Bullshit

Smart move by philosopher Harry Frankfurt to call his book “On Bullshit“, thereby creating that little transgressive frisson necessary for publicity purposes: especially with the NYT referring to it as “On Bull – – – – “. But if you can get through this (via AL Daily) without your eyes glazing over, you must be a professional philosopher.

This guy, on the other hand, seems to be on to something:

How do you acquire credibility as an intellectual? You basically need to demonstrate your independence of thought, what Immanuel Kant called autonomy. Autonomy is most effectively conveyed by being “cast against type”, as actors say. In other words, you should adopt positions that do not seem to be in your interest to uphold. The more mysterious the benefit you would receive from the truth of your position, the more intellectual integrity you will appear to have. You should seek to plant a chronic nagging doubt in your audience, which causes them to leave your speech or text thinking: “She must have a point; why else would she say these crazy things?”
It is relatively easy to demonstrate autonomy if you come from a wealthy or aristocratic background. You simply need to disown your status and champion the poor and downtrodden. It worked for the Buddha, and it enabled socialism to gain a political foothold long before it became a proper workers’ movement. Moreover, this strategy may even help socialism to survive long after the workers have abandoned the movement in search of middle-class identities. (Socialism’s most steadfast defender in the UK over the past half-century has been the aristocrat Anthony Wedgwood Benn, better known as Tony Benn.) The strategy typically involves denouncing the corrupt conditions that maintain your status. Your discovery of this corruption turns out to be an unintended consequence of the superior education and leisure that you enjoy. You then dedicate the rest of your life to undoing the inequities, in part to atone for your own complicity in them.