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

method that provides in a finite number of steps the correct answer and no incorrect answers. Such would be the proper philosophical resolution of this all-too-philosophical moment.

Yet what these bloody Pythons provide is something quite different—something as disturbing as it is, nowadays at least, familiar. No philosopher enters. No philosopher is even summoned! Instead the hapless Mr. Praline takes matters into his own hands and, by an argument that consists, contrary to Occamian precept, in insistences multiplied, he denies the denial of the parrot. Any user of Wittgenstein’s slab language, or for that matter any licensed contractor, could predict the outcome. There is no parrot, no refund, and, of course, no resolution. Left to their own untrained amateur language, these reckless non-philosophers simply drift on the open sea to which they have banished themselves. Bon Voyage.

Read as a chilling morality play, this Dead Parrot sketch could suffice. But by enacting and promoting this and other philosophical situations into (so-called) popular culture, Monty Python has folded philosophy into the warp and woof of the everyday, the mundane, and the vulgar. This pet shop, of course, reminds us of man’s less-than-proud heritage among Thomas Hobbes’s “untamed beastes.” Need we more of an indication that we are being presented with degeneration incarnate? If so, notice that this scene is presented in a public forum—namely, television—characterized aptly by the eminent Spiro Agnew, the Greek shipping tycoon and later Secretary of State under Jimmy Carter, as a “vast wasteland.” To those properly tuned to the message, it can hardly be avoided: philosophical issues should be tossed into this wasteland to be shat upon by, among others, dead parrots. The mocking laughter of the studio audience, recruited no less from the very British citizenry who would go on to invent punk rock . . . Well, let me just say that this sketch alone likely damaged real and true philosophy more than any event of the twentieth century, and in saying that I include the publication of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. [sustained applause, cheering]

There is, I admit, a potential terminological puzzle. Wittgenstein showed us that “language games” and “forms of life” were proper foci for philosophical analysis. But his mere usage of those words does not, of course, license entertainers to concoct silly exchanges that run roughshod over the categorical distinctions they put in play. Is this parrot alive or dead? The poor viewer is left with the suggestion—nay, it’s not even a suggestion, but just an assertion or implication against which they can have no argument—that it may or may not be dead. Every test and analysis of the situation—if the bird is merely sleeping, for instance, then it should be able to be woken up—is deconstructed as some negotiation-rich tug-of-war. When Mr. Praline yells at the bird to see if it can be roused (“’Ello, Mister Polly Parrot! I’ve got a lovely fresh cuttlefish for you if you show . . . ”) the Owner jostles the cage and proclaims, “There, he moved!” Negotiation triumphs again, for now the argument is shifted to whether he jostled the cage:

OWNER: I never!!

MR. PRALINE: Yes, you did!

OWNER: I never, never did anything . . .

As these winds of negotiable ambiguity continue to push these two hapless non-philosophers out to sea, this perverse view of philosophy as some kind of game, some kind of solving of puzzles—a bourgeois pastime, perhaps, like Parcheesi, to be played by philosophers or pet-store owners alike—becomes plain.

Having sailed out of even potentially philosophically responsible waters, the sketch goes to its inevitable end—to a shouting match, a noisy string of synonyms and clichés meant to establish, per impossibile, some truth of the matter. This parrot, Mr. Praline says (now yelling at the top of his lungs) is

passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! ’E’s expired and gone to meet ’is maker! ’E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, ’e rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed ’im to the perch ’e’d be pushing up the daisies! ’Is metabolic processes are now ’istory! ’E’s off the twig! ’E’s kicked the bucket, ’e’s shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!

What is all this then? What have we got in this sorry excuse for a philosophical discussion? Nothing but a litany of bald assertions, not even an attempt at an argument, and, plainly, the utter absence of real philosophical analysis. And I’ll have you know that, after all the shouting, this pair decides to go home together in the fashion of pooftas?! [murmurs and disapproval from the audience] It’s these Monty Pythons who have taken us down this path. So who, I ask, shall grab the wheel and steer things right?

What Is to Be Done?

Some things cannot be shown (Wittgenstein, again, obviously) and must therefore be said, even belabored, because they are so insidious and complicated. So forgive me for running on but I want to impress upon you how complicated things have become and what is at stake.

First and foremost, despite Pythonic appearances, philosophy is no game. Careers are at stake! Publishing royalties! These depend upon our ability to responsibly analyze things philosophically and thus to distinguish correctly the real philosophers from the frauds and charlatans. Now that the Pythons have so turned poor Witt on his head and let this parrot out of its cage, it’s nigh impossible to know who’s who and what’s what. Your own department, as you well know, is revered as a band of genuine pioneers in the theory of identity and naming. Yet—I dare say only because some of you mentioned it earlier today—there are some, well many, I’ve run across who question whether your department remains in existence today, or whether it ever existed beyond those few moments long ago when it was put in front of Monty Python’s cameras. [laughter from the audience] Need I say more, then, to illustrate the widespread confusions?

What,