08-05-2016, 10:46 PM
Harry Frankfurt, an eminent moral philosopher and former professor at Princeton, wrote a brilliant essay in 1986 called On Bullsh!t (Frankfurt himself wrote about Trump in this vein, as have Jeet Heer and Eldar Sarajlic.) In the essay, Frankfurt distinguishes crucially between lies and BS: “Telling a lie is an act with a sharp focus. It is designed to insert a particular falsehood at a specific point...In order to invent a lie at all, must think he knows what is true.”
But someone engaging in BS, Frankfurt says, “is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all...except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says.” Frankfurt writes that the BSer’s “focus is panoramic rather than particular” and that he has “more spacious opportunities for improvisation, color, and imaginative play. This is less a matter of craft than of art. Hence the familiar notion of the ‘bullsh!t artist”.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/...story.html
But someone engaging in BS, Frankfurt says, “is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all...except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says.” Frankfurt writes that the BSer’s “focus is panoramic rather than particular” and that he has “more spacious opportunities for improvisation, color, and imaginative play. This is less a matter of craft than of art. Hence the familiar notion of the ‘bullsh!t artist”.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/...story.html
08-06-2016, 01:16 AM
That is great.
We needed this 6-9 months ago! It was all true then...
We needed this 6-9 months ago! It was all true then...
08-07-2016, 10:51 PM
BS is all that Trump has. Without it he is nothing other than a loudmouthed dumbass.