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On Truth (Hardcover)

by Harry G. Frankfurt (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
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On Truth + On Bullshit + Bad Science
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Product details

  • Hardcover: 112 pages
  • Publisher: Pimlico (6 Sep 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1845951247
  • ISBN-13: 978-1845951245
  • Product Dimensions: 14.6 x 10 x 1.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 148,083 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

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.


About the Author

Harry G. Frankfurt is professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University. His books include On Bullshit; The Reasons of Love; Necessity, Volition, and Love; The Importance of What We Care About; and Demons, Dreamers, and Madmen. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

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3 of 4 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.
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