On Truth

Full disclosure: I am an attorney, not a professor of philosophy. As my profession must deal with unending loads of BS and is one that ostensibly seeks "truth," Dr. Frankfurt's latest essay was required reading. I stress essay and choose to recognize what this book accomplishes rather than what it does not. I found this volume to be a worthy introduction to an exceedingly important topic. "On Truth" is a sequel to a famous predecessor regarding BS wherein Dr. Frankfurt uses the common vulgarity as a metaphor for the goals of our society. However, he felt that he had failed to adequately show the dangers of indifference to truth, which he defines as the hallmark of BS. His premise is that our society is based on truth sufficient to weather the increasing storms of BS but that the foundations of our culture are susceptible to the continual eroding force of BS. He argues that we need to start paying attention to truth before we lose the concept and are unable to repair the damage being done. The Declaration of Independence began "We hold these truths to be self-evident" thus, those who went on to accomplish the American Revolution, draft and enact the Constitution, and who were generally recognized as a pretty capable bunch, did not collapse into arguments and finger-pointing about the philosophical niceties of what they were about. The self-evident truths of the founding fathers were rather like Justice Stewart's famous admission that pornography is hard to define, but "I know it when I see it." Truth is a staple of religious training--folks used to get their weekly dose in Sunday School. Thus, the decline in religious observance seems to be closely mirrored by the decline in appreciation for and understanding of truth in general. Too few commentators dare to approach the issue--the vicious attacks on those who profess any belief in truth are all too common, as is the prevailing attitude that "your truth" need not be "my truth." Accordingly, "On Truth" is more of a warning than a summation. It is a piece of evidence, not proof of the argument. States Dr. Frankfurt: truth is of immense practicality, if we lose respect for truth we cease striving after it, we are more creatures of truth than we admit, ignorance and error have no value, lack of respect for the value of truth will ultimately cost us the very powers that give us the power to create. Highly Recommended

I liked it, but it doesn't have the visceral punch of "On Bullshit" by the same author. But, worth it.

It was a good read overall. Sometimes you need to reset your basic understanding and this did the trick when it comes to truth.

A somewhat longer part 2 to Dr. Frankfurt's book "On B.S." (I use B.S. because Amazon will not let me write the real word in a review, but you know what it stands for...). Here he briefly explores the epistemological structure of truth along with its social, political, and psychological importance and the need to reject the corrosive postmodernist idea that there is no such thing as "truth". A short book, easy to read, very much food for thought in these troubling times. Dr. Frankfurt is a legend in the field of philosophy of mind and the subject of free will. This little book well worth the read.

This is a poorly-arranged attack on post-modern critiques of objective analysis. It is presented to the general public, which is a sad mistake because the author glosses over the complexities of post-modern theory and then attacks his strawman with fairly empty rhetoric. This is a fun read, but not an effect argument. I am not myself a post-modernist, but as someone trained in philosophy, I can assure you that this book is a disappointment. If you are persuaded by its arguments, you are too quick to swoon.

Very interesting look a truth, what it is, how we see it and how we use it. With the lack of it all around us now we have to get back to it.

Early in this book Frankfurt offers a comfortable old Oprah Winfrey-type idea that seems absolutely true, that "no society can afford to despise or disrespect the truth." Everyone who believes this also "knows" Stone Age people lived in caves, George Washington was the first US president, Jesus was born on Dec. 25 and Marilyn Monroe was a natural blonde beauty. The truth is none of these widely believed falsehoods are true; but, in general, to question them is to "despise or disrespect the truth." Let's consider another example. A century ago, dynamite was an awesome new and powerful explosive. Suppose a scientist of the era had said two pieces of a special metal, if slammed together sufficently fast, would produce an explosion equal to 10,000 tons of dynamite. How many people, scientists or otherwise, would respect that "truth" which is the essence of the atomic bomb? In that case, the "truth" would have been a reason for ridicule and rejection. Truth is relative. For many millennia, including the eras of Greek democracy and the birth of Jesus from which modern democracy claims its spiritual and moral roots, people believed the earth was flat. Good scientists were burned at the stake for saying otherwise. The truth is different, but somehow societies survived and thrived even with such falsehood. Frankfurt ignores the obvious examples of societies that never knew the "truth" about many things, and condemns post-modernists who define "truth" as what a person "is constrained to regard as true by various complex and inescapable social pressures." This strikes him "as being not only far too glib but also rather obtuse." He'd be much better off if he looked at some pictures of Marilyn Monroe, and learned she was not a natural blonde, had nose and chin surgery to improve her looks, and wore a padded bra. Her "falsies" and other nips and tucks are what added up to the "true" Monroe who was so alluring in so many films. Once he understood this, he could delve into more complex issues and perhaps find a useful definition of "truth". Until then, it's doubtful this book could earn him a visit with Oprah Winfrey, whose ethnic background is such that even the American "truth" once said Blacks could never be anything but slaves. All in all, it's a very disappointing book. I expected much better.

It's all BS, but it looks great on my bookshelf, next to his other book.

Beautiful and inspiring little book.

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.

Short and sweet. Makes you think.

I liked the beginning and found it bogging down a bit toward the end. It is a short read...and worth while, because in our time “truth is trampled in the streets”.