The bale counter and the liar
According to the American philosopher, Harry G. Frankfurt, "bullshit is a more dangerous enemy of truth than lies." The emphasis of Michael the Great
The sense of ridicule must now also be recorded among the victims of the coronavirus. An idiotic sentence by Marco Travaglio (“Draghi is a son of a father, and he doesn't understand shit”) was enough to provoke pandemonium. In the face of those who contested a not exactly courtly speech, even prestigious intellectuals took the field to defend the freedom of speech of the editor of the Fatto Quotidiano . But what are we talking about? Nobody denies anyone the right to say "bullshit".
This is the title of an irreverent essay (originally On Bullshit ) by an American philosopher, Harry G. Frankfurt. Published for the first time in 1986, it was translated fifteen years ago by the publisher Rizzoli. Today it should be read and reread. "One of the most salient features of our culture is the amount of bullshit in circulation," warns the professor emeritus of Princeton University in the opening words. How to blame him? These are days in which silly slogans, empty nonsense, statements that denounce a desperate ignorance are uttered with impunity. If they don't have the monopoly, some journalists patent them at an impressive rate.
Frankfurt has taken the trouble to investigate the nature of the phenomenon. He argues that "bullshit is a more dangerous enemy of truth than lies." The "bullshitter" – we would say the cazzaro – is in fact more fearful than the liar. As Saint Augustine taught, the liar is to some extent interested in knowing the truth, because in order to lie he must know it. That is, he must confront the truth in order to construct a lie. Therefore, if the liar still "honors" the truth and moves within its horizon, on the other hand the one who says bullshit bypasses it and is concerned only with denying it. A well-informed interlocutor on how things stand, therefore, can always counter it.
On the contrary, the bale counter is more difficult to contradict, as he is completely disinterested in what is true and what is false. He shoots his bullshit and, first of all on talk shows and on social networks, he shares and spreads that of others to poison the wells of rational discourse. Describing the seventeenth-century plague of Milan in the "Promessi sposi", Alessandro Manzoni concludes with a splendid and rightly famous sentence: "Common sense was there, but it was hidden for fear of common sense". I doubt, however, that it holds true in present time. Because when bullshit becomes common sense, common sense is forced into exile.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/il-contaballe-e-il-mentitore/ on Tue, 27 Jul 2021 07:39:00 +0000.