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In your local Borders or Barnes and Noble, the self-help and philosophy sections are separated by shelves labeled religion, or psychology, or history. This makes sense: what does Plato have to do with Becoming the Me I Want To Be? But aside from the obvious differences (in methodology, purpose, and rigour) the two disciplines share the attempt to illuminate through self-understanding.

How-to books always seem to read well when you know something about the subject; when you've got a little experience to go on and can judge the validity of the advice. These days, the how-to-succeed-at-college book is a standard pre-university gift. Bookshops are full of them, and they arrive in the dorm room tucked into laundry baskets or messenger bags. No matter what their value to the newly graduated high school student-reading about the novelty of university culture is enticing indeed-these guides rarely offer much to current college students, other than a chance to see how far off the mark their own experience is.

Cal Newport, current MIT grad student and passionate supporter of overachieving co-eds everywhere, has published numerous pieces on college life. His first book, How to Win at College: Surprising Secrets for Success from the Country's Top Students (2005), offers a collection of suggestions culled from "phenomenal" college students across the country.

The advice ranges from the rather obvious ("eat healthy") to the fairly insightful ("start fast, end slow") to the counterintuitive ("don't do all of your reading"). The book is rife with seemingly contradictory chapter titles-how can you "Make Friends Your #1 Priority" if you should "Always Go To Class?-but Newport, earnest as he is, manages to make it seem possible as well as desirable.

The book ends on one priceless note of wisdom: "Don't Have No Regrets" (attributed to a college "star," whose failure to grasp basic grammar apparently did not hinder his academic success. Perhaps it was from Janos, the frat-boy turned state assemblyman mentioned in the introduction).

The effectiveness of this type of book is always secondary to individual experience. After being in college for a few months, most students know what works best for them. By then, it should be easy to separate the truly helpful from the truly inane (the bullshit, as it were).

Which leads us right to Harry G. Frankfurt, the retired Princeton Professor of Philosophy whose On Bullshit (2005) was a New York Times Best Seller for 27 weeks.

Though a small book with a charming title, On Bullshit is dense reading-an exercise in logic and mental stamina. Frankfurt distinguishes between bullshit and outright lying thusly: "the essence of bullshit is not that it is false, but that it is phony." In other words, the difference lies not in the product, but rather the process.

To Frankfurt, then, bullshit is a "greater enemy of the truth" than lying, since it ignores the authority of truthfulness: "It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction."

And why does bullshit seem so prevalent today? For Frankfurt, the answer is simple: we live in an age of increased forms of communication, we're saturated in media and, as citizens of a democracy, we're imbued with the idea that everyone has a responsibility to voice their opinion. But the discrepancy between opinion and knowledge is magnified in the realm of public life. To anyone who turns on a cable news channel this is easily apparent.

The bow-tied professor came to UWM Oct. 7 as part of the "Letters and Science Dean's Distinguished Lectures in the Humanities" and spoke to a crowded Merrill Hall from his upcoming book. His talk, entitled "Getting It Right," put forward a rational basis for considering what to care about.

According to Frankfurt, self-preservation is the "protean mode of concern" - the basis from which we make decisions. This self-preservation is "not itself grounded in reason, but love." When Frankfurt talks about love here, he's not referring to romance or lust or any of those common definitions, but rather to a "mode of caring" that is involuntary and not rationally determined. The object can be, among other things, a person, an ideal, a group.

So, because an individual is invested in this love, and because this love is non-utilitarian, it necessarily provides a basis for deciding what to care about. Frankfurt sees this in an evolutionary schema-it requires a "confidence in what we cannot help being."

"It's important to you to understand what's important to you," said Frankfurt.

Sage advice, and as applicable to success in college as it is to anything else in life.

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