Sublime

But a personal morality is simply the making of rules for yourself that will guide your conduct toward what you want and away from what you don’t want. And the rules are made by examining alternative sets of consequences in important matters. Your knowledge will tell you what consequences you believe will ensue from any given action; and only your

This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled—whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others—to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant.

“Knowledge is power,” wrote Francis Bacon. But Bacon’s vast knowledge did not keep him from taking bribes and falling into disgrace. Clearly, Bacon’s knowledge did not have the power to save him from himself.[a.] What Bacon overlooked, we now make explicit: Knowledge is useful in the service of an appropriate Model of the Universe[b.] , and not oth

Second, it’s advantageous to recognize how we often rely on bullshitting when we feel compelled to talk about things we don’t understand. Frankfurt explains how the widespread conviction that many of us share about needing to comment or weigh in on every single issue around the globe leads to increased levels of BS.

That if growing up might be a quest for one’s illegitimacy, this is because one’s legitimacy resides in what one thinks one knows about oneself. This, I think, is what Freud quickly discovered and then tried to undiscover. It is not an increase in self-knowledge that Freud describes, but its limits. He

Stupid people are generally malicious, for the very same reason as the ugly and the deformed. Similarly, genius and sanctity are akin. However simple-minded a saint may be, he will nevertheless have a dash of genius in him; and however many errors of temperament, or of actual character, a genius may possess, he will still exhibit a certain nobility

When Freud wanted to persuade us that perception was distorted by wish, he wanted to persuade us that we tend to see merely what we want in what is there, and that knowing (and not-knowing) is all to do with wanting rather than with truth.

However studiously and conscientiously the bullshitter proceeds, it remains true that he is also trying to get away with something. There is surely in his work, as in the work of the slovenly craftsman, some kind of laxity that resists or eludes the demands of a disinterested and austere discipline. The pertinent mode of laxity cannot be equated, e