Chapter 2 "On Nonsense" Nonsense and Nonsense

Research Fellow, Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Professor Harry Frankfurt wrote (On Bullshit) because "too many people are bullshitting" and there is no theory about bullshit yet.This fascinating philosophical treatise begins with a fascinating title, a topic so unusual that it is easy to think of Wittgenstein, the School of Everyday Language, or even postmodern philosophy when discussing it.Bullshit is obviously not a philosophical question in an authentic context, but now more and more people have realized that many less solemn things in life are also important questions of life, and they also explain life profoundly, but they are very Rarely discussed in depth, as the author finds out: "For bullshit, we lack theory".There are many similar questions, and they all lack theory. For example, I once wanted to know the situation of "daydream".Psychoanalysis tries to point out that night dreams often imply things that people dare not face directly. So, do daydreams really express what people really want?Do people really know what they want?And so on, if we ignore these unstudied issues, we may not be able to properly understand life and the world. Taking bullshit as an example, bullshit probably constitutes the main part of people's speech. Therefore, if we do not understand bullshit, it may be difficult Correctly understand people's language activities and psychological activities.

In fact, Professor Frankfurt's research has not really given a theory about bullshit, but only a preliminary analysis, but his research on the difference between bullshit and lying is indeed very interesting and insightful. He found that although bullshit and lying They are all untrue words, but they seem to be in harmony with each other, and they do not have the same essence.A lie is the opposite of the truth. Therefore, although a lie rejects the authority of the truth and opposes the truth, it admits the existence of the truth after all. It is only trying to cover up the truth. A lie is serious when it opposes the truth, while bullshit ignores the truth at all and doesn't care about anything at all. Therefore, bullshit is not serious about truth, it doesn’t care what truth is, and it doesn’t even admit the existence of truth, so Frankfurt said, “In terms of influence, bullshit is far more serious than lying , is the greater enemy of 'truth'", and the danger of bullshit is that "this creed of 'anti-truth' gradually eats away at our information, so that we no longer believe that truth can be judged by honest efforts, and even fail to understand objective reality. explore the concept".This analysis is very profound.

Wittgenstein's analysis of "nonsense" (nonsense) may be mentioned here, but nonsense is also fundamentally different from nonsense.According to Wittgenstein, when science and logic have clarified all the "speakable" things, there will be some "unspeakable" things left. Nonsense, that is, statements that have no truth value, is typical of most philosophical statements, especially metaphysics.The unspeakable is beyond our capacity for knowledge, so that any attempt to say it is only nonsense.Although Wittgenstein is against nonsense, he is not against those unspeakable things, because he found that those unspeakable things are the most important issues, such as the meaning of life, the world, morality, aesthetic concepts and so on.We live in those unspeakable things, that's how we live, although talking about those unspeakable things must be meaningless, but those unspeakable things are valuable, we have to talk about those unspeakable things Things "with respect".However, Wittgenstein does not properly address the problem of nonsense.We must notice that those unspeakable things are not facts of life "as they are", but conceptual facts "said" by many nonsense, that is, just because people say certain things as they are. value, that’s why those things make life worthwhile, those unspeakable things are created in speech, they are said by people, instead of first having that kind of thing and then people say it, Therefore, if those unspeakable things are not allowed to be said, it is tantamount to canceling those unspeakable things, and those things will not exist.This is a paradoxical problem that Wittgenstein was not aware of.

What I want to say is that the nonsense of philosophy is not nonsense, but "big words" closely related to the meaning of human life. People need big words to make life meaningful.Professor Frankfurt discovered the anti-truth nature of bullshit, which is very important. I would like to add another aspect about bullshit. Bullshit is not only anti-truth, but more seriously, it is anti-value. Bullshit can kill the seriousness of human beings. This is the greatest harm of nonsense. Of course, life needs bullshit, and life without bullshit is awkward.Quentin Tarantino raised a strong question in his film "Pulp Fiction": "Why do people have to talk nonsense when they are together, otherwise they feel so boring?" The characters in the film finally discovered that only Only those who are connected with each other can reach the state where silence is not uncomfortable.It can be seen that nonsense is needed in life. If there is no nonsense, all kinds of publicity work, all kinds of shows, cocktail parties, conference dinners, and even friendships will not go on.But bullshit still conveys important information about people's tastes, intentions, and what they are really serious about, from how, what, and especially what is not bullshit.The point is that bullshit must have boundaries. There are always some things that cannot be bullshit, and things that cannot be bullshit cannot be bullshit.Serious-looking bullshit on serious issues is utterly horrific, it destroys spirit and emotion, a classic example is the endless "legitimate" bullshit by professors and academics in the name of "academic norms" , pretending to be a noble spiritual cause with boring, trivial or even mentally retarded academic nonsense, the damage to ideology and academics is almost as harmful to the mind as the skits at the cultural evening.

It is for sequence.