Monty Python and Philosophy (40 page)

According, at least, to David Edmonds and John Eidinow,
Wittgenstein’s Poker: the Story of a Ten-Minute Argument between Two Great Philosophers
(New York: Harper Collins, 2001).

Though one gets the impression Cleese might well study philosophy if he had it all to do over again, given that philosophy has become one of his main post-Python interests. Concerned about the meager attention accorded philosophical questions in contemporary life, for example, in 2002 Cleese recorded a well-received set of radio “blurbs” on philosophical topics for the American Philosophical Association (see
www.udel.apa.edu
). He’s also shared the stage repeatedly with Pomona University’s E. Wilson Lyon Professor of Humanities Stephen Erickson in public discussions of the meaning of life (the topic, not the film) and, from 1999 to 2005, was A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University where he lectured on, among other things, philosophy and religion.

David Hume, “Of Miracles,” in his
Writings on Religion
, edited by Antony Flew (Chicago: Open Court, 1992), p. 73.

Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin, with Bob McCabe,
The Pythons’ Autobiography
(New York: St Martin’s Press, 2003), p. 281.

Immanuel Kant, “What Is Enlightenment?” in Kant,
On History
, edited by Lewis White Beck (New York: Macmillan, 1963), p. 3.

Similarly, if Brian is an existentialist, he might be either a religious or theistic existentialist (like Kierkegaard, Martin Buber (1878-1965), or Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973)) or an atheistic existentialist (like Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, or Albert Camus (1913-1960)).

Theistic humanism rather than secular humanism is a common theme in
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
. Here God is portrayed as criticizing religious believers who devalue their humanity, as in this dialogue:

Bob Lane, “The Absurd Hero,”
Humanist in Canada
17:4 (Winter, 1984-85).

Albert Camus,
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
(New York: Vintage, 1955), p. 90.

Albert Camus, Preface to
L’Étranger
, edited by Germaine Brée (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1955).

Robert C. Solomon, “Camus’
L’Étranger
, and the Truth,” in his
From Hegel to Existentialism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 246-260.

The Pythons with Bob McCabe,
The Pythons: Autobiography by the Pythons
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003), p. 326.

The ensuing account of horror derives from Noël Carroll,
The Philosophy of Horror
(New York: Routledge, 1990), especially the first chapter. For further background on comic amusement, see my article, “Humour,” in
The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics
, edited by Jerrold Levinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 344-365.

It may seem that this does not apply to a great deal of black comedy. In many instances the cruelties dealt in black humor do not appear to be directed at objects that morally deserve such punishment. Think of such genres of dark humor as dead baby jokes. However, in cases like this, the cruel humorist is encouraging us to direct our moral rancor not at the babies in the jokes, but at sentimental attitudes that usually accompany discourse about infants. It is that complacent sentimentality that the dark humorist thinks deserves a moral whack.

Similarly, the recurring mentally-challenged “Gumby” characters in
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
(see, for example, “Gumby Crooner” in Episode 9, “The Ant: An Introduction”) seem to be basically an assault , by his own hand, on excessive sentimentality. It is not that Gumby deserves to be hit on the head with a brick, as he is; rather, the ethical energy underwriting the harsh laughter here is aimed at the sentimentalization of the mentally ill. The butt of the laughter lives off-screen, in a manner of speaking. It resides wherever pompous types congratulate themselves for caring for their “inferiors.”

Corbyn Morris,
An Essay towards Fixing the True Standards of Wit, Humour, Raillery, Satire, and Ridicule
(1744) (New York: Garland, 1970).

S.H. Wood,
Walpole and Early Eighteenth-Century England
(London: Methuen, 1973), p. 61.

Ray Monk,
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius
(New York: Penguin, 1990), p. 287.

Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
(New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 97-98. I quote from propositions 4.461 and 4.4611.

Rush Rhees, “Wittgenstein’s Builders,” in
Discussions of Wittgenstein
(New York: Schoken, 1970), p. 80.

Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Philosophical Investigations
,
Third Edition
, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1958), p. 43.

Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Remarks on Color
(Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), p. 58e, paragraph 317.

I have in mind Hume’s Ideational Theory of Meaning. See, for instance, David Hume’s
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), Section II, pp. 20-22

Ludwig Wittgenstein.
On Certainty
(New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1969), p. 60e.

This is not the only time the Pythons evoke this tradition; consider the more explicitly philosophical sketch in episode 27 of
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
(“Whicker’s World”) in which Mrs. Premise and Mrs. Conclusion find themselves arguing about the meaning of Jean-Paul Sartre’s ‘Roads to Freedom’:

John Rawls,
A Theory of Justice
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1971).

Judith Jarvis Thomson, “A Defense of Abortion,”
Philosophy and Public Affairs
1 (1971), pp. 47-66.

I don’t want to single out Baptists for ridicule. Some of my best friends were once Baptists. And I have enough ridicule to spread among many deserving factions, each convinced that the others are bound for Hades. This special conviction is my cue that God wants me to make fun of them.

Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Gay Science
(New York: Vintage, 1974), p. 181 (translation slightly modified).

See Thomas J.J. Altizer,
The Gospel of Christian Atheism
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1966); Altizer and William Hamilton,
Radical Theology and the Death of God
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966).