Monty Python and Philosophy

by Gary L. Hardcastle

  For Kevin Schilbrack, it’s Monty Python’s Life of Brian that serves as grist for the philosophical mill. His “‘Life’s a Piece of Shit’: Heresy, Humanism, and Heroism in Monty Python’s Life of Brian” (winner, incidentally, of the Award for Best Title in this Particular Volume, solely on the grounds of profanity and use of H’s) argues that Brian, the film’s hero, has existentialism written all over him (namely, the form of existentialism championed by Albert Camus (1913-1960)). Ten-year olds, and others similarly intrigued by the limits of the human digestive system, may want to turn immediately to Noël Carroll’s sensitive and delicate treatment of the wonderfully insensitive and indelicate Mr. Creosote. In “What Mr. Creosote Knows about Laughter,” Carroll finds an explanation for why we (well some of us, at least) find Mr. Creosote, from Monty Python’s Meaning of Life, disgustingly funny rather than just plain disgusting. Enjoy the chapter with a wafer-thin after-dinner mint.

  In “The Limits of Horatio’s Philosophy,” Kurt Smith takes up the delightfully absurd sketch “Piston Engine (a Bargain)” from Episode 43 of Monty Python’s Flying Circus (titled “Hamlet”) and asks a simple but vexing question: What are these women, these pepperpots, saying? Smith’s answer leads us through the philosophical evolution of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), the Austrian philosophical luminary transplanted to Cambridge in the 1930s. Harry Brighouse’s contribution, “Why Is An Argument Clinic Less Silly than an Abuse Clinic or a Contradiction Clinic?,” makes use of the Python’s famous “Argument Clinic” sketch (originally in Episode 29 of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, “The Money Programme”) to illuminate how the political philosopher John Rawls (1926-2002) analyzed our beliefs about the rightness or wrongness of social practices and institutions. Far from being a ridiculous scenario, Brighouse suggests, a real argument clinic could serve a genuine and much-needed social function.

  Taking us back to Brian (Cohen, that is), Randall Auxier makes an offer that you don’t see everyday, at least not in a book of relatively serious philosophy. Auxier is willing to save your soul, both mortal and immortal, by way of the heroic anti-hero of Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Sound good? Do be warned: the salvation involves a dose of Nietzsche, a smidgen of Pascal, and a heads-on confrontation with the evidence we have, or lack, that God is British. Rebecca Housel’s “Monty Python and The Holy Grail: Philosophy, Gender, and Society,” on the other hand, invites us to view Monty Python and the Holy Grail from the dual perspectives of Arthurian legend and feminist ethics. Amidst the humor, Housel argues, are serious and intriguing philosophical and ethical undertones. Stephen Asma’s chapter, “Against Transcendentalism: The Meaning of Life and Buddhism,” explores the recurring themes of dehumanization in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life and links these to a deeper dualistic framework embedded in many religions. In the end, Asma argues, the film leads us to something completely different (naturally): the Buddhist value of mindfulness. Stephen Erickson’s “Is There Life After Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life?” then offers a critique of the idea that life is a journey, its meaning somehow tied up with the journey’s destination. Erickson sees the Pythons unwittingly reducing that notion to absurdity as they offer a more compelling alternative, a view Erickson calls “comedic eliminativism.”

  What, That’s Not Enough for You?

  Okay. On then to the second part, Aspects of Pythonic Philosophy. Here the chapters focus not on a particular sketch or film but rather on a particular philosophical topic or idea—one that connects to several different Monty Python sketches or scenes. If you’ve come to this book looking for a particular philosophical topic (as opposed to a particular bit of Python), this is the section for you. Leading it off is Stephen Faison’s chapter, “God Forgive Us.” We are pleased to announce, in fact, that Faison’s chapter has finally settled, once and for all, those thorny and unresolved questions of God’s existence, God’s nature, and God’s relation to humanity. Well, not really. But Faison does argue that the Pythons, in consistently doing such a spectacular job parodying God’s relation to us, have provided two invaluable services. They have raised the question of God’s relationship to us and made immeasurably harder the jobs of well-meaning Sunday school teachers. John Huss’s “Monty Python and David Hume on Religion” keeps the focus on God by drawing illuminating parallels between the treatment of theological questions by the Pythons and David Hume (1711-1776), the skeptical philosopher who contributed greatly to philosophy despite his being Scottish. Huss has convinced us, at least, that Hume, but for his dying in the eighteenth century, would plainly have become the seventh Python.

