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

philosophy, but because they think Monty Python is insensitive to THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, where every letter in that expression is capitalized. Philosophy is a conversation going back to Thales, they will say, and if you don’t know what’s been said then you’re simply not doing philosophy, let alone good philosophy. This is a criticism leveled not infrequently at contemporary analytic philosophy, and though I agree with the sentiment, I do not agree that it works against Monty Python. As before, I rest my response on a single counter-example, prefaced with a comment or two. Good history of philosophy doesn’t just tell you what past philosophers said. It reveals connections between what they said, and connections between the philosophers themselves. And even better history discovers connections which are novel, surprising, and provocative. And the absolute best history of philosophy ties all this together and presents it in a manner so striking and harmonious that it just must be true. And since song is that thing which is striking and harmonious, the absolute most spectacularly best history of philosophy must be done in song. With this in mind, I present Monty Python’s “Bruces’ Philosophers Song.” It speaks for itself, and so, out of respect for Monty Python, whose brilliant explications of the central themes of contemporary analytic philosophy have gone unnoticed until today, and out of respect for the glorious history of philosophy, let us rise and sing the “Bruces’ Philosophers Song” with the members of Monty Python.

Immanuel Kant was a real piss-ant who was very rarely stable.

Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table.

David Hume could out-consume Schopenhauer and Hegel.

And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.

There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ya ’bout the raising of the wrist.

Socrates himself was permanently pissed.

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, on half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.

Plato, they say, could stick it away, half a crate of whisky every day!

Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle, And Hobbes was fond of his Dram.

And René Descartes was a drunken fart: “I drink, therefore I am.”

Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;

A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he’s pissed.

Thank you very much.120

Everyone Remembers Their First Time: About the authors, nearly all of whom have an ‘s’ in their name.

STEPHEN ASMA holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale and he is currently a professor at Columbia College, Chicago. He is the author of several books, including The Gods Drink Whiskey: Stumbling Toward Enlightenment in the Land of the Tattered Buddha and Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums. He was corrupted by Monty Python’s Flying Circus reruns at a young age, and credits this as the origin of his lifelong pursuit of profound absurdity. His website is www.stephenasma.com.

RANDALL E. AUXIER first learned of Monty Python at the tender age of sixteen in 1977, attending the FM-100 Midnight Flicks at the Plaza Theatre in Memphis, Tennessee, where Monty Python and the Holy Grail was showing. Whether it was on account of the drugs or the movie (he cannot be certain), this was the one and only time he ever physically rolled into the aisle laughing at a movie (during King Arthur’s battle with the Black Knight), which was especially noteworthy since he did not have an aisle seat. He teaches philosophy at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, and knows the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow.

BRUCE BALDWIN hails presently from the University of Free Slough, where he teaches courses on Ludwig Wittgenstein, political science, and the theory of opaque names. He is the author of several articles as well as Getting Perfectly Clear: An Introduction to Political Theory (Camford University Press). He met the members of Monty Python in England in the early 1970s, a meeting that, as his contribution to this volume recounts, set off a chain of events that affected him professionally and personally.

HARRY BRIGHOUSE is Professor of Philosophy and Affiliate Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and author of numerous papers on political philosophy, philosophy of education, and educational policy. He has unnerving expertise on the history of British comedy, especially the prehistory of Monty Python, having spent his formative years doing very little other than listening to Round The Horne, Hancock’s Half Hour, Men from the Ministry and I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again. Although a broadly liberal egalitarian he strongly believes that there should be a law forbidding anyone from watching Monty Python’s Life of Brian without first having seen Spartacus.

An assistant professor of philosophy at Lehman College of the City University of New York, ROSALIND CAREY received the M.A. in Religious Studies and the Ph.D. in Philosophy from Boston University. Co-editor of the Bertrand Russell Society Quarterly, her publications include several articles and two books (both forthcoming) on Bertrand Russell’s exchanges with Ludwig Wittgenstein on the nature of philosophy, logic and belief. Rosalind Carey was inducted into a Monty Python fan club as an adolescent, where she has remained ever since.

NOËL CARROLL, in this life, is Andrew Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Temple University, and the author, most recently, of Beyond Aesthetics (2001) and Engaging the Moving Image (2003). In ultimate reality, on the other hand, he is a perpetual stand-up comic, eternally auditioning for Monty Python (with no success). Such is the meaning of life.

PATRICK CROSKERY was a double major in Philosophy and English at the University of Virginia, and received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Chicago. He first started thinking seriously about the philosophical dimensions of Monty Python while teaching with Gary Hardcastle at Virginia Tech; Gary’s annual Monty Python talk was a highlight of the Philosophy Club speaker series Patrick organized. He is now associate professor of philosophy and director of the Honors Program at Ohio Northern University. His research interests include the