On Truth (Hardcover)

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On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt 3.8 out of 5 stars (4)  £6.26

Bad Science by Ben Goldacre 4.6 out of 5 stars (143)  £3.60

The Importance of What We Care About: Philosophical Essays by Harry G. Frankfurt £11.99

Irrationality by Stuart Sutherland 4.2 out of 5 stars (26)  £6.99

The Reasons of Love by Harry G. Frankfurt 4.0 out of 5 stars (2)  £8.99

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Review
The author of On Bullshit (2005, not reviewed) returns with an itty-bitty disquisition on the personal and societal importance of truth.Frankfurt (Emeritus, Philosophy/Princeton Univ.) takes a common-sense approach. Although there are some allusions to Spinoza and Kant and Shakespeare, and although he drops into his text a quotidian here and a prolegomenon there, the author addresses throughout the average educated reader who perhaps needs some pages to turn on the New York-Boston shuttle. He begins by admitting an oversight in his surprise bestseller Bullshit: He didn't really discuss therein what truth is and why we should care about it. Frankfurt has no interest in esoteric arguments about the nature of reality, no concern (here, anyway) with the peculiarities of quantum mechanics. No, he's interested in verifiable, everyday fact. It's true that the moon orbits the earth; it's false that the moon is green cheese. He notes we cannot live without the truth (red lights really do mean stop) and argues that "it is nearly always more advantageous to face the facts of which we must deal than to remain ignorant of them." He discusses lying (it's almost always bad) and shows how both liars and lie-ees are damaged-the former because their lies create enormous loneliness (they can tell no one), the latter because lies confine them to a world unreal and thus unpredictable. Frankfurt detours briefly to look at lies that everyone knows are lies and uses as illustration Shakespeare's Sonnet 138 ("When my love swears that she is made of truth"). Here, Frankfurt turns gentle and even compassionate-though he ought to have addressed the Bard's layered meanings of lie and habit. Frankfurt ends by showing how we develop our sense of self by banging up against reality-against the truth. He declines all comment on an enormous condor named Religion that's flapping noisily around in his small room. Which is it, truth or bullshit?Readers expecting a meal will find only a snack, but a tasty one. (Kirkus Reviews)

Product Description
Whatever benefits and rewards it may sometimes be possible to attain by bullshitting, by dissembling, or by sheer mendacity, societies cannot afford to tolerate anyone or anything that fosters a slovenly indifference to the distinction between true and false. In a world of spin, rhetoric, blagging and bullshitting, a basic level of scepticism and the impulse to question first impressions is widely considered a virtue. Yet the very purpose of such caution - the discernment of truth - has for some time been undermined by a postmodern generation of authors, journalists, historians and philosophers who categorically deny the existence of any exterior, objective truth, elevating instead the impenetrable subjectivity of the individual above all else. Blending philosophical insight with sheer common sense, Harry Frankfurt's incisive sequel to "On Bullshit" is a defence, a vindication, and a celebration of Truth. Whether concerning ourselves with work, pleasure, people or poetry, Frankfurt demonstrates that a belief in a basic notion of Truth is essential not just to our everyday involvement with the physical world, but also to the concepts of identity, confidence, trust, conviction, society, and communication that endow our lives with meaning.

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1 Review 5 star:  (1) 4 star:    (0) 3 star:    (0) 2 star:    (0) 1 star:    (0)           Average Customer Review 5.0 out of 5 stars (1 customer review)		Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Most Helpful Customer Reviews   0 of 1 people found the following review helpful: 5.0 out of 5 stars You can handle the truth, 26 Aug 2008 By  Sphex (London) - See all my reviews Do you want to know who you are? Do you want to know the many ways in which you are limited, the many boundaries that separate you from the world out there, that define who you are? I thought not. The first question sounds like the opening impertinence of a self-help book; as for the second, no one likes to dwell on their limitations. One surprising and rewarding theme of this gem of a book, however, is the connection between facts and truth and identity: "If there were no such facts or truths, if the world invariably and unresistingly became whatever we might like or wish it to be, we would be unable to distinguish ourselves from what is other than ourselves and we would have no sense of what in particular we ourselves are. It is only through our recognition of a world of stubbornly independent reality, fact, and truth that we come both to recognize ourselves as beings distinct from others and to articulate the specific nature of our own identities." Harry Frankfurt has written a little book about a big idea. His language is precise, as you would expect from a philosopher, and yet he's as suspicious of "fakers and phonies" as Holden Cauldfield. You can't help warming to a professor who worries over whether an "adequate discussion of bullshit" is possible in our culture. There is a twinkle in his style that sits well with his approach: these are more than dry reflections on an abstract concept. He cares about the truth, and he wants to explain why we should all care about the truth, and not just pay it lip service. In one corner we have postmodernism in its many guises, which would have you believe that the distinctions "we make between what is true and what is false are ultimately guided by nothing more indisputably objective...than our individual points of view." (Thank goodness the planes we fly in are not built by postmodernist engineers.) In the other corner are those mired in more traditional faith positions. I recently heard a Catholic teacher claim that a "lot of young people are searching for the truth, whether they have faith or not." This may well be a true statement, but its concept of truth is confused. The truth is not "an entity of some mysterious sort that might be identified and examined in its own right", nor is it handed down from on high. It belongs to the innumerable individual propositions that we encounter during our lives, from which we derive the facts about the world and learn "the true nature of reality". Since the truth about a proposition is discovered by an appeal to reason and evidence, it's not clear what faith has got to do with it. Frankfurt does not stint on seriousness nor does he lack ambition. A brief sketch of Spinoza's remarkable idea "that people cannot help loving truth" seems to undermine one of his own observations, that "we humans have a talent...for ignoring and evading the requirements of rationality". Frankfurt's own remarkable intellect resolves this apparent contradiction by elucidating Spinoza's idea of love as "the way we respond to what we recognize as causing us joy", by pointing out that people "invariably love what they believe helps them to continue in existence and to become more fully themselves." The flip side of this - that "false beliefs...do not effectively help us to cope" - reinforces the point, and should also make us suspicious of those who talk up the consolatory nature rather than the truth of their beliefs. When it comes to normative judgments, Frankfurt acknowledges the perception that "such judgments only express personal feelings and attitudes that are, strictly speaking, neither true nor false." But he reminds us that we tell if someone is good or bad by means of "factual statements describing...concrete evidence of moral deficiency." And factual statements depend on our being able to tell truth from falsity. Once again, truth matters, and Frankfurt shows us why. What he cannot be expected to explore in this short book is why those who proclaim the loudest that they've found the truth are often those furthest removed from reality, but he gives us the confidence to challenge their claims for ourselves. Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this) Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review › See all customer reviews...		Ad feedback   Search Customer Reviews Only search this product's reviews

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