Compare And Contrast: Understanding Lies And Bullshit

Michael Larrea
Compare and Contrast: Understanding Lies and Bullshit
In order to understand the imagery between lies and bullshit, strong and viable characteristics must be marked in order to catch the immediate factors corresponding to both misrepresentations of reality. For H. Frankfurt, it is because of our unsubstantial and elusive nature that facts can be opposed to uncertain conclusionsabout us “sincerity itself is bullshit.” (p.67) in reality, lies and bullshit are evolved forms of individual conducts were dishonesty is the root of all transgressions.
In his book “On Bullshit,” H. Frankfurt seems to be arguing that bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are (Frankfurt). The point that Frankfurt seems to be making in his book is that it is impossible for someone tolie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it (Frankfurt). Frankfurt best sums up this point when saying “When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statementsto be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says.” (p.56). The point that Frankfurt makes reinforces the fact that lying does care forthe truth in order to oppose it. Bullshit doesn't pay any attention to truth. Frankfurt regards this ‘unconcern to how things really are’ as the spirit of bullshit.
These destructive and manipulative behaviors have deferred our evolution as a society since the beginning of time, either as to fake something in order to denote an impressive lifestyle, or to lie just to get rid of another humanbecause of jealousy, maintaining us out of good principles to create affirmative and constructive societies, which allows people to flourish as individuals and as families.

All characteristics described simplify what it means to be under either category of either of lies or bullshit, but how we humans react in public life to lies and bullshit is a different matter. “Bullshit may not deceive us, oreven intend to do so, either about the facts or about what the bullshitter takes the facts to be.” Alternatively “His only indispensably distinct characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to" (p.53). Let us contrast Plato’s “Apology” for a better understanding of how lies and bullshit put an end the life one of the greatest minds of mankind.
In “Apology,” Plato’spurports to represent a historical occurrence, namely, the speech which Socrates made at his trial (Plato). The point that Plato seems to make is Socrates is being prosecuted for three claims: inquiring into things below the earth and in the sky, making the weaker argument defeat the stronger, and teaching for a fee. Socrates begins his defense by saying that his prosecutors are lying, and that hewill prove it (Plato). Plato best sums up this point when saying “I went to someone with a reputation for wisdom, in the belief that there if anywhere I might test the meaning of the utterance and declare to the oracle that “this man is wiser than I am, and you said I was wisest.” So I examined him—there is no need to mention a name, but it was someone in political life who produced this effect onme in discussion, Gentlemen of Athens—and I concluded that though he seemed wise to many other men, and most specially to himself, he was not. I tried to show him this; and thence I became hated, by him and by many who were present. But I left thinking to myself, “I am wiser than that man. Probably neither of us knows anything worthwhile; but he thinks he does and does not, and I do not and do...