Monty Python and Philosophy

by Gary L. Hardcastle

  Some of you will spot the irony afoot. For it was a certain youthful indiscretion on my part, with certain now-famous elements of popular culture (combined with, I admit, several pints), that first led me to your wonderful department and its uniformly underrated approach to matters philosophie. I refer—I can see some of you smirking already—to that BBC excrescence non puerile known as Monty Python’s Flying Grail [audience: “Circus! Circus!”]. Right, right, Circus. Anyway, as we all know, it was upon encountering one of these so-called “Pythons” in a Twickenham Road pub that I learned (and how he knew, I haven’t the foggiest) that this very department was at that very time soliciting. Soliciting applications for a visiting scholar. And again as we all know, the result has been a long and most fruitful, if sporadic, intellectual camaraderie.

  But let us be clear: if this Monty Python business inadvertently nourished my career, that was a mere accident attendant upon a substantial disaster for twentieth-century philosophy proper. The philosophy I . . . well, we . . . were taught to love, honor, and cherish became, in the course of Monty Python’s success, popularized—a circumstance all the more ironic given the fact that, I was once told, the Pythons themselves were once students at two of the greatest universities in the history of civilization, Oxford and Cambridge. Knowing something of the real, true philosophy, they apparently felt equipped to stun, even kill, it with an Arbeitkorp comprising not just a show on the telly but at least one full-length movie, the sheer popularity of which surely helped obscure, if not altogether erase, those crucial disciplinary and cultural borders I just mentioned. Indeed, Monty Python, I submit, paved the way for the utterly ridiculous idea that anyone anywhere can not only pass judgment upon philosophical matters, but do so on national television. Good Lord, I even witnessed a sketch in which two washer ladies discuss Sartre! [laughter]. Laugh if you must, but all this mucking about has had dire consequences. It has made it next-to-impossible to tell who is really a philosopher and who is not; who is a fraud and who has earned a place over Wittgenstein’s knee.

  Some of my younger colleagues, back in Slough, dismiss my worries. They have their standard response about the status of anything: “Well, it’s all negotiable now, isn’t it? It’s all textual.” [yelling] WELL IT’S NOT! [audience cheers]. But, I ask you, is their attitude not the main reason why a walk through the drawing rooms of today’s universities resembles nothing so much as a muck-about in a postmodern zoo, where the animals have been let loose from their cages to wander amongst (and, inevitably, mount) each other, heedless to their heritage as natural kinds? If it is still a philosophical homily (as I, like so many others, learned from our graduate advisors) that there can be no distinction without a corresponding instinction, then the present essay can be regarded as a tracing of one triumph of instinct over distinct.117 Thus my title.

  The Trouble With Dead Parrots, and Sketches About Them

  How, precisely, did a comedy troupe with ill-advised access to a television camera create a fissure in the dyke capable of releasing these floodwaters? Well, the reason strikes me as quite plain: they ignored the master. As Wittgenstein says, language matters. But to watch these Pythons, you’d think Wittgenstein never even existed! It’s language on holiday with them, I tell you, and nary a care for the perspicuity, rigors, or quality with language that our profession claims as its very own! All of this is clearest in a sketch I recently chanced upon when preparing my talk to you and which happily remains obscure and, more importantly, largely unknown to my negotiation-intoxicated younger colleagues. I hesitate to even begin to—ahem!—popularize it here, not only because it tends to agitate me but . . . [inaudible comment from the audience]. Right, that’s a good idea. Thank you, Bruce. [sound of bottle opening, pause]. There. Alright, the sketch goes like this. A Mr. Praline angrily returns to his local pet store to complain about a bird he’d recently purchased. The pet shop owner. . . . Oh, I actually have it transcribed here . . . bugger, I’ll just read it.

  MR. PRALINE: I wish to complain about this parrot what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique.

  OWNER: Oh yes, the, uh, the Norwegian Blue . . . What’s, uh . . . What’s wrong with it?

  MR. PRALINE: I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it, my lad. ’E’s dead, that’s what’s wrong with it!

  OWNER: No, no, ’e’s uh, . . . he’s resting.

