” (Princeton; $9.95), a tiny book of sixty-seven spaciously printed pages that has gone on to become an improbable best-seller."The article touches on a wide range of philospher's take on the truth, but I liked the last part best where Mr. Holt contrasts the ugliness of bullshit and possible transcendent nature of a good bullshitter -
"However one feels about the authority of truth, there is a separate reason for deploring bullshit; namely, that most bullshit is ugly. When it takes the form of political propaganda, management-speak, or P.R., it is riddled with euphemism, cliché, fake folksiness, and high-sounding abstractions.
The aesthetic dimension of bullshit is largely ignored in Frankfurt's essay. Yet much of what we call poetry consists of trite or false ideas in sublime language. (Oscar Wilde, in his dialogue “The Decay of Lying,” suggests that the proper aim of art is “the telling of beautiful untrue things.”) Bullshitting can involve an element of artistry; it offers, as Frankfurt acknowledges, opportunities for “improvisation, color, and imaginative play.”
When the bullshitting is done from an ulterior motive, like the selling of a product or the manipulation of an electorate, the outcome is likely to be a ghastly abuse of language. When it is done for its own sake, however, something delightful just might result.
The paradigm here is Falstaff, whose refusal to be enslaved by the authority of truth is central to his comic genius. Falstaff's merry mixture of philosophy and bullshit is what makes him such a clubbable man, far better company than the dour Wittgenstein. We should by all means be severe in dealing with bullshitters of the political, the commercial, and the academic varieties. But let's not banish plump Jack."
Plump Jack is a reference to Sir John (Jack to his friends) Falstaff in Shakespeare's play Henry IV.
