On B-----T
by Harry G. Frankfurt
Princeton and Oxford:  Princeton University Press, 2005, 67 pp

 

            Reviewed by Dr. Susan K. Hedahl

            Following the editorial policy of the illustrious New York Times Book Review, I will also forebear to spell out the entire title of the book for this review.  Let's say that the commonly used time-honored initials of the book's topic are the same as Bible School.

             Harry Frankfurt is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University. This little book's intent is to provide a "theoretical understanding of b-----t, mainly by providing some tentative and exploratory philosophical analysis.... My aim is simply to give a rough account of what b---t is and how it differs from what it is not.... (2)

            The author attends to a variety of different names, roughly analogous, to b----t. He includes "balderdash, claptrap, hokum, drivel, buncombe, imposture, and quackery. (5) Max Black's work, The Prevalence of Humbug (Ithaca:  Cornell University Press, 1985) provides some trajectory materials for Frankfurt's analysis of b-------t.

            Near the book's conclusion, Frankfurt zooms up close to make such a statement as this: "Since b---t need not be false, it differs from lies in its mis-representational intent.  The b----t(er) may not deceive us, or even intend to do so, ...What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us about is his enterprise......he misrepresents what he is up to." (54)

        Befitting the exquisite arguments and brevity of this little book, I invite you to read it for yourself and learn more.  In this reviewer's opinion, far too little training and attention is given in graduate theological education to the structures of verbal tactics, strategies, argumentation theory and rhetoric so necessary to thread one's way through everything from intense theological arguments to church council meetings.

       Given the morass of ethical, moral and practical realities facing Christians today, all of which are persistently made murkier by the prevalence of a lot of b--------t(ers), Frankfort's book should be 'must' reading for every professional church worker.  It would definitely help, to use Jesus' words, in sorting out the wheat from the chaff.