Teo Degas' Books & Decks

There are books that one wants to buy as soon as we read the title, like this one. A priori, Frankfurt appears as an agent provocateur, as the book is sold on Amazon, where there is a straight no-profanity no-expletives policy.  However the book feels a total ploff flop once we start reading, because the expectations were so high, that the book can only fall short.

Frankfurt's intention is to define what BS means, the intention behind the concept, if any, the function/s it serves, and what does it not mean. Through this essay, we get to see some of the characteristics that Frankfurt unearths and attributes to BS. Thus, BS is a deceptive deliberate misrepresentation, short of lying, by word and/or deeds, produced in a careless or self-indulgent manner, unrefined and somewhat spontaneous. Its essence is the lack of connection with truth, an  indifference to how things really are. Frankfurt identifies BS as connected to 'hot air' or bluff but not as much to nonsense. BS is phony not false, colourful and creative, but not precise or sharp.

Frankfurt starts his essay with a cross-examination of the definition of Humbug, as provided by Max Black in 1985. He also compares the meaning and use of the word with the definitions that the Oxford English Dictionary offers of bull, bull session, and BS. He also sketches  St Augustine's typology of lies, and, of course, invites Wittgenstein to the party because the whole essay is a Wittgensteinish exercise.

One of the aims of this work  is to explain the difference between a lie and BS, and Frankfurt succeeds at doing so, because we get to see clearly how both things are essentially different in intention, conception, format, and presentation. Another of the aims of the book is to discuss whether there is more BS today than before and why, and although the discussion on this subject occupies barely two pages, it is quite good and goes straight to the point.

One of the most questionable discussions in the book is, paradoxically, one of the things I enjoyed the most. It revolves about a conversation that Fania Pascal and Wittgenstein had in Cambridge in the 1930s.  She was feeling really bad after having her tonsils removed, and told Wittgenstein that she felt like a dog run down by a car, to which the philosopher replied, somewhat upset, “You don’t know what a dog that has been run over feels like.”.  To me, the whole point of the discussion between Pascal and Wittgenstein is that she was talking hyperbolically and metaphorically to express how bad she felt and how unwell she was, and, we can guess, to get a bit of friendly support. But she did not get any because Wittgenstein was not really listening to her, he was hearing the words coming out of her mouth and interpreted them literally, as an autistic person would do. She wasn't implying that she knew how a dog would feel in those circumstances, or that a human and a dog would feel the same if run down by a car, or that she knew how a dog in those circumstances felt but decided to ignore it for the sake of verbal flourish. The point of the episode is not, like Frankfurt says, on Pascal disregard for reality when she speaks, it is that Pascal and Wittengstein were speaking two different languages because their emphasis was different. Hers was on the flourished colours of her pain. His on the literal transcription of reality that he expected from language in a mathematical-like precision. That being the case, to me, the anecdote is pointless in a discussion on the subject of BS.

While reading this book, I wondered why the need to give BS 'a' definition, or rather one meaning, or so it appeared to me. The Urban Dictionary  allows us to appreciate the different  shades of the word in common everyday colloquial language. In my personal life, I have had the word speared at me to mean, depending on the context and the person,: 1/ you don't know what you are talking about (even though I did know what I was talking about). 2/ You are kidding! 3/ You are talking nonsense.  5/ You are lying and you know it, but want to fool me. 6/ I don't believe you, I don't want it to be true!

The beauty of language (when a precise definition is not needed for the exercise of Law, legislation or relevant philosophical analysis, and when the word has not been used for decades or centuries and its meaning is quite established) is that language is alive, fluid, and in constant movement. At times one has to be familiar with the person to 'get' the way and meaning s/he uses and gives to a certain word, the context, the colour, the intention. There are words with a definition that most people would agree on, while other words have so many different hues and undertones, that offering an unique definition feels like a corset. So, why reducing a word to a sort of ivory goddess-like monolith with a specific colour, material and varnish? Why trying to define philosophically a word that was never meant to be philosophical or used philosophically?  I don't mean to say that the exercise in the book is pointless or useless, I mean to say that there is not much philosophy behind Bs, Bsiting and Bsiters, and the exercise is more about how to approach a concept to define it precisely than anything else. Said differently, it is more about the exercise itself than about the word that the philosopher has chosen for this book. Which is interesting the same.

In a way, this book shows (I don't know whether willingly, as a joke, or whether unwillingly, as an academic exercise gone bananas) the need of the Academia to define colloquial and popular words and concepts to give them a status that they were never meant to have. Or, on the contrary, the need and demand of modern pop culture to have its most darling  words sealed with the Academia's seal of approval and the Academica, in response to the demand, takes a leap of faith and dances with Bs itself.

At least to me, this work feels as if the author had had a great idea, started to write a book, something had happened, and he had interrupted his work and left the work incomplete. Yet, it is a nice read overall with some good points to ponder. It is just that I wanted more. I expected more. It could have had more depth and more juice!