On Bullshit

by Harry G. Frankfurt

He is not trying to deceive anyone concerning American history. What he cares about is what people think of him.

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.

does seem that bullshitting involves a kind of bluff. It is closer to bluffing, surely, than to telling a lie.

What is wrong with a counterfeit is not what it is like, but how it was made. This points to a similar and fundamental aspect of the essential nature of bullshit: although it is produced without concern with the truth, it need not be false.

bullshitter is faking things. But this does not mean that he necessarily gets them wrong.

On the other hand, a person who undertakes to bullshit his way through has much more freedom. His focus is panoramic rather than particular.

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth.

For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.

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

Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic exceed his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic.