfurt's slim study makes an ideal gift, and I can think of no one who could benefit more from its pages' call for closer analysis of rhetorical motivation. The nation could use a grass-roots literary protest to kick off all those summer reading programs anyway. I'm putting mine in the mail tomorrow, and I encourage others to do the same.
Between the Covers is a biweekly book review and publishing analysis.
