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

and Early Eighteenth-Century England (London: Methuen, 1973), p. 61.

17

Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (New York: Penguin, 1990), p. 287.

18

Ludwig Wittgenstein. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 97-98. I quote from propositions 4.461 and 4.4611.

19

Rush Rhees, “Wittgenstein’s Builders,” in Discussions of Wittgenstein (New York: Schoken, 1970), p. 80.

20

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Third Edition, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe (New York: Macmillan, 1958), p. 43.

21

Ludwig Wittgenstein. Remarks on Color (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), p. 58e, paragraph 317.

22

I have in mind Hume’s Ideational Theory of Meaning. See, for instance, David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), Section II, pp. 20-22

23

Ludwig Wittgenstein. On Certainty (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1969), p. 60e.

24

This is not the only time the Pythons evoke this tradition; consider the more explicitly philosophical sketch in episode 27 of Monty Python’s Flying Circus (“Whicker’s World”) in which Mrs. Premise and Mrs. Conclusion find themselves arguing about the meaning of Jean-Paul Sartre’s ‘Roads to Freedom’:

MRS. PREMISE: . . . Well this is the whole crux of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Roads to Freedom.

MRS. CONCLUSION: No, it bloody isn’t. The nub of that is, his characters stand for all of us in their desire to avoid action. Mind you, the man at the off-license says it’s an everyday story of French country folk.

MRS. PREMISE: What does he know?

MRS. CONCLUSION: Nothing.

MRS. PREMISE: Sixty new pence for a bottle of Maltese Claret. Well I personally think Jean-Paul’s masterwork is an allegory of man’s search for sonally think Jean-Paul’s masterwork is an allegory of man’s search for commitment.

MRS. CONCLUSION: No it isn’t.

MRS. PREMISE: Yes it is.

MRS. CONCLUSION: Isn’t.

MRS. PREMISE: ’Tis.

MRS. CONCLUSION: No it isn’t.

MRS. PREMISE: All right. We can soon settle this. We’ll ask him.

MRS. CONCLUSION: Do you know him?

MRS. PREMISE: Yes, we met on holiday last year.

25

John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1971).

26

Judith Jarvis Thomson, “A Defense of Abortion,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1971), pp. 47-66.

27

I don’t want to single out Baptists for ridicule. Some of my best friends were once Baptists. And I have enough ridicule to spread among many deserving factions, each convinced that the others are bound for Hades. This special conviction is my cue that God wants me to make fun of them.

28

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (New York: Vintage, 1974), p. 181 (translation slightly modified).

29

See Thomas J.J. Altizer, The Gospel of Christian Atheism (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1966); Altizer and William Hamilton, Radical Theology and the Death of God (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966).

30

Graham Chapman, et al., Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Book) (New York: Methuen, 1980), pp. 23-24.

31

Freud describes the problem in The Future of an Illusion (New York: Norton, 1927).

32

Dr. Jacob Bronowski, author of The Ascent of Man (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), which is the text version of a TV series produced by the BBC. Bronowski, who “knows everything,” was a mathematician, statistician, poet, historian, teacher, inventor and a leader in the Scientific Humanism movement.

33

Nietzsche, The Gay Science, p. 182.

34

Nietzsche associates Jesus himself with the psychological type of the divine idiot, and means it as praise for Jesus. See The Anti-Christ (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), Section 29.

35

See Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

36

See Nietzsche, Ecce Homo and On the Genealogy of Morals (New York: Vintage, 1967), pp. 36-37, 40, 73f, and so on.

37

Henri Bergson, Laughter (New York: Macmillan, 1911), pp. 16-17. The ring of Gyges is a Greek legend (see Plato in The Republic, Book II) about a ring that turns the wearer invisible, bringing absolute power and some very naughty behavior.

38

“Cyprian’s Supper,” is an anonymous parody from the fifth or sixth century in which many biblical characters, from Adam to St. Peter, take part in a great banquet and are satirized with brief, sharp verses.” See the Associated Press story in The Clarion Ledger (March 26th, 2005) and http://www.clarion-ledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050326/FEAT05/503260355/1023 .

39

Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose (New York: Warner, 1984), pp. 576-78.

40

Even though Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life won the jury prize at Cannes. See The Life of Python, BBC/A&E, executive producers Elaine Shepherd and Amy Briamonte (2000).

41

See Robert Hewison, Monty Python: The Case Against (New York: Grove Press, 1981). Shortly after the film was released, Cleese and Palin debated Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark on the BBC2 discussion program Friday Night, Saturday Morning.

42

Blaise Pascal, Pensées (New York: Modern Library, 1941), Fragment 233.

43

I would like to thank Tom Alexander and Aaron Fortune for their silly and unhelpful advice about this essay.

44

Joseph Campbell, Transformations of Myth Through Time (New York: Perennial Library, 1990), p. 218.

45

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth (New York: First Anchor, 1991), p. 57.

46

The notion of a “masculine ethics” is based on the “ethics of justice,” a concept developed in turn by Harvard psychologist, Lawrence Kohlberg.

47

See Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1982).

48

In Arthurian tradition, the Black Knight is the Thunder Knight, killed by Yvain in Chretien de Troyes’s account. See Campbell, Transformations of Myth Through Time, p. 237.

49

Joseph Campbell, Transformations of Myth through Time, p. 239

50

Joseph Campbell, Masks of God: Occidental Mythology (New York: Arkana, 1991).

51

My thanks to George Reisch and Gary Hardcastle for their excellent editing efforts on this chapter and to William Irwin for inspiring philosophical discussions.

52

Digha Nikaya, Potthapada Sutta in The Buddha’s Philosophy of Man: Early Indian Buddhist Dialogues, edited by Trevor Ling (Everyman’s Library, reissued 1993), p. 34.

53

David Denby, New York Magazine (April 4th, 1983).

54

Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968).

55

This phrase was appropriated by Superman in the 1950s.

56

That is why work sucks, and always will.

57

The appropriately concerned reader may rest assured that God is aware of the aforementioned unions.

58

A wink or nod is sufficient acknowledgment.

59

The Devil was known to sneak about the gaming tables jabbing naked buttocks with his pitchfork.

60

Okay, so they’re still alive. Chances are they’re older than you are, so they’ll be dead when you get there. Happy now?

61

Which, as you now know, is much better than it used to be.

62

David Hume, Principal Writings on Religion: