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

This works because the philosophy and the popular culture are in the right balance; as you have had enough of one, the other takes its place (not always precisely when everyone would like though; a few complain that there’s not enough Monty Python in the talk, and fewer complain that there’s not enough philosophy). But what is in balance involves conceptual schemes—we have the construction and examination of some conceptual scheme, be it holism or existentialism or whatever, and then the nearest thing we might expect to the world with that scheme in force. We have a shopkeeper insisting a dead parrot isn’t dead, for example, and a man determined to find cheese in a plainly empty, albeit very clean, cheese shop. I don’t think we can make sense of this talk without reference to conceptual schemes. We certainly, at any rate, can’t make sense of it as Hume would have wanted, as an alternation between laughter, say, and a search for truths about what makes us laugh.

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Of course I’m still a philosopher, so my inclination is to keep on writing about what I suggested in the previous section. But you are probably eager to stop reading about all this and start actually visiting some of these conceptual schemes, that is, actually participate in some Monty Python . . . you know, laugh at it. Me too, actually. But hang on; I have one last thing to draw your attention to. Why is it that we laugh at these alternative conceptual schemes? Why are they funny?

This is not as deep a question as it sounds, or at least it isn’t if we regard Monty Python as being in the business of enacting different conceptual schema. We laugh for many reasons, but one reason is because we encounter something unexpected, that is, unfamiliar or surprising. And one thing that a new conceptual scheme is, by definition, is unfamiliar or surprising. So we laugh when we are shown a way the world isn’t, but could be. And that’s what Monty Python does; they present genuinely new conceptual schemas for us to participate in vicariously. And we laugh because, well . . . imagine a world that includes an All-England Summarize Proust Competition. See, you laughed.

Now I’m not so interested in this fact as part of a theory of humor, or laughter, as I am in what it suggests about laughter’s connection to the intellect or, as we might say, to being smart. Laughter has been treated like an emotional reaction just like the other sentiments (disgust, envy, attraction and so on) for centuries. But laughter is more than that. Laughter and humor have a connection to intelligence, to intellect, that disgust, for example, doesn’t have. Being witty isn’t just a sign of intelligence, moreover; being witty is being smart. Laughter’s connection to the intellect is rather puzzling unless we think of laughter in the way I’ve suggested, as the natural byproduct of partaking in new conceptual schemes, something which itself comes on the heels of inventing those conceptual schemes. I quoted W.V. Quine at the very start of this essay, and Quine was right; philosophy itself is no laughing matter. But Hume, who I also quoted at the start of this chapter, was right as well. Philosophy, done well, is surrounded by our culture, and by laughter particularly: the laughter of contemplating the things philosophy suggests. And either one of these things by itself is not much fun at all.

If I’m right about this, you’re probably more than ready to stop reading and put some Monty Python in the DVD player. Do it. And while you’re at it, invite a philosopher over to join you. I’m, uh, probably able to make it . . . especially if you’re showing Life of Brian.

21

Themes in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy as Reflected in the Work of Monty Python

GARY L. HARDCASTLE

My aim in this talk119 is to present a comprehensive overview of each and every one of the main themes endured by analytic philosophy in the last sixty years or so, and to argue the bold historical claim that the whole lot is well represented—indeed, often best represented—in the work of Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, collectively and henceforth referred to as “Monty Python.” Since I have all of fifty minutes to make my case, I expect we’ll have time for a song at the end. So let’s get to it.

Analytic philosophy has spent the last seventy years engaged in two successive revolts. If you didn’t know this, don’t feel bad—philosophers engaged in revolt look pretty much exactly like philosophers not engaged in revolt. They go to the office, teach introduction to philosophy, make a few phone calls, have office hours, work on a rough draft, and head home. There’s no storming of the parliament building, ripping up of city streets, or lobbing of Molotov cocktails for your revolting philosopher, or, I should say, the philosopher in revolt. To see philosophical revolt you have to go to the philosophical journals, and indeed that’s where you find the first revolt, the famous revolt against metaphysics. This occurred in the 1920s and 1930s and was carried out by the logical positivists, who are now regarded in analytic circles as something like folk heroes. If you have been conditioned by college life to feel guilty if you have not yet written something down, then write down the names of the leading logical positivists: ‘Moritz Schlick’, ‘Rudolf Carnap’, ‘Hans Hahn’, ‘Otto Neurath’, ‘Herbert Feigl’, ‘Philipp Frank’, and ‘A.J. Ayer’.

The positivists’ revolt against metaphysics was really successful. Really, really, successful. It was so successful that even now, when everyone agrees that (a) logical positivism is dead, and that (2) even if it isn’t dead, its arguments against metaphysics, to use the technical phrase, suck pond water, upper-level courses