On Bullshit

Frankfurt does not simply assert his definition of bullshit. He starts with Max Black's formal definition of "humbug" — deceptive misrepresentation of one's own thoughts, short of lying — and works through each element, showing where it succeeds and falls short. He then uses Wittgenstein's objection to a friend's casual simile ("I feel just like a dog that has been run over") to isolate the defining feature of bullshit: the speaker has not submitted her statement to the discipline of accuracy. She is not lying — she is not trying to convey something false — but she is also not trying to get things right. Truth does not figure in her calculations. The definition emerges from this case analysis rather than being imposed on it.

The distinction between bullshitter and liar is the essay's strongest move. The liar must track the truth to successfully assert the opposite. The bullshitter faces no such constraint. Both the liar and the honest person are oriented toward the facts, playing opposite sides of the same game; the bullshitter refuses to play. This three-way contrast gives the definition genuine exclusionary power.

The later claims are less developed. The argument that bullshit is a greater enemy of truth than lies rests on a sound structural insight — opposition to a framework reinforces it, while indifference dissolves it — but Frankfurt states this in a few sentences and treats it as self-evident. The closing argument about sincerity follows directly from the definitions he has built, and is stronger than it first appears. The gaps are in development, not logic.

Frankfurt's central concept — bullshit as indifference to truth — is defined with unusual precision. The three-way contrast with honesty and lying gives it clear boundaries: it rules out honest mistakes (the person cared about truth but failed), lies (the person cared enough to subvert truth), and sincere speculation (the person is trying to get at truth but lacks certainty). The supporting distinction between phony and false is compact and illuminating: what makes a counterfeit defective is not what it looks like but how it was made. A perfect copy is still a fake. A true statement made with no concern for its truth is still bullshit.

The concept holds across every application in the essay — the Wittgenstein anecdote, the Fourth of July orator, crafted advertising, bull sessions. Frankfurt consistently insists that the relevant "laxity" is not carelessness about detail but disregard for truth-constraints. The one boundary that could be sharper is the line between genuine indifference to truth and weak-but-present concern for accuracy — the person who embellishes freely while retaining some vague sense that the broad strokes should be right.

The essay is disciplined for a work on a provocative topic. Frankfurt does not moralize about bullshit until the closing pages, and even then his claims are grounded in the framework rather than in emotional appeals. Examples are chosen for analytical utility, not shock value. Conclusions emerge from sustained examination of cases rather than from narrative framing imposed on top.

The final section, where Frankfurt moves from definition to cultural diagnosis, is less careful than the definitional work. He identifies antirealist philosophies — those denying reliable access to objective reality — as a deep source of contemporary bullshit. This is asserted rather than argued. He does not engage with antirealist positions on their own terms or consider whether some forms might be defensible without generating the consequences he describes.

Frankfurt builds his argument through concrete cases, each isolating a specific feature of the concept. A reader who disagreed could locate exactly where to push back — reject the Wittgenstein anecdote as a bad example, and you can reject that step without losing the rest. Frankfurt is consistently honest about the tentativeness of his project, calling it "preliminary," "tentative and exploratory," and "more or less sketchy." He leaves certain questions explicitly unresolved rather than papering over gaps.

The main deduction is the closing section on sincerity, which compresses several steps. But it follows from the essay's definitions: if bullshit is indifference to objective truth, and someone abandons tracking objective reality in favor of "being true to oneself," they have adopted exactly the stance Frankfurt defined as bullshit.

Citations are few — Max Black, a Wittgenstein anecdote, Saint Augustine, the OED, and two literary works — but honestly used. Frankfurt is candid about the thinness of his literature base: "I have not undertaken a survey of the literature, partly because I do not know how to go about it." For original conceptual analysis, this is legitimate. He engages with Black's competing definition fairly and at length, granting what it gets right before showing where it falls short. The most notable gap is the absence of work on speech acts and communication norms (Grice, Austin), which would have enriched the analysis without threatening it.

No funding sources, industry affiliations, or structural pressures. The author was a tenured emeritus professor at Princeton writing about an abstract question with no commercial stakes.