Truth Be Told
Author Harry Frankfurt follows up on his previous BS.
By Keith White, University of Virginia
Monday December 18, 2006
Harry Frankfurt, emeritus philosophy professor at Princeton University, has recently released On Truth, a follow-up to his best-selling book On Bullshit. On Truth seeks to validate a central premise of Frankfurt’s earlier work, which explores the prevalence of bullshit in today’s public discourse, and its detrimental effects.
Frankfurt’s new little book—100 pages in a pocket-sized frame—explores the value of truth in entertaining fashion. While the book cannot claim to extinguish this heady question once and for all, and at times creates straw man arguments to crush, the book succeeds on its central task: Reminding us that cynicism is not a solution.
Frankfurt sat down with Campus Progress to chat about his book, and to share his take on truthful politics.
Campus Progress: Who are you trying to reach with this book, and why should they take your invitation?
Harry G. Frankfurt: I am trying to reach all the people who are concerned about the condition of public discourse and who are aware of the deformities of discourse we’ve been subjected to in the latest lying and misrepresentations over so many of today’s important issues.
What I object to is the idea that the difference between true and false is itself some type of construct that doesn’t correspond to anything in reality.
Is part of the problem that people use their beliefs, whether political or religious, instead of facts, to construct what they perceive to be true?
That’s certainly part of the problem: people using as evidence things that do not constitute evidence. But I think there’s something deeper than just making that kind of mistake.
It’s not a matter of mistaking something that is false and believing it is true, and trying to build on it—on a foundation that will collapse inevitably. It’s a deeper kind of skepticism that denies that there is really such a thing as objective truth that our beliefs need to conform to.
Do you think the average voter sometimes conflates questions of public policy and questions of truth?
I think it’s a problem in that people are very dogmatic about it, in that people insist that their position is based on truth and the other alternatives are based on falsity. That’s a problem. I would hope that people would try to base their opinions, their beliefs, and their policies on truths, on facts that can be established and justified with evidence.
So is being modest the key to finding truth? Do Americans reward public leaders when they admit they don’t know the answer to something?
Well we do sometimes, but I do think it is rare. We like our public leaders to be definite, to be sure of themselves, to have a very confident attitude towards the policies they are recommending and attempting to promote.
Do you think American voters will come to reward truthful politicians in the future?
I am not very optimistic about it. I don’t think it’s likely to happen very often, that we can count on it happening, or that we can even plausibly insist that it happen with the confident expectation that our insistence will be rewarded. Though I don’t think it’s out of the question.
I think that we do best in these matters when we are faced with an imminent or actual catastrophe that clears the air on a lot of bullshit and a lot of vague and vaporous ideas. When we have a real catastrophe and that something must be done, and certain other alternatives that may have already been tried are not going to be successful, then we may get a straightforward, clear-headed, straight thinking political figure that can lead us to see how to cope with our difficulties in an effective way.
When we are not faced with this sort of dramatic failure of our system, it’s very easy to say, “Well you know, we can just get along. Who knows what will happen? We don’t really know what’s happening, but it will all turn out alright. And, in any case, we don’t have to make radical changes now because we don’t know what sort of changes would be appropriate.”
Hasn’t America reached that catastrophic moment with 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina?
No, I don’t think so. I think in the immediate after-effect of the 9/11 event people were aroused, and their attitudes were mobilized in a very particular way. They wanted something to happen, and they knew they wanted something to be done. But that has tended to fade and evaporate, and this return to normalcy is a very powerful motive.
Do you think the media, particularly the all day news cycle, is doing a good job in keeping truth front and center to their viewers?
I think they are in a bad position. They have to keep talking all the time. And if you have to keep talking all the time, you are bound to loose touch with the really important criteria and conditions and constraints upon what’s justifiable to say or to think and what isn’t.
The media covers an enormous range of individuals and programming, but I don’t think that there’s a general intention on the part of significant aspects of the media to deny truth, distort it, or loose touch with it. But I do think the necessity to talk all the time, whether you know what you are talking about or not, the mentality of, “Keep talking or you don’t get paid,” that’s a terribly powerful motive for slipping out of a rigorous and demanding set of criteria for limiting what you say to what you know.
Do you think people still have faith that our political system can find a way towards truth?
I think that a lot of people, and maybe even most people, believe the system is corrupt. But I also believe that most people believe that the system can be repaired and the corruption can be eliminated—that the design of America’s politics is so resilient and robust that if we could only get a handle on the mechanisms that it provides, it could clear the air, and get rid of all the pollution and corruption you are alluding to.
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