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

that exist outside of language. There is nothing in language or its analysis alone, for example, that makes sense of the Bruces’ co-dependencies. Nor do they explain the strong personal and emotional attractions (or aversions) that so many philosophers developed about Wittgenstein or the strategies philosophers adopted to navigate Nazism or McCarthyism. Yet these kinds of extra-linguistic factors (variously historical, sociological, and psychological) most likely contributed to the scope and nature of philosophy as it evolved through the twentieth century.

If philosophy desires to understand and account for its own development and nature, it cannot embrace Wittgenstein’s dictum that philosophy consists in solving puzzles in ordinary language. It must instead open itself to perspectives and results offered by history, sociology, and other areas of intellectual life. With more open borders, there should be much more for philosophers to do than belabor the idiosyncrasies of ordinary language or pauses and endings. And for all that, there may be no. Time Toulouse.

19

Word and Objection: How Monty Python Destroyed Modern Philosophy

BRUCE BALDWIN

Some might say that a rather senior philosopher like myself has his creative days behind him.115 Indeed, some have actually said this. But I am finding, partly because of the circumstances I will discuss here today, that this conventional wisdom has it all backwards: I, even as I near eighty, am behind my most creative days. But then again, as most of you know, I’ve long been accustomed to being at odds and out of step with most of the “trends” and conventional “wisdoms” in philosophy! [audience laughter—Eds.]

In My Day . . .

Well, let me begin with a personal reflection of sorts. Many of you know that my heart, along with my intellect, is rooted in Great Britain. On my earlier visits to your department, you may have heard me speak of what went on in the drawing rooms of some of the finer British universities in the middle decades of the last century, in my dear youth. Ah, to be wandering room to room back then! One might spy down one corridor young men furiously debating something called sense data—the sight of a red lorry or the taste of an apple were common examples. You see sense-data around still, at least occasionally, by the way. And down another corridor, I recall seeing two rather gawky biologists of indeterminate intellect played giddily with chains of tinker-toys and x-rays (for some reason) and who, I later learned at High Table, discovered some important result about exactly how to hook-up or chemically combine two chains of such tinker-toys. And for this these men became Nobles! Every corner, every drawing room, contained some fascinating activity or one sort or other. Halcyon days!

The philosophical excitement in those decades swirled dizzyingly, of course, around the great Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), with whom on several occasions I attempted to talk and dine. Permit me a bit more in the way of personal anecdote. As you all know, though we were not on intimate terms, I knew Wittgenstein quite well. And as I made quite clear to the authors of that recent book, Wittgenstein: Joker (though they chose not to respond to, or even acknowledge, my letters), I myself was even present at that philosophical tête-à-tête many years ago that has lately been attracting so much attention. This is the one, um, you’ve all heard about it I’m sure, in which Wittgenstein is rumored to have behaved poorly. Well, I can tell you that most of what is being said about this so-called affair has been thoroughly obscured by the intervening years or, as seems more likely, various agendas and postmodern machinationé implemented by those endeavoring to revise, downplay, or trivialize (and presumably popularize!) Wittgenstein’s singularly great and oft-misunderstood contributions. Now let me be clear that Witt, as I called him, was not joking around during that week’s discussion at the Moral Sciences Club. Far from it! The speaker, however—a nervous, funny-looking Austrian named ‘Popper’, I recall—I distinctly remember him waving around some stick or something as he talked. When Whitehead asked him to leave it alone, Popper claimed that the stick had nothing to do with philosophy, and that he was only gesturing, and I quote, “in philosophical fun”!

Well, I needn’t tell you what happened next. Philosophical fun, indeed! Witt stormed out of that now-fabled assemblage, slamming the door in the process. This I remember vividly because I was sitting at the door, and Witt stepped on my foot on the way out, crushing three of my toes!

And here, gentlemen, is my foot! [laughter, applause]

Well, my foot has since healed, but philosophy, I’m afraid, has not. What Wittgenstein taught us that day, as on so many others, was that philosophy is a most serious business, and a most serious business cannot be interspersed with anything else—be it science, literature, or play, even good old-fashioned poker play by the warm hearth. I do believe that I recollect those post-war years so fondly not because I was then in my prime (a little logical joke there, eh!), but because those times were special. In those days, we lived the philosophical homily, imbibed from the writings of Duns Scotus (1265/66-1308), that everything, philosophy especially, has a place and, contrarily, that there is a place for everything. The human mind made great strides then (mostly, but not just, in England), but these strides were premised on the seriousness and intensity of research that comes with keeping intellectual life organized, well-structured, and . . . in its place. Everything is, we all agree with Parmenides. But I insist that everything not only is, but must also be in its right place. [applause]

Scotus? Scotus? He is, sadly, a stranger to today’s university. He’s even more a stranger to today’s so-called philosophy. Like the proverbial toothpaste bled from its tube, philosophy has, over the course of my career, spilled out of its proper place to mix, meld, and just generally interlace itself with, well, everything—what is called