John brought me a lovely little book today, On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt. Frankfurt is an emeritus moral philosophy professor from Princeton University. Maybe when you are emeritus you get to put "bullshit" in the title of your book and the Princeton University press publishes it.

I find the book absolutely thrilling.

1. It's small, just 67 half-size pages. It feels like you can learn something really important in a short amount of time.
2. It's philosophy, that is to say, careful thinking, the antithesis to bullshit.
3. It's about bullshit, a topic that enrages me.

My favorite lines:

"I shall next attempt to develop, by considering some biographical material pertaining to Ludwig Wittgenstein, a preliminary but more accurately focused appreciation of just what the central characteristics of bullshit are" (19).

"It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth--this indifference to how things really are--that I regard as of the essence of bullshit" (35).

"When we characterize talk as hot air, we mean that what comes out of the speaker's mouth is only that. It is mere vapor. His speech is empty, without substance or content. His use of language, accordingly, does not contribute to the purpose it purports to serve. . . . Just as hot air is speech that has been emptied of all informative content, so excrement is matter from which everything nutritive has been removed" (43).

"Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about" (63).