  Taking us from God to madness, Michelle Spinelli makes use of “The Idiot in Society” (Episode 20 of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, “The Attila the Hun Show”), among other classic Python skits, to get a grip on the claim, articulated by the social historian and philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984), that what counts as madness or insanity is something created—‘constructed’ is the word—by the society in question. Don’t be surprised if, after reading Spinelli’s “Madness in Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” you find yourself watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Foucault in hand.

  Moving the focus from theology to morality, Patrick Croskery’s “Monty Python and the Search for the Meaning of Life” performs the remarkable feat of illustrating several notions of the ethical life, as well as its pitfalls, solely by way of Monty Python. Not unlike other authors, Croskery addresses the Pythonic flirtation with nihilism, the denial of values of any sort, and offers a sensible verdict: the Pythons know nihilism well, but they are not nihilists. Nihilism is also the starting point for Edward Slowik’s “Existentialism in Monty Python: Kafka, Camus, Nietzsche, and Sartre” (winner of the award for Most Names In A Single Title In This Volume. Congratulations, Ed). For Slowik, though, the Pythons’s message is more existentialist and less nihilist. He notes a particular resonance between Monty Python’s impatience with pretension and the philosophical message about life’s meaning offered by the German philosopher and redoubtable laugh-meister Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).

  The ghost of Wittgenstein looms large in Monty Python and in Rosalind Carey’s delightfully Gumbyish “My Brain Hurts!” Carey takes on the difficult question of what philosophy is exactly, a question that Wittgenstein himself answered in different ways throughout his life. Ludwig, sadly, could not avail himself of the Pythons to illustrate his ideas. But Carey has nicely filled the gap, matching bits of Python to bits of Wittgenstein in a manner that might not have pleased Wittgenstein himself (not much pleased him, to be honest) but, we think, enlightens and entertains us. Finally, anyone who has waded in philosophy’s waters will have noted the far-fetched, perplexing, and often downright silly “thought-experiments” that brighten philosophers’ eyes. In “Why Is a Philosopher Like a Python? How Philosophical Examples Work,” James Taylor faces head-on and explains this distinctly philosophical thing called the thought experiment. By comparing such experiments to sketches that are equally far-fetched and sometimes utterly absurd (but, we grant, much more entertaining), he shows that the philosophical thought experiment is not quite as crazy as it may first appear.

  Bloody Hell, There’s More!?!

  It depends how you look at it. Wittgenstein wrote that the same figure can be seen as a duck or a rabbit. So, you may see the remaining chapters as a misfit bunch of leftovers or, very differently, as a natural class defined by similarities of form and content. We see them as a school of ducks, each of which looks at philosophy (or some aspect of it) in light of the phenomenon of Monty Python. It is remarkable, after all, not only that the utterly bizarre Monty Python’s Flying Circus was sponsored by the BBC in the first place, but that Monty Python itself grew into an institution of enormous cultural influence. In light of that success and the many connections between philosophy and Monty Python explored in the earlier chapters, this section asks, What might be gleaned about the fortunes—or misfortunes—of the otherwise unworldly enterprise of philosophy? These authors (
your two editors among them) think there is much to explore. Hence, our final section: Pythonic Aspects of Philosophy.

  Alan Richardson’s “Tractatus Comedio-Philosophicus” wants us to know that the only difference between Monty Python and academic philosophy is that philosophy isn’t funny. Sensing philosophy’s imminent disaster, Richardson conducts an intervention (of sorts) to which he has invited Wittgenstein and Nietzsche, if you can picture that. George Reisch’s “Monty Python’s Utterly Devastating Critique of Ordinary Language Philosophy” makes the case that the Pythons imbibed, and found unsatisfying, far more of the analytic philosophy afoot in Cambridge and Oxford than might have otherwise been thought. Reisch then calls for a Python-inspired rehabilitation of philosophy, but one quite different from Richardson’s.

