Philosophy prof pens book on bull

Harry Frankfurt, professor emeritus in the philosophy department, wasn't bullsh-tting when he wrote an essay titled "On Bullsh-t."

The work, which was recently published in book form by the Princeton University Press under the same title, defines bullsh-t and addresses its prevalence in American society. Frankfurt, a moral philosopher, foregoes superfluous material in the introduction and bluntly writes "[one] of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullsh-t."

"Bullsh-t shows the indifference to distinction between true and false," Frankfurt said. "A liar deliberately says what is false, but someone who bullsh-ts does so to suit his purpose."

For example, an advertiser is less concerned with the truth about their product and more concerned about selling it, he explained. "Bullsh-t becomes an instrument for pursuing personal goals."

Frankfurt, 76, first wrote "On Bullsh-t" in 1986 when he sought entrance into a humanities group called the Whitney Humanities Center during his tenure at Yale. Not long after, the Raritan Review, a literary journal, printed the essay.

"I didn't want people to regard it as amusing," Frankfurt said. "Philosophers are devoted to clarifying concepts and that's what I try to do."

Frankfurt wondered why attitudes toward bullsh-tting were so different from attitudes toward lying.

"Lying is the more serious offense in society and I have no idea why that tolerance of bullsh-t should be there," he said. "Lying shows that someone doesn't conform to reality, but that still acknowledges the truth . . . Bullsh-t doesn't preserve the truth at all."

To Frankfurt's knowledge, no one has objected to "On Bullsh-t," either in book or in essay form. "In the 20 years since it first appeared [in the Raritan Review] I don't know if a year has gone by without someone expressing some appreciation about it," he said.

In addition to a recent flood of emails — which according to Frankfurt has been "quite extraordinary" — Frankfurt has received some unusual requests. A man in Wales asked him if he could "put the essay to music."

The paper's unusual topic drew attention from the academic community long before the book's release in late January.

"The interesting thing about ["On Bullsh-t"] was the puzzling topic," said philosophy professor Gil Harman, who has read the essay multiple times. "We all talk about truth and lies, but what do we mean when we talk about bullsh-t?"

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

International publications including The New York Times and The London Times have also solicited interviews from Frankfurt. During an interview with The London Times, a reporter asked him about his take on the prevalence of bullsh-t in education.

"I told them that schools should enable and encourage students to accept the discipline of truth," Frankfurt said. "To the extent that a university's ideology conflicts with that, it fails it mission."

While he said that universities are probably less responsible for skewing students' perceptions of true and false, since professors are ultimately after the truth, universities can also facilitate bullsh-t by encouraging students to act in a certain — often politically correct — way. "Students then say things that the school regards as valuable, but aren't grounded in real evidence," Frankfurt said.

Frankfurt was unsure, however, if it would be best if bullsh-t disappeared.

"Bullsh-t is an insidious threat to the fundamental difference between true and false, but on the other hand, bullsh-t is so prevalent and persistent that it may have some beneficial role in society," he said.

Frankfurt was a member of Yale's faculty from 1976 to 1990, following positions at Rockefeller University in New York, SUNY-Binghamton and Ohio State University. He accepted a position at Princeton in the early 90s.

Now retired, Frankfurt resides in a quaint house near the Graduate College.