It is a brave thing for a philosopher to try to bring them down with a little essay-like hunting an elephant, or, better, a herd of elephants, with a pea shooter. Truth and its agent, reason, are the kings of the philosophical jungle, and their capture has excited the finest minds. HAS THE TRICK BEEN REPEATED with the current essay? Truth is bigger game than bullshit. So the meditation was successful, the balance of amusement and insight was perfect, and we parted company with the author, perhaps an hour or so after picking up the work, happier and wiser than before. We might not have been able to formulate this difference for ourselves, but we recognize it as true when we see it. It is this blithe unconcern that distinguishes the bullshit artist whether as a result he is merely amusing or a serious menace varies from case to case. The former is indifferent to whether what he communicates is true or false. The latter is concerned to communicate something false as if it is true. Frankfurt put his finger on the essential characteristic of the bullshitter, which distinguishes him from the liar. And then, perhaps to our surprise, the quest succeeded. The oratorical rotundity with which it chased an Aristotelian definition of bullshit increased the humor, and was perfectly matched by the schoolmasterly rebukes it issued to previous authorities for getting it wrong. Frankfurt’s first book worked so well because it maintained a tone of clinical academic gravity in dealing with an essentially ludicrous topic. It also contains Swift’s acidic take on the meditations of Robert Boyle: “A Meditation Upon a Broom-Stick.” But it reminds us that the great essayists include philosophers too, such as Montaigne and Hume, as well as the various masters of satire and whimsy.īullshit is a paradigm of an essay-sized subject. The Oxford Book of Essays, which I have open in front of me, includes such titles as “Thoughts in Westminster Abbey” (Addison), “The Plumber” (Trollope), “The Departure of a Guest” (Belloc), and “Well Informed Circles and How to Move in Them” (Waugh).

The tone of such writing is fairly uniform: confidential, humane, amused, civilized, and leisured. We enjoy a few carefully chosen reflections, an aphorism or an insight we might not have managed for ourselves, perhaps a dusting of academic icing in the shape of a quotation or two, and so to bed. And there are some subjects well-suited to treatment in a short essay, subjects on which a brief meditation is all we require. Even the tardiest author can be expected to produce this amount of copy to a deadline, since one would need a thick skin to trot out the standard excuses of illness, family, competing duties, and the rest to explain delays in what could scarcely be more than a week’s work. Production and editorial costs must be almost invisible. One can see why publishers love the miniature, especially when such mouth- watering sales are in their sights.

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