  Yet a third style of rehabilitation is suggested—okay, demanded—by Bruce Baldwin’s “Word and Objection: How Monty Python Destroyed Modern Philosophy.” Though less sympathetic to the intersection of philosophy with popular culture than the other chapters, we chose to include Baldwin’s chapter (in the form of a faithfully transcribed lecture) in order to promote debate about philosophy in popular culture and because Baldwin’s personal investment in things Pythonic proved too ironic for us to resist.

  Finally, Gary Hardcastle’s “My Years With Monty Python” recounts his adventures over the past ten years lecturing about Monty Python and philosophy to non-academic audiences. Hardcastle tries to make sense of why anyone would find the combination palatable, let alone entertaining. Taking up a similar question that Hume, that almost-seventh Python, posed centuries ago, Hardcastle finds a satisfying answer (note, however, that he is easily pleased). Hardcastle’s chapter makes frequent reference to his earlier essay, “Themes in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy as Reflected in the Work of Monty Python,” so we’ve included that here, too. Call it a Special Bonus Track.

  Okay, That’s All for Now

  That’s how it goes. There is no one “deep and interesting” connection between Monty Python and philosophy, it turns out, because there are many. There are bits of Python that are better understood and appreciated by philosophical analysis; there are bits of philosophy that are well served by Python sketches and themes; and the whole, enduring empire of Monty Python has a thing or two to say about the status of philosophy and its role in the world. If you were hoping for something pithier, less obvious, or pythonesque (see?), well, we’re sorry.

  We know, much has been left out of this book, too. As Heather Douglas reminds one of the editors daily, there are not nearly enough mentions of the Holy Hand Grenade (even counting that one). Other colleagues, we rest assured, will complain that their personal philosophical heroes had to be left out (“What, no Bosanquet?! No Nicolas de Cusa?!?!”). Who knows—maybe there is room on the shelf for a sequel volume of Monty Python and Philosophy in which the Holy Hand Grenade and other topics can be philosophically analyzed. If you want to see that sequel, make sure you buy at least two copies of this book. Going farther still, one might consider a new academic organization, something like a society dedicated to the philosophical analysis of Monty Python. Those plans, alas, will remain exceedingly tentative so long as a suitably catchy and marketable acronym remains elusive.

  And Where the @#$%^& is the Queen?

  From the very start, we wanted the Queen to participate. We really did. We tried. And our correspondence with her Highness (displayed at the very start of this book, for we have nothing to hide) shows that we offered her a really sweet deal: unlimited length, no set topic, and not even a real deadline. But, alas, it was not to be, at least if this “Mrs. Gill Middleburgh” is to be believed. Where we went wrong we don’t know, but we’re undeterred. For this volume’s sequel (and have you bought your second copy yet?), we promise you . . . Prince Charles.

  Philosophical Aspects of Monty Python

  “Welcome to a packed Olympic stadium!”

  Scenes from “International Philosophy,” originally produced for German TV and later included in Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl.

  2

  “Life’s a Piece of Shit”: Heresy, Humanism, and Heroism in Monty Python’s Life of Brian

  KEVIN SCHILBRACK

  Brian whimpers. He is pushed around by his mother. As a revolutionary, he is incompetent and he cannot compose a proper sentence in Latin, even one composed of just three words. Nevertheless, circumstances conspire so that he is taken to be a prophet or a messiah, revered by a multitude. He nearly inaugurates a new religion.

  What exactly is Brian? And what are the Pythons trying to do in telling the story of his life? Many took this movie to be an insult to God; they saw it as blasphemy. But the Pythons were famously interested in philosophical questions, especially about the meaning of life, and if one watches the movie with this in mind, one gets a very different message.

