Monty Python and Philosophy (10 page)

I’ve dwelled on this example, because it neatly displays both the power and the limits of thought-experiments. Good thought experiments are powerful because they can force us to interrogate judgments we had previously simply assumed, and show them to be groundless. But they are also limited. By themselves they do not support substantive conclusions about what is right and wrong, but only show that certain kinds of reasons support (or fail to support) such conclusions.

Moreover, we have to recognize that individually and collectively we are subject to all sorts of biases and prejudices that we cannot readily filter out about these matters. We are reluctant to see our own behaviors as systematically wrong, and, like it or not, we have a tendency to normalize the values of our own social framework. For example, a world in which women are systematically barred from using certain occupational skills is one in which
they will tend to be seen both by men
and women
as less capable of exercising those skills. We all, now, see what was wrong with slavery or witch-burning, but when these practices were in force they were seen as normal by nearly all involved. So reflective equilibrium, when conducted as a variant of personal meditation, gets us only so far. Getting to the full truth requires that we have an array of interlocutors: people with different perspectives who can challenge our biases and help us to transcend the limits of our own efforts. When women entered the debate about women’s status in society they presented arguments and perspectives that were not previously in play, and which the men involved in the debate may not have been able, or at least may not have bothered, to imagine. The wider the participation in reflective equilibrium, the more likely the process is, other things being equal, to lead us toward the truth.

This brings us back to the Argument Clinic. One’s own perspective on moral, and other, matters is necessarily limited. This doesn’t mean that one is completely stuck in one’s own perspective; one can, and should, think as far beyond it as one can. But often, one needs help: someone or, preferably, many people, to present alternatives, with whom one can then uncover agreement and disagreement. Mere contradiction, entertaining as it is to a pantomime audience, simply does not serve this purpose.

This philosophical point also tells us something about Monty Python’s humor and why many people find both Monty Python and thought-experiments ludicrous when they first encounter them. Good thought experiments have a great deal in common with good absurd sketches, of the kind the Python team excels in (and, I think, the kind of creativity required to produce them is very similar). They both depend on an internal logic, which may look absurd from the outside. So the Pet Shop owner in the Parrot Sketch (
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
, Episode 8, “Full Frontal Nudity”) has at his fingertips a huge array of alternative possibilities to the Norwegian Blue being dead; and the customer has an equally rich array of ways of making the point that the parrot is, in fact, dead. The structure of the sketch depends on this contrast, and the pieces of the sketch have to fit together. Thought experiments and Python sketches also both depend on a connection with the world. The thought experiment has to be connected in a way that isolates the intuitive judgments that are at issue;
the absurdist sketch has to connect with some aspect of the audience’s experience enough so that it is possible to suspend disbelief for the duration of the sketch. And, in fact, some sketches are themselves rather like thought experiments; they say “Of course, this couldn’t happen or isn’t going to happen. But let’s ask what would make sense if it
did
happen.” The “Argument Clinic” works better than it otherwise would precisely because, as I am arguing, argument—much more than mere contradiction or abuse—engages us aesthetically as well as intellectually.

Far from being absurd, then, it is entirely sensible to go to an argument clinic (as the client understands it). If one has strong ideas about parrots, it may even make sense to go to Michael Palin’s pet shop. If we are committed to uncovering the truth about matters of human value or other matters of great complexity, we usually need other smart, good-willed, and intellectually serious people to alert us to perspectives and reasons we would not have been able to conjure up on our own. If more people sought argument clinics the world would be a better place, and not only because philosophers would be richer.

RANDALL E. AUXIER

L
et’s start by just facing it. We’re all sinners—not me so much as you, because I’ve actually done pretty well, but I could stand a bit of regeneration and I can see that
you
are in real trouble with you-know-Who. He told me so Himself, last night, over a bottle of Two-Buck-Chuck. He likes cheap wine because, well, He loves a bargain. Here is the point. I have a message for you from Him, so listen up: “You are to regard the following essay as revealed, on peril of your eternal soul” (and if you are reading this, I’m sure the peril is quite real). I don’t ask any more of you than would any other inspired being.

How came I to possess such particular favor with He-Who-cannot-be-named? I was a delinquent of fourteen, wandering down a street in Memphis, when a small band of renegade Baptists sidled up to me, sincerely inquiring as to the likely destination of my soul.
²⁷
I said I was late to meet my dealer. They were undeterred. I told them he would be armed and dangerous, and that he was a Methodist. That just encouraged them. They said that if I would pray a simple prayer with them and ask Brian into
my heart, my life would be changed, Brian would take away my sins and save me a seat on that Great Greyhound to Chicago (you can’t go to hell or heaven without a layover in Chicago). I could see these were no ordinary Baptists. These fellows
had
something. That was long ago, and many things have been revealed to me since, including the actual code for the Microsoft Operating System, which I now know to have come directly from Satan. I stand before you today an altered man, yes, some of it was surgical, but some came by direct action of the Almighty. If you care for your soul, turn back.

