On Monday, April 6, from 16:15 to 17:45 (Jakobi 2–336), the third talk of this semester’s departmental colloquium series of the Department of Philosophy will take place.
Paul McLaughlin (Bath Spa University, England) will give a talk titled “The Philosophy and Political Economy of Bullshit”. The session will be moderated by Mats Volberg.
Abstract. There is an extensive, if still inchoate, body of literature on ‘bullshit’ as a mode of discourse (and arguably also a form of practice). Philosophically, Harry Frankfurt’s influential essay encouraged a more rigorous examination of the subject (or, rather, one of its varieties). However, it was Jerry Cohen who developed a more “self-critical” philosophical approach to bullshit. I intend to develop this approach further and to broaden it beyond what is in fact an “other-critical” critique of Francophone philosophy. In doing so, I hope to make somewhat better sense of bullshit in general, and of philosophical bullshit in particular, through engagement with aspects of social theory and political economy.
All students, faculty, and other interested parties are warmly welcome!
