on bullshit............................

"one of the most salient features of ourculture is that there is so much ubllshit.  everyone knows this.  each of us contributes his share.  but we tend to take the situation for granted.  most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it.  so the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concer, nor atttracted much sustained inquiry.

....in consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is,, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves.  and we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us.  IN other words, we have no theory....i propse to begin the development of a theorteical understanding of bullshit....."

 

".......why is there so much bullshit? of course it is impossible to be sure that there is relatively more of it nowadays htan at other times.  there is more comunication of all kinds in our time than ever before, but the proportion that is bullshit may not have increased.  without assuming that the incidence of bullshit is actually greater now, i mention a few considerations that help to account for the fact that it is currrently so great...

....bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about...thus the production of bullshit is stiumulated whenever a person's obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic exceed his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic.  this discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled-whether by their own popensities or by the demands of others-to speak extensively about matters of which they to some degree ignorant.  BLAH BLAH

....the contemporary proliferation of bullshit aso 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 ho things truly are....."

......."but it is preposterous to imagine that we ourselves are determinate, and hence susceptible both to correct and to incorrect descriptions, while supposing that the ascription of determinacy to anything else has been exposed as a mistake.  as conscious beings, we exist only in response to other things, and we cannot know ourselves at all without knowing them  moreover, there is nothing in theory and certainly nothing in experience to support the extraordinary judgement that is the truth about himself that is the easiest for a person to know.   Facts about ourslves are not peculiarly solid and resistant to skeptical dissolution.  our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstatial-notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things...and insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit................"

harry frankfurt the MORAL PROFESSOR....professor emeritus at princeton....jeezus...