  MR. PRALINE: Look, Matey, I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I’m looking at one right now.

  OWNER: No no he’s not dead, he’s, he’s restin’! Remarkable bird, the Norwegian Blue, idn’it, ay? Beautiful plumage!

  MR. PRALINE: The plumage don’t enter into it. It’s stone dead.

  OWNER: Nononono, no, no! ’E’s resting!

  So, here we have in the Owner (who, it should be noted, does not own the subject of the sketch, the parrot—see how it’s language on holiday already?) a denial of the parrot’s very existence; it is, in fact, a bold parrot-denial. The stage is set, therefore, for philosophical debate; if it were in our hands, professional hands, a proper language would be set down, tending to syntax and semantics, and then by means of this language the dispute would be resolved effectively, that is, by way of a method that provides in a finite number of steps the correct answer and no incorrect answers. Such would be the proper philosophical resolution of this all-too-philosophical moment.

  Yet what these bloody Pythons provide is something quite different—something as disturbing as it is, nowadays at least, familiar. No philosopher enters. No philosopher is even summoned! Instead the hapless Mr. Praline takes matters into his own hands and, by an argument that consists, contrary to Occamian precept, in insistences multiplied, he denies the denial of the parrot. Any user of Wittgenstein’s slab language, or for that matter any licensed contractor, could predict the outcome. There is no parrot, no refund, and, of course, no resolution. Left to their own untrained amateur language, these reckless non-philosophers simply drift on the open sea to which they have banished themselves. Bon Voyage.

  Read as a chilling morality play, this Dead Parrot sketch could suffice. But by enacting and promoting this and other philosophical situations into (so-called) popular culture, Monty Python has folded philosophy into the warp and woof of the everyday, the mundane, and the vulgar. This pet shop, of course, reminds us of man’s less-than-proud heritage among Thomas Hobbes’s “untamed beastes.” Need we more of an indication that we are being presented with degeneration incarnate? If so, notice that this scene is presented in a public forum—namely, television—characterized aptly by the eminent Spiro Agnew, the Greek shipping tycoon and later Secretary of State under Jimmy Carter, as a “vast wasteland.” To those properly tuned to the message, it can hardly be avoided: philosophical issues should be tossed into this wasteland to be shat upon by, among others, dead parrots. The mocking laughter of the studio audience, recruited no less from the very British citizenry who would go on to invent punk rock . . . Well, let me just say that this sketch alone likely damaged real and true philosophy more than any event of the twentieth century, and in saying that I include the publication of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. [sustained applause, cheering]

  There is, I admit, a potential terminological puzzle. Wittgenstein showed us that “language games” and “forms of life” were proper foci for philosophical analysis. But his mere usage of those words does not, of course, license entertainers to concoct silly exchanges that run roughshod over the categorical distinctions they put in play. Is this parrot alive or dead? The poor viewer is left with the suggestion—nay, it’s not even a suggestion, but just an assertion or implication against which they can have no argument—that it may or may not be dead. Every test and analysis of the situation—if the bird is merely sleeping, for instance, then it should be able to be woken up—is deconstructed as some negotiation-rich tug-of-war. When Mr. Praline yells at the bird to see if it can be roused (“’Ello, Mister Polly Parrot! I’ve got a lovely fresh cuttlefish for you if you show . . . ”) the Owne
r jostles the cage and proclaims, “There, he moved!” Negotiation triumphs again, for now the argument is shifted to whether he jostled the cage:OWNER: I never!!

  MR. PRALINE: Yes, you did!

  OWNER: I never, never did anything . . .

  As these winds of negotiable ambiguity continue to push these two hapless non-philosophers out to sea, this perverse view of philosophy as some kind of game, some kind of solving of puzzles—a bourgeois pastime, perhaps, like Parcheesi, to be played by philosophers or pet-store owners alike—becomes plain.