  “Blessed Are the Cheese Makers”: The Question of Heresy

  Is Monty Python’s Life of Brian blasphemous?

  After the success of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the Monty Python gang were not sure what to do for their next project. As a lark, one proposed the title: Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory. Apparently, the idea for a Biblical comedy was just spontaneous. Once the idea caught on, however, the troupe took their work seriously: they read the Bible and Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, trying to see where funny material might be found. After reading about Jesus, however, they came to the conclusion that they respected the things he said and that they did not want to make fun of him. So they shifted to the idea of a thirteenth apostle, perhaps one who would always be late and miss the miracle, and this idea continued to morph until they came to the idea of someone born at the same time as Jesus who is mistaken as a messiah, and this became Brian.

  Even before it came out, the idea of a Biblical spoof was controversial. The project was originally financed by EMI, but they backed out of the project, fearing that the script was blasphemous. (The film was eventually financed by George Harrison, the Beatle.) Once the film was made, it was picketed by Christian groups and was banned in Ireland and Norway and in parts of the United States and Britain.

  Yet the movie never suggests that God does not exist. It never suggests that God is less than what believers take God to be, or even that Jesus is not the Son of God. Jesus appears in the movie twice—once at his birth and once giving the Sermon on the Mount—and his miracles have left ex-lepers behind him. Throughout the movie, Jesus is portrayed in a respectful and even orthodox way.

  The movie satirizes not what Christian believers believe, but instead the way that some believers believe. First, it mocks a certain religious eagerness to believe. Some philosophers of religion have also criticized this. David Hume (1711-1776) is one of the most insightful. Hume complains about “the strong propensity of mankind to [believe in] the extraordinary and the marvellous,” and notes that this alone “ought reasonably to beget a suspicion against all relations of this kind.”3 To believe that one has a secret, that one knows something remarkable that others don’t know, can bring a palpable sense of one’s own specialness that is so agreeable that it is hard to resist. According to Hume, the desire to feel this is the primary motivation for gossip—and it is also the motivation to create and to spread stories of miracles. Monty Python’s Life of Brian illustrates this process perfectly, when the crowd convinces itself that Brian’s inability to tell others the secret of life is a sign that he is hiding it; when they decide that Mandy, his mother, must be a virgin; and when losing a sandal creates a small storm of debate about whether true followers should gather sandals or cast them away. In this way Monty Python’s Life of Brian teaches a brand of healthy skepticism toward the pontifications of the religious.

  Even more sharply, the film mocks a certain religious smugness. Religious belief can feed a sense of satisfaction with oneself that can lead to carelessness, hypocrisy, and even violence. Think of those in the film who are attending the Sermon on the Mount with their parasols, congratulating themselves fo
r attending a religious event, but unengaged with the significance of the message. As they bicker with each other about big noses, they mistake “Blessed are the peacemakers” for “Blessed are the cheesemakers,” and eventually break out in a fistfight. They figure out that Jesus has said, “The meek will inherit the earth” (not, as they first thought, “the Greek”), but it does not touch them: “That’s nice, I’m glad they’re getting something ’cos they have a hell of a time.” Monty Python’s target is not the belief in a perfect being, a being that is all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful, what is sometimes called “the God of the philosophers.” The target of the movie’s ridicule is instead the popular belief in a more human-like God. David Hume targeted this idea as well; he calls it “anthropomorphism.” Anthropomorphism in this sense is a belief that is focused not on a perfect being, or a benevolent creator, but on an extremely powerful being that, one hopes, is on one’s side. We see this anthropomorphic belief in the prayer offered in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life: “O Lord, Ooh, you are so big, so absolutely huge, Gosh, we are all just absolutely impressed down here, I can tell you. Forgive us, Lord, for our dreadful toadying. And barefaced flattery. But You are so strong and, well, just so super. Amen.” And the belief in a powerful being who takes sides can easily be used to justify violence. There are, after all, prayers like this one from Monty Python and the Holy Grail: “O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade that, with it, Thou mayest blow Thine enemies to tiny bits in Thy mercy.”