On Bullshit

"Harry G. Frankfurt [was] the world’s foremost authority on bullshit...In our current political climate, [his] words sound prescient to the point of redundancy."---Ron Charles, Washington Post
"Brilliant."---Fareed Zakaria, Washington Post
"Seminal."---Roger Cohen, New York Times
"Immediately, I must say: read it. Beautifully written, lucid, ironic and profound, it is a model of what philosophy can and should do. It is a small and highly provocative masterpiece, and I really don't think I am bullshitting you here."---Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times
"Frankfurt’s account of bullshit is doubly remarkable. Not only does he define it in a novel way that distinguishes it from lying; he also uses this definition to establish a powerful claim: ‘Bullshit is a greater enemy of truth than lies are.’"---Jim Holt, The New Yorker
"On Bullshit taxonomises an entire style of government."---Aditya Chakrabortty, The Guardian
"[On Bullshit] remains unnervingly relevant. . . . Frankfurt described the bullshitter as ‘he’ rather than ‘she’ or ‘they.' But now . . . we may have to refer to the bullshitter as ‘it’—because a new generation of chatbots are poised to generate bullshit on an undreamt-of scale."---Tim Harford, Financial Times
"A tightly focused, telling critique of a political and cultural climate that seems positively humid with mendacity, obfuscation, evasion and illusion."---Steven Winn, San Francisco Chronicle
"Frankfurt famously argued that bullshit is speech that is typically persuasive but is detached from a concern with the truth. Large language models are the ultimate bullshitters because they are designed to be plausible (and therefore convincing) with no regard for the truth. . . . And bullshit is dangerous, warned Frankfurt."---Carissa Véliz, Time
"The droll prose is a tasty treat."---Richard Pachter, Boston Globe
"[Frankfurt] tries, with the help of Wittgenstein, Pound, St. Augustine and the spy novelist Eric Ambler, among others, to ask some of the preliminary questions—to define the nature of a thing recognized by all but understood by none. . . . What is bullshit, after all? Mr. Frankfurt points out it is neither fish nor fowl. Those who produce it certainly aren't honest, but neither are they liars, given that the liar and the honest man are linked in their common, if not identical, regard for the truth."---Peter Edidin, New York Times
"A slim treatise on the pervasive, willful and devilish art of avoiding the truth." * Washington Post *
"[Frankfurt] attracted public attention on a scale unimaginable to most academic philosophers. The reason for his appearances on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, CBS’s 60 Minutes and other US network TV programmes was On Bullshit, his brief but bestselling disquisition on what he described as ‘one of the most salient features of our culture.'" * Financial Times *
"The scholar who answers the question, 'What is bullshit?' bids boldly to define the spirit of the present age. . . . Frankfurt's definition is one of those not-at-all-obvious insights that become blindingly obvious the moment they are expressed."---Timothy Noah, Slate
"Harry Frankfurt is gone. But before he left, he won half the battle against bullshit: He called it what it is."---Stephen Harrop, Boston Globe
"Terrific. . . . Has anything truer ever been written?"---William Watson, Montreal Gazette
"This is what the world has long needed. . . . Bullshit is now such a dominant feature of our culture that most of us are confident we can recognize and rebuff it. But Frankfurt shows the reader just how insidious (and destructive) it can be. . . . This book will change your life."---Leopold Froehlich, Playboy
"Frankfurt is that rare thing, a secular thinker trained in analytical philosophy who has focused a lifetime’s attention on moral issues, has insights of real value, and is able to express them in rational language to any intelligent and attentive reader. . . . He is what an intellectual should be: someone who cares deeply about truth, and follows where it leads, instead of trying to lead it."---David Warren, Ottawa Citizen
"While philosophers have considered [On Bullshit] seriously, political scientists generally have not. But they should, because BS is an integral part of political rhetoric."---Paul Babbitt, Chronicle of Higher Education
"One of the most read works of public philosophy ever."---Nigel Warburton, New European
"Frankfurt's book should be required reading for anyone whose speech or writing are intended for public consumption. Despite his subject, he is definitely not full of it."---Kevin Wood, Japan Times
"On Bullshit grabbed the imagination of so many because it identified something that was obvious as soon as Frankfurt pointed it out. . . . Writing near the beginning of the digital age, Frankfurt never anticipated that the rivers of bullshit would soon become tsunamis, supercharged by the internet, social media and a 24/7 media cycle."---Brett Evans, Inside Story (Australia)
"Thanks to Harry G. Frankfurt, we now have the theoretical framework and tools for recognising and evaluating bullshit. On Bullshit is essential reading for the sceptically inclined."---Gerry Burke, Dublin Opinion
"it came to me as welcome news indeed that Princeton University Press is publishing a twentieth anniversary edition...On Bullshit, copies of which I dearly hope will find their ways into the hands of those still keeping their heads above the steaming piles rising all around us in order to provide them an eloquent, concise, and effective explanation of what bullshit is and how it works." * Well Read Naturalist *
"It seemed to me that it was such a great thing that Princeton University Press is putting it [On Bullshit] out again. . . . Everyone should get a copy." * The Two Matts *
"Based on an essay written in 1986 and published as a short book in 2005, this crisp classic by the late American philosopher Harry G Frankfurt has been deservedly republished by PUP to mark its 20th birthday. . . . Twenty years since its publication, it is alarming to reflect how consumingly topical this minor masterpiece now is."---Matthew D’Ancona, The New World
"Lies are not the greatest enemy of the truth, according to the philosopher Harry Frankfurt. Bullshit is worse. . . . As he explained in his classic essay On Bullshit (1986), a liar and a truth teller are playing the same game, just on opposite sides. . . . Reading his essay in the age of generative artificial intelligence provokes a queasy familiarity. In several respects, Frankfurt’s essay neatly describes the output of AI-enabled large language models. They are not concerned with truth because they have no conception of it. They operate by statistical correlation not empirical observation."---John Thornhill, Financial Times
"What Frankfurt, who taught at Princeton, conveys well is that the bullshitter is a social menace. He argues that the bullshitter is in some respects a more malign figure than the liar. . . . Frankfurt also drew a political lesson: bullshit is a threat to democracy because believing a lot of bullshit is incompatible with the sort of knowledge that a well-informed electorate needs to have. In this, he obviously anticipated much of the progressive reaction, some of it justified, some of it faintly hysterical, to the arrival of “post-truth” politics in 2016."---John Maier, The Times