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Beatrice Pieri

Professor Mary Cunningham

Introduction to Philosophy

13 November 2022

An Understanding of Bullshit

“People should care about the truth because the truth is the truth about how things are and

it’s important for us to recognize how things are, not to pretend that it’s something else. If you

have the truth, then you know what reality is like, if you don’t then you’re ignorant of reality.”

This opening scene from the Bullshit! video featuring Harry Frankfurt that we watched in class

really stuck with me. There is so much bullshit in the world. After reading Harry Frankfurt’s

philosophy On Bullshit, I believe it changed my perception on how I listen and view people in

the world, regarding bullshit. If people understood what bullshit really is, then perhaps they too

would change their perception of the world. Understanding the philosophy of bullshit, will help

one view the world differently.

What is bullshit? Harry Frankfurt says, “we have no clear understanding of what bullshit

is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves.” Yet the philosophy of bullshit

suggests that bullshit is an alternative, it is a lack of respect and concern for the truth. Bullshit is

a significant feature of our culture. We, as a society today, use bullshit as a crutch in a passive

way to avoid telling the truth or a lie: “It is a phenomenon itself so vast and amorphous that no

crisp and perspicuous analysis of its concept can avoid being procrustean” (Frankfurt 1).

However, we can certainly define bullshit to a certain extent without fulling knowing what it

means. In order to define bullshit, we need to know the difference between bullshit and lying.
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Frankfurt defines a lie as something “designed to insert a particular falsehood at a specific point

in a set or system of beliefs, in order to avoid the consequences of having that point occupied by

the truth.” Whereas, in the Bullshit! video, Frankfurt describes bullshit as “not a matter of trying

to conceal the truth, it’s a matter of trying to manipulate the listener, and if the truth will do then

that’s fine if not that’s also fine” Bullshit in essence is just words with no meaning.

“One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone

knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take this situation for granted. Most

people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it”

These were Harry Frankfurt’s opening sentences to his discussion of On Bullshit. We can

certainly recognize the fact that we all bullshitters, it has become something that is so ingrained

in our society, most especially with the familiar phrase “fake it till you make it.” The bullshitter

is one who isn’t concerned with the truth, or the truth-value of what they are saying. They have

no regard for the consequence of their words, especially because they aren’t trying to conceal the

truth of something. Whereas a liar has a motivated end goal of trying to conceal something. They

are intentionally misrepresenting the true facts about something. Frankfurt defines the liar as

someone who is “attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to

know that he wants us to believe something that he supposes to be false.” The bullshitter

bullshits because “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 conceal it.” (Frankfurt 17).

So, we see the liar and the bullshitter are both playing at a different game. However, I do believe

that if a bullshitter continues down his path of bullshitting, then he must also be trying to “hide”

something just like the liar. For example, a good depiction of bullshitter could be as follows:
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Once there was a boy who was running for elementary school class president. This boy

was speaking to some fellow students and teachers about why he would make a good class

president. One of the teachers said to the boy, “Johnny, the earth is flat. What do you think about

this?” Johnny was confused and didn’t know how to answer this at first, but he really wanted the

class president position, so he had to answer. Johnny was indifferent to whether the earth was flat

or not, so Johnny replied, “Yes ma’am, the earth is flat, and I think we need more science classes

to prove this. Everyone needs to know about the earth being flat” Johnny, being in elementary

school, doesn’t actually know if the earth is flat or not. Since he was unfamiliar with the truth, he

didn’t lie, he was merely agreeing to the fact that his teacher just told him the earth is flat.

Johnny doesn’t care whether the earth is flat or not, he just wants the class president position.

Elementary school Johnny is a bullshitter because a bullshitter “is neither on the side of the true

nor on the side of the false… He does not care whether the things he says describe reality

correctly” (Frankfurt 17). Just because a bullshitter is talking, doesn’t mean he is lying.

Our society laughs and winks at bullshit, but frowns upon lying: lying comes with

consequences. So why do we accept bullshit and why do we have such an accepting attitude

towards bullshit? There is a popular saying that our society uses, “when you want to help people,

you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear,”

and I think that this helps correlate why we “accept” bullshit so much. Bullshit, even though a

misrepresentation, is not on purpose, whereas, lying is. I feel like since bullshit isn’t as harsh of a

misrepresentation, we don’t treat it like a “crime,” and that’s why it’s overlooked so much.

Understanding the philosophy of bullshit, will help one view the world differently. The

philosophy of bullshit in itself is an interesting topic. Bullshit is not a lie, it’s not to conceal the

truth. Bullshit is simply spoken because one doesn’t concern themselves with the truth, they
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don’t regard the truth or attempt to lie. They are unattached to the truth; the answer has no effect

on their life. The bullshitter misrepresents himself to others by trying to prove something to them

without actually caring. This essay I just wrote, although discussed bullshit in hopes of helping

one understand it to recognize it in their life, is bullshit in itself. For I simply don’t care, I

bullshitted the whole thing. I didn’t lie nor hope to lie. My hope for it was to inform you of

bullshit, but I am actually indifferent to the subject of bullshit itself. So, if I misrepresented this

topic in anyway, it is because I am a bullshitter, just like everyone else.

Works Cited

“Bullshit! | Featuring Harry Frankfurt.” YouTube, 15 June 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?

v=_D9Y-1Jcov4.

Frankfurt, Harry. On Bullshit. Princeton University