  Having sailed out of even potentially philosophically responsible waters, the sketch goes to its inevitable end—to a shouting match, a noisy string of synonyms and clichés meant to establish, per impossibile, some truth of the matter. This parrot, Mr. Praline says (now yelling at the top of his lungs) ispassed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! ’E’s expired and gone to meet ’is maker! ’E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, ’e rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed ’im to the perch ’e’d be pushing up the daisies! ’Is metabolic processes are now ’istory! ’E’s off the twig! ’E’s kicked the bucket, ’e’s shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!

  What is all this then? What have we got in this sorry excuse for a philosophical discussion? Nothing but a litany of bald assertions, not even an attempt at an argument, and, plainly, the utter absence of real philosophical analysis. And I’ll have you know that, after all the shouting, this pair decides to go home together in the fashion of pooftas?! [murmurs and disapproval from the audience] It’s these Monty Pythons who have taken us down this path. So who, I ask, shall grab the wheel and steer things right?

  What Is to Be Done?

  Some things cannot be shown (Wittgenstein, again, obviously) and must therefore be said, even belabored, because they are so insidious and complicated. So forgive me for running on but I want to impress upon you how complicated things have become and what is at stake.

  First and foremost, despite Pythonic appearances, philosophy is no game. Careers are at stake! Publishing royalties! These depend upon our ability to responsibly analyze things philosophically and thus to distinguish correctly the real philosophers from the frauds and charlatans. Now that the Pythons have so turned poor Witt on his head and let this parrot out of its cage, it’s nigh impossible to know who’s who and what’s what. Your own department, as you well know, is revered as a band of genuine pioneers in the theory of identity and naming. Yet—I dare say only because some of you mentioned it earlier today—there are some, well many, I’ve run across who question whether your department remains in existence today, or whether it ever existed beyond those few moments long ago when it was put in front of Monty Python’s cameras. [laughter from the audience] Need I say more, then, to illustrate the widespread confusions?

  What, then, is to be done? I daresay the answer is obvious. We must boycott all these avenues and institutions that have so far promoted this popularization, and we must begin with Monty Python. This means a number of things. First, of course, we must simply assert ourselves. Let us prove that we do indeed exist [cheers from audience] and that we must be taken seriously by the philosophical establishment!

  That’s the easy part. Much harder, I fear—though not impossible, let’s hope—is the task of refuting or at least obscuring this notion that Monty Python has anything philosophically interesting or genuine to say. Now, in this case, we can kill two emus with one stone [cheers and laughter from audience] simply by organizing ourselves and like-minded (that is, real) philosophers and publishing our own book—say, something like, Real Philosophy Is Not Popular Philosophy—in which we can illuminate the pitfalls of the current fashions.

  Indeed, that is what I’ve begun to do in my talk today. Of course, here I am preaching to the converted. So what I shall do—and I implore you all to join me—is send round my essays and papers to publishers in hopes that at least one is not yet intoxicated with this blasted popularization business. I am quite serious that with the right kind of organization and a publication or two we may inaugurate, really, a movement for the depopularization of philosophy. [Cheers and commotion in audience]

  I see that beer and fresh meat are being brought in now, so if you’ll all just calm down for yet another minute while I . . . [inaudible above cheering and commotion in audience]. Alright, thank you. I’m almost done here, so . . . just quickly . . . I, I think the most important thing, as each of us plays our role in this anti-popularization movement, is to downplay the popularity of Monty Python itself. Really, unless it’s absolutely necessary, we must not even mention Monty Python in these efforts and obviously not take part in projects or books or conferences that take these mere entertainers seriously as philosophers, popular or unpopular—of any kind at all. [More cheers and calls for food] Alright, then. Let’s have a drink!

  20

  My Years with Monty Python, or, What’s So Funny About Language, Truth, and Analyticity?

  GARY L. HARDCASTLE

  And though a philosopher may live remote from business, the genius of philosophy, if carefully cultivated by several, must gradually diffuse itself throughout the whole society, and bestow a similar correctness on every art and calling.

  —David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, §1

  Philosophy [is] on the whole no laughing matter.

