On Bullshit

December 2, 2025 | 1,101 words | 6min read

Paper Title: On Bullshit Link to Paper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit Date: 1892 Paper Type: Philosophy, Philosophy of language Short Abstract: In this paper the philosopher Harry Frankfurt tries to give a preliminary analysis of what bullshit is.

Introduction

He begins his essay by saying that, until now, there has not been much analysis of the term bullshit and that, for this reason, he will also give only some preliminary remarks about it. Further, he lists two sources that have done something similar: the Oxford English Dictionary and Max Black’s essay The Prevalence of Humbug. In this essay, for all intents and purposes, Frankfurt treats humbug as almost synonymous with bullshit.

Humbug

Frankfurt gives a short commentary on several aspects of humbug:

• Deceptive misinterpretation: Black thought that humbug necessarily involves an intention to deceive. Frankfurt asks whether there is any essential feature of humbug that is not dependent on intention.
• Short of lying: Black believes humbug is a lesser form of lying. That humbug and lying differ in degree, not in kind. Frankfurt rejects this, because for him every word in our language might share some characteristic feature with lying, but we would not therefore say that every word differs from lying merely in degree.
• Especially pretentious word or deed: Black notes that humbug can be not only words but also actions. He also does not believe pretentiousness is essential for humbug. Frankfurt agrees: he thinks bullshit does not need to be pretentious.
• Misrepresentation of one’s own thoughts, feelings, or attitude: The person who produces humbug misrepresents themselves first: they misrepresent their own state of mind, and second, they misrepresent whatever they are talking about. Hence, if a lie succeeds, the victim is deceived twice: having a false belief about the liar’s mind and a false belief about the matter at hand.

Frankfurt interprets Black’s notion of humbug as follows: the primary intention of humbug is to give the audience a false impression of what is going on in the speaker’s mind, whereas the primary aim of lying is to give the audience a false belief about the world.

When, on July the Fourth, an orator says, “Our great and blessed country, whose Founding Fathers, under divine guidance, created a new beginning for mankind,” this is humbug: but the orator is not lying. He does not necessarily want the audience to hold a false belief; he does not care about that. What he cares about is what people think of him. He wants them to think of him as a patriot with deep thoughts.

One thing that seems to be involved when talking about bullshit is that it is produced in a careless or self-indulgent manner. It is not finely crafted. This is what the word shit suggests. Excrement is not designed or crafted, it is merely dumped or emitted.

Wittgenstein Anecdote

Next, Frankfurt gives an anecdote from Fania Pascal, who knew Wittgenstein:

I had my tonsils out and was in the Evelyn Nursing Home feeling sorry for myself. Wittgenstein called. I croaked: “I feel just like a dog that has been run over.” He was disgusted: “You don’t know what a dog that has been run over feels like.”

Wittgenstein does not intend to accuse her of lying, but of misrepresenting. She characterizes her feeling as “the feeling of a run-over dog.” She is not acquainted with the feeling to which this phrase refers.

The phrase does say something, namely that both experiences feel bad: being run over, and having your tonsils removed. But her characterization is too specific and excessively particular. It is not merely that she feels bad; she claims to feel the same kind of badness as a run-over dog. For Wittgenstein, that is bullshit.

For Wittgenstein, the problem with her statement is that it is unconnected to a concern with truth. Her description of her own feeling is something merely made up, because she has no way of knowing how a run-over dog feels. She repeats the phrase mindlessly and without any regard for how things really are. What disgusts Wittgenstein is that she is not even concerned whether the statement is correct.

Her fault is not that she fails to get things right, but that she is not even trying.

Her statement is grounded neither in a belief that it is true nor — as a lie must be — in a belief that it is not true. It is precisely this lack of connection to a concern with truth, this indifference to how things really are, that Frankfurt regards as of the essence of bullshit.

Oxford Dictionary

(skipped, not interesting)

Bluffing vs. Bullshit and Consequences

Bullshit seems to be similar to a bluff. Both lying and bluffing involve misrepresentation, but while in lying falsity is central, in bluffing it is more about fakery or embellishment. Bullshit is similar: it is not false but phony.

The consequences of lying, bluffing, and bullshitting also seem to differ, with lying being frowned upon the most:

We may seek to distance ourselves from bullshit, but we are more likely to turn away from it with an impatient or irritated shrug than with the sense of violation or outrage that lies often inspire.

A bullshitter does not primarily try to misrepresent matters of fact, or at least that is not his intention. If this happens, it is “accidental.” The bullshitter wants to deceive us about what his business is, what his intentions are, what his character is.

Both the liar and the bullshitter misrepresent, but the liar intends to misrepresent matters of fact, whereas the bullshitter misrepresents what he is, what he intends, what he cares about.

In this respect, one might even say that bullshitting is worse than lying: the liar still cares about the truth, he must know it in order to conceal it. The bullshitter, however, does not care at all whether what he says is true or not. All he cares about is producing the desired effect.

Origin of Bullshit

Why is there so much bullshit? Frankfurt identifies two sources:

• Bullshit is unavoidable whenever someone is required to talk about something they do not know much about.
  • especially in a democracy where it is a civic duty to have opinions about everything.
• Proliferation of anti-realist theses undermines confidence that there is something we can call “truth.” One response to this is to adopt sincerity as an alternative ideal: since we cannot have truth, we can at least represent ourselves honestly.
  • But this presupposes that we can represent ourselves more honestly than we can represent the world, and why should that be the case? (e.g., the unconscious complicates self-representation.)

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