Monty Python and Philosophy, Gary Hardcastle [portable ebook reader TXT] 📗

thought that a line needed to be drawn between political satire on the one hand, and malice, libel, and treason on the other. Fixing the standards of humor, wit, raillery, satire, and ridicule—that is, fixing them as political, legal, and even moral concepts—appears to be Morris’s real motive for publishing the essay. Even so, in a careful read of the essay, one gets the feeling that Morris was more interested in setting standards of humor that were compatible with the Licensing Act than he was in setting out a defense of humor.

Understanding the larger picture now, and coming to grips with the fact that the Golden Rump wasn’t about a golden rump, I decided to abandon the historico-philosophical angle all together. At least, I decided to abandon the focus on the eighteenth century. I was a fish out of water—a fish nevertheless looking to make a quick couple of hundred bucks.

Freed from my scholarly chains, I began to consider possible ‘artistic’ ways by which I might approach a study of Monty Python. I had an idea! Following a paper writing strategy that I had learned from my students, I quickly got online and visited a site that sports a well-known essay generator. It immediately generated for me an essay titled, “Realities of Fatal Flaw: Capitalist Discourse and Textual Theory,” the first section of which was titled, “Neotextual Narrative and Sartreist Existentialism.” This was like stealing postmodern candy from a computational-based-essay-writing baby. It was a bit of work, but I read the thing in one sitting. The second section titled “Realities of Collapse” was especially difficult. I got to the end of the essay only to find an important notice, which read: “The essay you have just seen is completely meaningless and was randomly generated by the Postmodernism Generator.” This was difficult to believe, for I swear that I almost understood what A. David Cameron, University of Illinois (who was listed as the essay’s author), was getting at. Be that as it may, my artistic vision was almost complete! My hope was to use the postmodern generator’s essay and act postmodernly, giving it the title: “This is Not an Essay, It Just Looks Like One.” But, I was immediately reminded of the 1926 surrealist painting Ceci n’est pas une Pipe, painted by some guy from Belgium. So, the idea of a joke essay was quickly coming to an end. As much as it grieved me, I would have to say something interesting about Monty Python. Perhaps I would return to those women with their piston engines.

Wittgenstein and Meaning: The Absurd and The Funny

It’s well known that Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) had once forwarded a theory of meaning that took hold of Moritz Schlick and the philosophers of the Vienna Circle. It has come to be called the “Verification Principle,” which says: The meaning of a sentence is determined by its method of verification. And though Wittgenstein repeatedly denied ever having said anything like this to Schlick or to members of the Vienna Circle, this apparently has not changed the fact that it is well known that he did say it.17 The idea of the Verification Principle is that the meaning of a sentence is determined by the various ways one could take to determine the truth of the sentence. Of course, there are some snags here. For instance, the principle itself is not subject to verification. And so, as some have argued, if we are to believe what the principle tells us, we must conclude that it is meaningless, in which case we should un believe it, to use a phrase from some unknown philosopher whose name I am forgetting at the moment. Be that as it may, let’s look at the piston engine skit in light of this principle.

Mrs. Non-Gorilla asks, “Been shopping?” Mrs. Gorilla answers, “No . . . been shopping.” As I suggested earlier, I take it that the latter amounts to saying: “It is not the case that I’ve been shopping and I’ve been shopping.” This is a logical contradiction; and so, it is false. It cannot be true. Verification here is a moot point. Now, if there is no way by which one could verify the sentence uttered by Mrs. Gorilla, then according to the principle, it seems to follow that the sentence is not false after all, but meaningless. At least, according to at least one biographer, this is one gloss of what Wittgenstein might say (Wittgenstein says about the proposition “This circle is 3 cm long and 2 cm wide” that it is not false, but nonsensical (Monk, p. 286).) Even so, Wittgenstein states in the Tractatus: “The proposition shows what it says, the tautology and the contradiction [on the other hand] that they say nothing. . . . Tautology and contradiction are, however, not nonsensical; they are part of the symbolism. . . .”18 Their meaning, if we want to call it that, is merely formal. And so, we might say that even though the sentence that Mrs. Gorilla utters has meaning (though only formally), it is for all that empirically empty. In other words, she cannot be taken to be saying anything about the world. I think that we could take this a step further and claim that although the sentence she utters has meaning, Mrs. Gorilla isn’t saying anything at all! Admittedly, this on its surface seems a bit odd, and I will return to it shortly. Before I do, it is worth noting that the same sort of oddity can be found in what Mrs. Smoker utters in reply to Mrs. Non-Smoker. This second exchange has an additional twist. For example, in answer to Mrs. Non-Smoker’s question about how one cooks the piston engine, Mrs. Smoker says, “You can’t cook that!” This, it seems to me, is true and can be verified. Mrs. Non-Smoker replies, “You can’t eat that raw!” This, too, is true and can be verified. So, now we have