Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt Essay

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But bullshit is still negative, a sloppy disregard for the truth, and self-indulgent -- the bullshitter is trying to get away with something, to put something over on his audience about his character. The bullshitter is trying to conceal his or her real intentions and enterprise -- one reason why politicians are often said to be bullshitters, given that even when they might be speaking intelligently about healthcare, their real intention is likely to get reelected, not to change the world. Truth is of little interest to the bullshitter. This is the danger of bullshit -- unlike a lie which can be proven factually false, it is almost impossible to prove that someone's intentions are entirely self-serving and corrupt. That is why bullshit seems to be so rife today: "where people are frequently impelled -- whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others -- to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant" and when they must speak about important issues they care little about, but can rhetorically use those issues to further their own ends (Frankfurt 63). However, there are many prominent examples of politicians who were accomplished liars and bullshitters, and lied and bullshitted simultaneously.

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For example, President Clinton later admitted that he deliberately mislead the American public when he said he 'did not have sex with that woman -- Ms. Lewinsky' because he did not consider their relationship to be sexual, only 'intimate.' He was concealing the truth with his own bravado, telling himself it was for the good of the nation, his family, even Monica Lewinsky, yet it was a lie. The same was true for President Nixon's cover-up of Watergate, whereby the President seemed to 'believe his own bullshit' that concealing the break-in to the Democratic headquarters was not illegal because he, the President, by definition could do nothing illegal. Although the distinction between lies and bullshit Frankfurt makes is observable in some abstract cases, in the real life of politics, and in the real world in general, the distinction between lying and bullshitting is far less obvious. Bullshitters conceal facts they know to be true in their posturing, and liars may posture when telling deliberate, known untruths.

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