Monty Python and Philosophy (42 page)

No claim about Wittgenstein is small enough to be uncontroversial. I shall simply state dogmatically here that on my reading of Wittgenstein he is really talking about jokes and he thinks grammatical jokes, by revealing grammar that is ordinarily concealed, are genuinely deep. Further elaboration of this thesis awaits the day when there will be a
Wittgenstein and Philosophy
book in this series.

For the first see
Monty Python’s Flying Circus
, Episode 30, “Blood, Devastation, Death, War, and Horror,” “Gestures to Indicate Pauses in a Televised Talk”; for the antlers it’s Episode 33, “Salad Days,” “Biggles Dictates a Letter.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein,
On Certainty
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1969).

One of the editors reminds me that we, he and I, do this in our pedagogical characters when teaching philosophy. Exactly so. But in those contexts,
I
, at any rate, feel like an actor playing in a comedy skit. It isn’t philosophy, really, since the skit is genuinely funny, only no one laughs. Peculiar.

I would like to thank this book’s editors, who both solicited and inspired this chapter. They also deserve thanks for accepting it despite the fact that, as old Wittgenstein himself used to say, my words have not infrequently missed my thoughts.

The sketch is titled “Gestures to Indicate Pauses in a Televised Talk” (Episode 30, “Blood, Devastation, Death, War, and Horror”).

Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Philosophical Investigations
(New York: Macmillan, 1953), I §60, I §19.

Wittgenstein,
Philosophical Investigations
, §109. I substitute “struggle” (
Kampf
) for the traditional translation, “battle.”

A.J. Ayer,
Language, Truth, and Logic
(New York: Dover, 1936), p. 89.

Cleese’s comments are from a lecture of his at Scripps College, 1998. I thank Stephen Erickson for providing a recording of this presentation. Popper and Russell strongly objected to the view that philosophy was entirely constituted by the analysis of ordinary language. Russell sneered at the philosophical “cult of ‘common usage’” (in Ray Monk,
Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness, 1921-1970
, [New York: Free Press, 2000], p. 384) and Popper in his autobiography frequently disclaimed “concentration upon
minutiae
(upon ‘puzzles’)” or “mere puzzles arising out of the misuse of language” (
Unended Quest
[Chicago: Open Court, 1982], pp. 90, 16).

On the controversy about Heidegger, see for example Hans Sluga,
Heidegger’s Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany
. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard, 1993). Controversy about Wittgenstein’s personal life began with Bartley’s biography,
Wittgenstein
(second edition, Chicago: Open Court, 1985). For an unflattering portrait of Wittgenstein and his admirers, as well as a sensible appraisal of the Bartley controversy (in the appendix, pp. 581-586), see Ray Monk,
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius
(New York: Free Press, 1990).

For pioneering accounts of anti-communism’s effects on intellectual life in the United States, see Ellen W. Schrecker,
No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986) and Frances S. Saunders,
The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters
(New York: The New Press, 1999). Subsequent accounts addressing philosophy in particular include John McCumber,
Time in the Ditch: American Philosophy and the McCarthy Era
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2001) and George A. Reisch,
How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). On the fashions of existentialism in cold war America, see George Crotkin,
Existential America
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2003).

Broad and Gilbert Ryle are cited in D. Edmonds and J. Eidinow,
Wittgenstein’s Poker
(New York: Harper Collins, 2001), pp. 71 and 31. On the mimicry of Wittgenstein’s students, see p. 34.

God exists, it later turns out, “by two falls to a submission.”

This chapter was transcribed and edited from audiotape. Sections headings were added for readability—Eds.

!—Eds.

I have treated this distinction elsewhere, most prominently in my Baldwin, B., “Instinction and Distinction Reconsidered,”
Philosophical Gyrations
, 1986, pp. 111-145, an essay which substantially revises and (I admit) corrects the earlier treatment in my
dissertatio
, “Five Aspects of the Instinct-Distinct Problem,” a dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Philosophy, Grosvenor Square College, by Michael Baldwin, 1971.

For your convenience, the talk itself is reproduced in the chapter following this one. Yes, in this very book.

This chapter is the text of a presentation I have given many times at many places, including prestigious universities and even more prestigious pubs. It’s also the topic of Chapter 20 of this volume, which is another reason to include it here. When I present this talk I read a bit and then show a clip (there are eight altogether). For the purposes of this book, though, except for The Bruces’ Philosophers Song (from
Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl
), I’ve replaced the clips themselves with their sources. So, to get the full experience, secure the clips beforehand and play them as you read. Some of you, however, will be able to play the clips in your head, such is your fandom. Try to get out more, okay?

This presentation was first given to the Undergraduate Philosophy Club at Virginia Tech, who solicited it in 1993. Undergraduate philosophy majors generally don’t get enough credit for the good they bring to the world, so let me note here that this presentation, and in a way this book, started with them.