Just a quick thought: some months ago I heard of the book “On Bullshit“
from philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt (Princeton University Press). It
even arouse some public attention when it came out in 2005 and got the
2005 Bestseller Awards, Philosophy Category. The thing that got me was
simply this extremely stylish title of the book … philosopy on
bullshit and bullshitters, what an idea. You may read a good intro to
the book and a short excerpt at the link above, and then get
it from Amazon.
Now I took a quick look at the concept and I think I could
appreciate the idea (read it not yet, though). Bullshit is not lying,
because the liar knows what truth is and cares about it wile the
bullshitter does not. He’s just busy with invoking some intended
impression, utilizing words and deeds and whatever in a primitive
pragmatic way for his goals, not caring about hurting the relationship
between reality and information about reality. That’s my rendering
though, I dunno yet how well it fits to what Frankfurt means.
It could be worth the effort to apply Frankfurts concepts to
religion and also to the Christian faith. For example in Bible
exegesis, where are the cases where we bullshit just to get our goals
through? Bullshitting implies to not even be aware of deviating from
truth, and exactly this is a heavy problem in our Christian culture.
Start date: 2008-03-17
Post date: 2008-03-17
Version date: 2008-03-17 (for last meaningful change)
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