The following are a select group of quotations and notes taken from the work 'On Bullshit' by the philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt.[1] In a so-called ‘post-truth’ world (perhaps), where mis- and dis- information roam wild, my inclination is that being able to distinguish between: (a) The political liar, (b) the political troll, and (c) the political bullshit-artist - is a concerning matter of instrumental and conceptual understanding for navigational urgency. All three are particularly difficult to differentiate. This being said, perhaps Frankfurt can help us in this regard, assisting us in teasing out how we can understand what makes the bullshit artist themselves – by clarifying what the mechanisation and operationalisation of bullshit implies.
Pages 33-34
“It is just this lack of connection
to a concern with truth – this indifference to how things really are – that I
regard as of the essence of Bullshit.”
47
“For the essence of bullshit is not
that it is false but that it is phony.”
47-48
“This points to a similar and
fundamental aspect of the essential nature of bullshit: although it is produced
without concern for the truth, it need not be false. The bullshitter is faking
things. But this does not mean that he necessarily gets them wrong.”
49-50
“The consequences of being caught
are generally less severe for the bullshitter than for the liar. In fact,
people do tend to be more tolerant of bullshit than of lies, perhaps because we
are less inclined to take the former as a personal affront.”
51
“It [bullshit] involves a program
of producing bullshit to whatever extent the circumstances require.”
51-52
“The liar is inescapably concerned
with truth-values. In order to invent a lie at all, he must think he knows what
is true.”
52-53
“On the other hand, a person who
undertakes to bullshit his way through has much more freedom. His focus is
panoramic rather than particular. He does not limit himself to inserting a
certain falsehood at a specific point, and thus he is not constrained by the
truths surrounding that point or intersecting it. He is prepared, so far as is
required, to fake the context as well. This freedom from the constraints to which
the liar must submit does not necessarily mean, of course, that his task is
easier than the task of the liar. But the mode of creativity upon which it
relies is less analytical and less deliberative than that which is mobilized in
lying. It is more expansive and independent, with more spacious opportunities
for improvisation, colour and imaginative play. This is less a matter of craft
than of art” – Trump and the art of dealing in bullshit?
53
“He [the bullshitter] [is] more
strongly drawn to this mode of creativity, regardless of its relative merit or
effectiveness, than he was to the more austere and rigorous demand of lying.”
“What bullshit essentially
misrepresents is neither the state of affairs to which it refers nor the
beliefs of the speaker concerning that state of affairs.”
54
“The bullshitter may not deceive
us, or even intend to do so, either about the facts or about what he takes the
facts to be.”
“What he does necessarily attempt
to deceive us about is his enterprise. His only indispensably distinctive
characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to.”
54-55
“But the fact about himself that
the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct
apprehension of reality; we are not to know that he wants us to believe
something he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter
hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no
central interest to him; what we are not to understand is that his intention is
neither to report the truth nor to conceal it.”
55
“It is impossible for someone to
lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such
conviction.”
56
“His [the bullshitter’s] 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.”
60
“[Bullshitting] involves making
assertions without paying attention to anything except what it suits one to
say, a person’s normal habit of attending to the ways things are may become
attenuated or lost.”
61
“The bullshitter ignores these
demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of truth, as the liar
does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of
this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.”
63
“Bullshit is unavoidable whenever
circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking
about.” Why Plato argues for philosophical kings? The relationship between doxa
and bullshit?
64-65
“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. These ‘antirealist’ doctrines undermine confidence in the value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and what is false, and even in the intelligibility of the notion of objective inquiry.” The equal and opposite, or absorptive perhaps, effect of postmodernism and ‘antirealism’ on agents and the proliferation of bullshit – Trump as a postmodern figure and the alt-right as a postmodern far right? Can this relate to Angela Nagle and her claim that identitarianism is the mirrored inversion of identity politics?[2]
[1] Harry G. Frankfurt (2005) On Bullshit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
[2] Angela Nagle (2017) Kill all Normies: Online Culture Wars from 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump. Winchester: Zero Books.