On Bullshit
On Bullshit is the original title of a book by the American philosopher Harry Frankfurt. The work is a 80-page explanation of notion of the English word Bullshit ( German about humbug, idle talk, pretentious nonsense ). The book was published in 1986 for the first time as an essay in Raritan Quarterly Review, and was founded in 2005 as a bound single- issue in the U.S. bestseller.
Content
The term " bullshit "
The vulgar word bullshit (literally "bull shit " ) called in colloquial English a certain kind of talk that is often pretentious, empty of content but in their approach. An accurate translation, which reproduces all the connotations of bullshit, does not exist in German. Most likely, the term can be translated with the English loan word humbug; related words like nonsense, nonsense, nonsense and balderdash.
The initial question
At the beginning and again at the end of the text Frankfurt noticed that we were in our culture constantly surrounded by bullshit. Most interests him one bullshit, which will be visible in public life, particularly in advertising and public relations, such as political parties and politicians, with advertising, PR and politics today are adjacent very close. Bullshit will inevitably be produced when people are forced or even get a chance to talk about things of which they do not understand enough. In public life, this is unfortunately very often the case. The second cause of a flood of bullshit Frankfurt called the widespread belief that in a democracy every citizen to all matters relating to his country, must have dedicated opinions. In addition, many would like to see themselves as conscious moral agents, even rate events and conditions around the world; when knowledge is incomplete facts, this aroused here inevitable bullshit.
Frankfurt's aim is to develop a theoretical handle which goes beyond the colloquial use of the term that accurately describes bullshit and makes it possible to identify bullshit.
Max Black: The Prevalence of Humbug
The first text that discussed Frankfurt in search of this handle is Max Black's essay The Prevalence of Humbug (1983). The term is bogus in tone milder than bullshit, referred the matter but the same. Black Humbug defined as " misleading ( to lie not quite reach reaching ) misrepresentation of one's thoughts, feelings or attitudes, especially by pretentious word or deed ." He thus describes some of the characteristics of Humbug, which, as Frankfurt finds, also make up bullshit:
- Misleading, deceptive intention
- The misrepresentation, but which is not identical to lie
- Presumption or pretension, which may be the motive for doing so (but need not), that bullshit is spoken
Who is talking bullshit, provides a misrepresentation - but not a misrepresentation of the thing about which he is talking about, but a misrepresentation of himself he wants to produce in others a certain impression about yourself and about what goes on in his head before him.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein has much of his philosophical energy used to identify certain forms of nonsense and fight. Frankfurt noted that Wittgenstein has named and thoughtful feature of bullshit that Black has escaped: namely sloppiness. Who is talking bullshit, this usually does not care, without mindfulness for details without mental discipline, with no effort at objectivity, without regard to standards; he freely follows his impulses and moods.
However, the lack of care is not a clean criterion for bullshit. In addition to coarse, gepfuschtem bullshit first, there are also refined subtle bullshit, such as advertising and PR, where experts make today sophisticated techniques from psychology, opinion and market research advantage. Second, there are not only hingeschlampten vague, nebulous bullshit, but also those of exaggerated detail, concrete and specific.
Frankfurt's definition
As a bottom line of bullshit Frankfurt determines the complete indifference of the bullshit Marketers (that is, the person who is talking bullshit ) to the truth. The Bullshitter do not care whether the statements are true or false; he does not even attempt to give a thorough description of reality.
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary essentially confirms the use that Frankfurt has made use of the term bullshit until then. In response, he finds the specified therein metaphor "hot air" that points just like the metaphor bullshit on the emptiness, the lack of substance of the speech.
Ezra Pound: Canto LXXIV
Another feature discovered in Frankfurt Ezra Pound poem Canto LXXIV (1948 ). Pounds lyrical I it is taking in this poem to provide a Bullshitter to task. Instead of empty chatter he calls facts. Bullshit is bluff. It is more fake than a lie, which is also a shed new light on it, that it must be made by no means sloppy.
Eric Ambler: Dirty Story
The next suggestion receives Frankfurt from a passage in Eric Ambler's novel Dirty Story (1967). One of the characters makes this thriller in the Bullshitten for survival technique and reflected thus probably better than through with lies. Frankfurt comes to mind first, that a Bullshitter in its environment usually more tolerant place than a liar, and that bullshit, because it's so much more vague, less perceived as a personal attack but a lie.
Second, the conceptual pair bullshit and lie here shows a new side: A lie is focused so sharply, the requirements of the lie are so strict that the liar if he wants to be successful, must exercise his craft very precise. The Bullshitter other hand, has great room for imagination and improvisation; compared with the liar he is virtually an artist.
Augustine: De mendacio
The final text, drawing on the Frankfurt, is Augustine's treatise De mendacio. The author differs in eight kinds of lies, seven of which are no lies in the strictest sense, because it is not the aim of the liar is to tell an untruth. Quite different in the eighth kind of lying, in the lied for the pleasure of deceiving; for Augustine is only that the true lie.
Because the Bullshitter the difference between true and false not interested, Frankfurt concludes that not lying is the greatest enemy of truth, but bullshit.
Expenditure
- Original title: Harry G. Frankfurt: On Bullshit. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ 2005, ISBN 0-691-12294-6.
- German translation: Harry G. Frankfurt: Bullshit. Translated from English by Michael Bischoff. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-518-58450-2.