On Truth
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On Truth
Narrated by:
George K. Wilson
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Narrated by:
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George K. Wilson
About this listen
As Frankfurt showed previously, bullshit lies within the realm of subjective perception. Truth, then, is what we find beyond this realm. But are we, as a people, willing to allow ourselves to be governed by honest principles? Could it be possible that we lack the commitment to acting morally and truthfully?
Using his trademark skill at sharing philosophical insights with a general audience, Frankfurt examines these and other questions in this informative audiobook.
©2006 Harry G. Frankfurt (P)2006 Recorded Books LLCListeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
"Equally brief, trenchant, and deeply thoughtful." ( Booklist)
This book is really an appendix to his previous work, probably in response to criticism that he never discussed why truth was worth striving for.
Frankfurt takes a Pragmatist line on justifying the value of "Truth" - it is useful! Firstly because without it, reality is harder to navigate, secondly, that lying undermines trust, and the self image of our lied-to friends, and thirdly, that love of truth expands the soul (Spinoza). Post modernist relativism (that there is no truth), is Frankfurt's special bête noir, a chapter which I thoroughly enjoyed.
However, it is only briefly at the end that he goes into the more interesting aspects of truth and untruth, such as in the Shakespeare sonnet, where two lovers flatter each other, each knowing the other is being untruthful, yet this knowledge only enhances their love "...and so, together we shall lie".
By using a Pragmatist justification, Frankfurt never grapples with the issue that BS and untruth can also be useful, and therefore are presumably justified e.g. for the child who learns to tell their first lie to avoid punishment (an important developmental step), for the fraudster, who lies for gain, for the skilled Sophist who's clever BS win's an argument, for Kant worrying whether to lie to protect a friend from a murderer, or the white lies to save another's feelings.
He also never gets onto the fascinating aspects of partial truth such as: perspectivism, spin-doctoring, selective statistics or being economical with the truth, and this feels like an opportunity missed.
So, in summary, "On Truth" makes some good points, and is narrated well, but falls well short of being a worthy sequel to his more famous essay "On B******t".
An Opportunity Missed....
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It just talks with dry academic words about how truth is instrumentally valuable and how without truth we can't understand objective reality and other platitudes.
He doesn't give any novel philosophical frameworks, just pontificates about things everyone intuitively knows.
Boring and uninsightful
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