  —W.V. Quine, Quiddities, Preface

  Here’s a true story. In the early 1990s, as a junior philosophy professor, I was invited to talk to the undergraduate philosophy club at the university where I had recently been hired. I accepted of course, and I even offered a rather promising title: “Themes in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy as Reflected in the Work of Monty Python.” That title—inspired by a nervous joke we traded back and forth in graduate school, that the dissertations we were all laboring on, each an example of the painstaking conceptual analysis for which analytic philosophy was named, were in fact on the philosophy of Monty Python—showed up almost immediately on flyers around campus, above a date, time, place, and—in large letters—my name. One got the distinct impression that I would give the talk by that name.

  Now, I had the title, but not what one might call “the actual talk.” If we are going to talk in actualities, I didn’t even have an actual idea for the actual talk beyond that suggested by the actual title. It was entirely conceivable (in fact I could conceive it, clearly and distinctly) that I would be introduced and then, at the podium, proceed to repeat that title in various formulations until, somehow, fifty minutes passed. “Well, then [ponder] . . . what are the themes of contemporary philosophy, and [long ponder] . . . how . . . are they analytic? And what is it to reflect these things I have suggested we call [extended ponder] . . . themes [medium ponder] . . . in Monty Python? [extended drink of water]” That would be a passable Monty Python skit but terrible philosophy and, more importantly, an altogether disastrous introduction of me and my work to my new colleagues and students. I had to do something, well, completely different.

  As the day approached I staved off panic and thought about it. I needed to show some clips from Monty Python; I had enough sense to know that putting ‘Monty Python’ in the title and then not showing clips from Monty Python would lead the several dozen Python fans in attendance to stone me (though they would don fake beards and unusually low voices for the stoning, a charming but ultimately insufficient consolation). But I also had to say something sensibly philosophical. As we put it in the philosophy biz, I had to do some philosophy. It was, after all, a philosophy club, and I a philosopher.

  So I sat down a full two days before the talk and . . . well, I don’t know how to put this, but . . . it all came together. In fact, it all came together wonderfully. I had on the one hand the memory of my favorite Python skits and movies (which at that time included a few dozen episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl, and portions
of Monty Python and the Holy Grail ). And, on the other, I had my particular take on the themes of analytic philosophy, which amounted to some very general notions about language, rationality, and philosophy itself. And, lo and behold, many of those skits really did reflect, somehow, many of those themes.118

  In “International Philosophy,” for example, a football team of German philosophers (“led by their skipper ‘Nobby’ Hegel,” the announcer tells us) play their Greek counterparts (“there’s Plato, always the man in form!”). The members of both teams quietly pace the field in thought until it occurs to one of them, near the end of the match, to actually kick the ball (this is, remember, the game Americans call ‘soccer’). This I used to comment on philosophers’ frustration with philosophy itself, which seems to involve, to put it plainly, excessive pondering. “Nudge Nudge,” in which the randy Norman pelts his fellow pub-goer, a staid Englishman, with innuendoes (“your wife . . . she likes sport, does she? Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more?”) I presented as an embodiment of the notion that people could have very different ways of looking at the world—different conceptual schemes, we might say—and that this could go undetected in everyday interactions, like, well, having a drink in a pub. And everyone’s favorite, the Dead Parrot sketch, in which a Mr. Praline attempts to return a clearly dead Norwegian Blue parrot to the pet shop where he “bought it not ’alf an hour ago” only to be confronted by a shop-owner who insists, by means of successive mental contortions, that the parrot is alive (“It’s sleeping! It’s stunned! It’s . . . pining for the fjords!”), struck me as a dead-on enactment of holism, the notion that any belief can be held in the face of any experience whatsoever so long as one is willing to make adjustments in one’s other beliefs. I used “The Argument Clinic,” the “Cheese Shop,” and “Burn the Witch” (from Monty Python and The Holy Grail ) to similar purposes, and planned to close the whole affair with a sing-along of the “Bruce’s Philosophers Song” (“Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle, Hobbes was fond of his dram . . . ”); I offered that as Monty Python’s non-trivial contribution to the history of philosophy. Excited as much by the fact that it was done as by the fact that I had managed to weave analytic philosophy together with Monty Python, I gave the talk. Just as the flyer had promised.