Friday, January 12, 2007

Making yourself clear

Harry Frankfurt, author of an article 'On bullshit' that got turned into a bestselling little book, has now written a follow-up, On truth. (You can read what Simon Blackburn thinks of it -- not a whole lot -- here.) Frankfurt appeared on Comedy Central's Daily Show this week to plug the thing and seemed either to be horribly embarrassed or scared or otherwise uninterested. You can watch it here, once you get past the advert. He is a great read and an interesting philosopher, but on this one occasion an attempt to make his views clear in a popular interview didn't turn out so well. Whose fault is that? Harry's? Jon Stewart's? (I didn't get a strong impression that Jon had read the book, short though it is nor that Harry had thought at all about what he might be asked and what it might be appropriate for this forum to say about the book.)

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