Sincerity and B.S.

Thucydides (the VFR reader, not the ancient Greek historian), drawing on the work of philosopher Harry Frankfurt, makes two points: that the modern tendency to engage in b___s___ is the result of the liberal denial of objective truth and the knowability of things; and that B.S. is also the result of the liberal/Rousseauian cult of sincerity. Since I had trouble understanding the second point, readers may want to jump directly to Thucydides’ reply to me where he clarifies what he meant.

Thucydides writes:

In the post “Hypocrisy and The Good,” you made the following very insightful observation:

Having gotten rid of the traditional, religious-based idea of the moral good, liberals embrace the liberal idea of the moral good, which is compassion, equality, diversity, inclusion, stopping global warming, etc. Unlike believing in the traditional moral good, believing in the liberal moral good does not involve hypocrisy, because for a person to be good in the liberal sense no actual moral behavior, with its inevitable failures, is required: the person merely needs to affirm that he believes in compassion, equality, diversity, inclusion, and stopping global warming. By signing on to liberalism, one is simply and truly good. This is the source of liberals’ inordinate self-esteem. Believing in a liberal good that is not higher than the self but identical to the self, liberals feel themselves to be perfectly good, even as they look with contempt and hatred at conservatives who hypocritically affirm, and seek to impose on society, some false higher good that they themselves don’t follow.

Of course, liberals not only reject the transcendent in general, but one specific form of it, namely that there is such a thing as objective reality and truth, and that we are limited by it.

This got me to thinking about Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s well-known essay “On B——S——,” (my elision), which can be found here. Frankfurt’s essay shows some of the consequences of the liberal abandonment of the ideal of knowing what is true.

Frankfurt distinguishes between lying and B.S. Lying at least shows concern with the truth, and seeks some advantage by creating a belief the liar knows to be false. The B.S.’er on the other hand is simply indifferent to what the truth might be, and is therefore a worse enemy of the truth. Frankfurt thinks the great prevalence of B.S. is due in part to the widespread belief that everybody ought to have an opinion about various matters, especially those affecting the country. This leads to speaking about matters about which the speaker usually has little knowledge, i.e., engaging in B.S.

Frankfurt points out that the growth of B.S. has deeper sources in forms of skepticism that deny that we can have any access to an objective reality and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things actually are. This leads to a retreat from the ideal of correctness to an alternative one of the pursuit of sincerity. Convinced that reality has no inherent nature which he might hope to identify as the truth about matters, the individual seeks to be true to his own nature. (I would add that for the liberal, this simply means rehearsing the notions that he has been trained to think represent the good: compassion, equality, diversity, etc., etc. The liberal engages in B.S. in Frankfurt’s sense—he talks confidently about matters about which he has little real understanding).

However, we are not fully transparent to ourselves; our nature is no more, indeed less clearly determinate than external reality. As conscious beings, we exist only in relation to other things, and we cannot know ourselves without knowing them. ( I would point out that “other things” would include not only material, but spiritual quantities). “There is nothing in theory, and certainly nothing in experience, that would support the extraordinary judgment that it is the truth about himself that is easiest for a person to know.” Our natures are elusively insubstantial. “And insofar as this is the case, Sincerity itself is B.S.”

In spite of its offensive title, I think Frankfurt’s essay is well worth reading and thinking about in the context of the nature of liberal thought.

LA replies:

I’ve read this twice, and I get bogged down at the point where it is said that B.S. is a result of the belief in sincerity, and that B.S. comes from people seeking to be true to their nature. This is not scanning for me.

Thucydides replies:

Sorry that I have not put this better. The role of sincerity and authenticity in modern culture has attracted considerable comment from the likes of Thomas Sowell (The Conflict of Visions, The Vision of the Anointed) and Lionel Trilling (Sincerity and Authenticity—The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures). See also Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity.

In the tradition of Rousseau, civilization and its institutions are seen as false and corrupting; man in his natural, untutored state is good and rational. In this view, there cannot be any specific common, i.e., institutional, definition of the Good. Therefore, what is prized is natural sincerity and authenticity, free of such influences as say churches or traditional practices. Man is thus put at the center of things.

Skepticism as to the existence of any transcendent value includes skepticism as to the existence and the value of truth, or the ideal of being in conformity to some acknowledged state of reality.

“Convinced that reality has no inherent nature which he might hope to identify as the truth about matters, the individual seeks to be true to his own nature.”

Frankfurt’s point is that we then falsely assume that we are completely transparent to ourselves. In fact, we really don’t have any such certainty as to our motives and their sources. As fallen creatures, we often imagine we act from the best of motives, when in fact we sometimes don’t. We are very prone to self-deception, and we are highly changeable (“elusively insubstantial”). We best understand ourselves in relationship to things and to other people, so we have the best chance to get that right.

So liberals who imagine that by a sincere display of an ostentatious benevolence, commonly expressed in terms of adherence to a conventional list of accepted instances (compassion, equality, diversity, etc.), they are engaging in an authentic presentation of their inner quality of natural goodness, and avoiding the hypocrisy of a commitment to a defined Good to which they do not live up, are in fact engaging in BS—that is, presenting a supposed commitment to certain matters not out of any real knowledge of or concern with such matters, but rather as a matter of how they wish to be perceived, not only by others, but by themselves.

Sorry that this was opaque, but I think it is quite important. I hope this serves to clarify things a bit.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 29, 2009 06:46 PM | Send