Over the years, Honest History has publicised the academic work of the late Professor Harry Frankfurt (1929-2023), a philosopher who famously nailed the phenomenon of ‘bullshit’, distinguishing it from lying but still excoriating its egregiousness.
Harry Frankfurt 2017 (Wikipedia American Council of Learned Societies; CC BY 3.0)
Here’s an easy way in to our collection of resources on bullshit. Here’s a taste:
It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth [says Frankfurt]. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false.
For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose …
Donald Trump delivers bullshit every time he speaks, as well as lies. Compare Trump with more analysis from Frankfurt.
10 August 2024