Alright, I can see
your
priorities. Let me play, then, Virgil to your Dante, Socrates to your Plato, Pontius Pilate to your Biggus . . . well, never mind. Let’s examine the remarkable, sinless life of Brian Cohen (Maximus) in light of certain philosophical and theological worries. And regarding such worries, God is on top of the heap, so let’s get right to that. This may be objectionable to some. Perhaps I’m bound for the infernal region. Handily, my Baptist friends believed that once you are saved, you’ll
always
be saved, and they have even been known to toss out those who disagree (although I was never clear whether
that
is enough to get a person “unsaved”). It seems the Baptists can send you
on your way
, but not precisely to hell, so they, along with most Protestants, seem to have signed a sort of non-proliferation of damnation pact, abdicating the nuclear option for the soul. The Roman Catholics wisely retain their weapon stock, leaving them the only remaining super(natural)-power. But as I mentioned,
I
got saved by the Baptists and I am not going to look a gift-Deity (or badger) in the mouth.
You
are quite another matter. You may need to go and find your own Baptists. Mine are probably in heaven by now. But it is your soul I am most worried about, as you will see.

So, God. In 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), in an especially foul mood, published the following infamous words (except they were in German):

Nietzsche was never renowned for his lightness of heart. It is not easy to distinguish the philosophical from the theological sense in this little narrative. Until recently both theologians and philosophers were plenty occupied with the Big Guy, so how to tell the difference?

One might think, “no theologian would proclaim the death of God,” but in the 1960s a bunch of theologians got a wild hair and did just that, and started wringing their hands over what becomes of theology afterwards.
²⁹
It was a silly time. They mostly went away, some not by their own choosing. So what is Nietzsche on about, and what makes it philosophy?

In the passage, the crowd of unbelievers is laughing at the man who would be sincere. Make no mistake, this is all about laughing at God, and what perils to the soul accompany this activity. What
kills
God is the laughter—or at least, laughter kills the
cheerless
God sought by those whose dominant religious passion is wrapped in
pathos
. Few have contributed more to laughing at such a God (and His followers) than the loyal Pythons, but they begin by having God (a less austere one) laugh at such believers. In
Monty Python and The Holy Grail
, addressing the believers adopting the “correct” pathos, God says: “Oh, don’t grovel . . . do get up! If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s people groveling!!” When Arthur apologizes,
God rebukes him: “And don’t apologize. Every time I try to talk to someone it’s sorry this and forgive me that and I’m not worthy . . .” and “It’s like those miserable psalms. They’re so depressing. Now knock it off.”
³⁰
This is the sort of situation into which Nietzsche’s “madman” steps, as a pathetic follower (or so he is
taken
to be by those laughing). The laughter is the clue that whatever reverence the solemn God once commanded has lost its grip. This may be the “madman’s” point, of course.

Nietzsche is quite right. If that God ever really existed, He is dead now. That so many people find the Pythons funny is Nietzsche’s justification. The God of our Victorian foreparents doesn’t frighten us now nearly so much as a Stephen King novel, although His followers (God’s, not King’s) are still numerous enough and in themselves
plenty
scary and increasingly desperate in an unbelieving world. Stephen King’s followers are scarier when one sits near them at dinner, although they get on nicely with Nietzsche’s people, since they all wear black, chew with their mouths open, and happily endure the interminable ramblings of self-indulgent writers who need editors far more than followers. The old God has been reduced now to a weapon of mass destruction, wielded by those angry about His death. Yet, to have a personal relationship with the dead God, one must supplement the historic pathos with a peculiar narcissistic psychosis.
³¹
This psychosis I will call “the Comic,” following a usage by Henri Bergson (1859-1943), which I will explain in a moment. For now, grant that reflection upon the difference between the
history
of the pathos of Christianity and its modern transformation into a psychosis is very much a philosophical matter, not a theological one, and this is what Nietzsche was foreseeing.

Philosophy is reflection upon
all
experience and aims at self-knowledge,
including
religious experience and ideas like “God.” Theology, by contrast, is reflection upon religious experience and ideas, undertaken in faith that such experiences do exist and such
ideas do refer to realities beyond themselves. This makes theology a more specialized activity. If you are already offended by what I have said, you’ll prefer theology. But there may still be a God never dreamed of in your theology, and He (or She, or It) may be laughing at you. On the far side of theology, you don’t know very much; even Dr. bloody Bronowski doesn’t know very much.
³²

That “far side” is where philosophical consideration of God finds itself after a couple of World Wars and a Cold War. Thus, where the faith can no longer be assumed, one moves past theology into philosophy. While we might be tempted to build an “alternative theology” based upon the Pythonic revelation, indeed,
sorely
tempted (forgive me Brian), instead we need to grasp how the Pythons enter the philosophical world precisely on the assumption that (the old) God is dead, or at least might be (I mean, maybe he’s not dead yet, but will be any moment). At the end of the infamous passage quoted above, Nietzsche’s madman says “I have come too early. My time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way.”
³³
If his time was not yet in 1882, certainly by 1979 (when
Monty Python’s Life of Brian
was filmed) the days had been accomplished. The Pythons speak of God and all this hilarity is not only tolerated, it drowns out the rage of those “serious” Christians.

Yet, laughing at God is dicey business any time. As I said, I’m right with Brian, and I am here to help
you
get right; I think it may be too late for Nietzsche. Even the Mormons, with their wise doctrine of salvation for the dead, show no interest in reclamation of the retiring little guy with the migraine that wouldn’t quit. In some ways, however, Nietzsche’s seriousness touches upon a characteristic of all that is comic. We can use it here.

So Brian Cohen (Maximus) stands continually before new incarnations of the same crowd as Nietzsche’s madman, asking the same sorts of questions. But Brian’s pathos is different from the madman’s; Brian has the sincerity of the divine idiot.
³⁴
Recall
the following exchange, when Brian finds himself obliged to prophesy: