Monty Python and Philosophy

by Gary L. Hardcastle

  The depth of a grammatical joke is the depth of philosophy. That accords nicely with the view outlined here.

  The Overcoming of Philosophy through Comical Paralysis of Language

  If we expand a bit upon Wittgenstein’s claim and employ it within the framework for thinking about philosophy already given, we will achieve an even more significant conclusion than we have achieved so far. Recall that in claiming Heidegger was speaking nonsense, Carnap was offering an objection to Heidegger. Carnap wished to overcome the nonsense Heidegger offered and philosophize correctly, that is, not nonsensically. Carnap called Heideggerian nonsense “metaphysics” and thus sought to “overcome metaphysics” by looking at the conditions under which language made sense and limiting philosophers to sense-making contexts of language use.

  We have disrupted Carnap’s picture by claiming that philosophers generally make the sort of nonsense that Monty Python makes, except that philosophical nonsense is typically not funny. Thus, on our view, it would be misguided to try to turn philosophy into a sense-making activity. But, we can continue to ask the sort of question Carnap was asking: If philosophy is what we say it is, is it worth doing? Once we ask this question, we have a way of understanding Monty Python as performing the sort of anti-philosophical service that Wittgenstein was hoping to perform.

  Wittgenstein said philosophy has the depth of a grammatical joke. “Grammar” is a word Wittgenstein used often, and he didn’t use it to mean the rules of language of the school books. Anything with structure has a philosophical grammar for Wittgenstein. Thus, Wittgenstein is saying that certain jokes reveal the structure of our lives in particularly striking ways and are, thus, deep. Jokes like this are the most significant in the corpus of Monty Python’s humor.101

  Consider Michael Palin in the hijacking sketch again. Palin’s character bursts into the cockpit and demands that the pilot and co-pilot not make a move. Immediately, however, this demand becomes qualified in complicated ways: the pilot must move to fly the plane; certain bodily movements are involuntary and cannot be prevented; if the plane is moving then all their bodies are moving with it; and so on. The hijacker tries over and over again to come up with a precisely correct demand to make. Or, to take a different example, John Cleese, as Dennis Moore, endlessly qualifies his claim that he and his victims know that if they try to resist, one of his victims is dead for sure; Moore seeks the precisely true account, even as the account becomes so long and complicated that he interferes with what he is really trying to do.

  Such skits have a genuine poignancy for us analytic philosophers. One can easily imagine a philosopher of action trying to come up with an analysis of “movement” which requires that he reproduce the hijacking sketch—indeed, I rather think I read such essays as a graduate student. One can recognize in Dennis Moore the striving for precision that analytic philosophers accept as their goal and that does, in fact, sometimes prevent them from acting usefully in the world. We now can understand these skits: Michael Palin and John Cleese are comedians. They know that they are putting us on. Their characters are, however, not comedians. Michael Palin’s character is a hijacker. But, he is not a hijacker of the sort we meet in the real world. The notion of movement needed for the appropriate understanding of “nobody move!” is taken for granted in the real world and goes without saying. Michael Palin’s character is a philosopher as hijacker, inhabiting a world in which philosophers hijack planes. Dennis Moore is philosopher as robber. Similarly for all those peculiar Python characters: the man who gestures during pauses in his speech to indicate that he is pausing and not finished speaking; the man dictating a letter who puts on antlers to indicate when he is dictating and not simply speaking. These are all examples of what philosophy would look like if done in the world of ordinary life.102 The absurd worlds examined in these sketches are worlds in which people genuinely exhibit the sorts of puzzlement philosophers claim to be clearing up. But these puzzles do not appear in our world.

  These skits are strikingly similar to Wittgenstein’s writing at its very best. Throughout his On Certainty, for example, Wittgenstein places the philosopher G.E. Moore (1873-1958) into various real world scenarios in order to see if there was any sense to be made of Moore’s philosophical claims.103 The book is brilliant comedy as Wittgenstein imagines conditions under which Moore (or anyone) might significantly say, as Moore did in his “Proof of an External World” that “I know this is my hand.” Moore was practicing philosophy. In trying to place this philosophy into the world, Wittgenstein creates a panoply of Pythonesque scenarios. Try it for yourself: Point to your left hand with your right index finger and say with passion that you know that this is your hand. Under what conditions could you imagine doing that with sense ?104

  Wittgenstein remains puzzled throughout On Certainty. He keeps trying to imagine scenarios in which someone asserts the things Moore asserts in his philosophy, and he keeps finding these claims to be, in such circumstances, “nonsense.” At a moment of illumination in the text (§463), he writes “This is certainly true, that the information ‘That is a tree’, when no one would doubt it, might be a kind of joke and as such have meaning.” This is as close as he comes to recognizing that what he is doing is a sort of comedic imagining: imagine a situation in which someone asserts a claim of a philosopher, and you are by that very fact in the realm of jokes.

  Wittgenstein does not quite release himself from the hold of the idea that there must be some sense to “I know this is my hand.” After all, Moore asserted it in all seriousness when doing philosophy. From our current perspective, we can see this “special scenario” in which the claim makes sense: as a philosopher, Moore is doing something like stand-up comedy. The standard rules of sense-making in the world are altered or suspended because we are in the realm of comedy. Here is the place at which the subversiveness of Monty Python’s humor comes to the fore: If philosophy is bad, unconscious comedy, then the philosopher seeks to make the world itself into the setting of his comedy. But, in skits like the hijacking skit, we discover that people who engage in the world in the ways philosophers claim to do not live in our world, and their actions in their worlds render those worlds less comprehensible to us than is our world. The search for clarity and precision that is the stock in trade for philosophers makes the world harder to engage in and more opaque. On this view, Monty Python provides a potent argument by example against (analytic) philosophy. Philosophical engagement with the world makes of the world simply the setting for a joke. It would be better for philosophers to recognize that they are engaged in comedy and to reveal something about the nature of the world through self-conscious construction of comedic scenarios.

  Wittgenstein wished in his philosophy to show “the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.” Philosophers have puzzled over this Wittgensteinian “philosophical therapy.” I suggest the following: One most misunderstands comedy if one believes that one must come to a peculiar and deep understanding of something in order to find it humorous. Rather, finding something humorous might in itself be an expression of the highest understanding you could have of it. (Don’t try to find the circumstances in which “I know this is my hand” makes sense; you best understand the specialness of that claim when you see that it makes sense only as a joke.) The peculiar intellectual and affective pleasure of the bizarre is the highest philosophical understanding you can have of the structure of our lives. The paralytic nature of attempting to get to the bottom of things in the world (like the Cardinals of the Spanish Inquisition episode (Episode 15, “The Spanish Inquisition”) who try over and over to express precisely the nature of the Inquisition) should be replaced by the pleasure of understanding ourselves outside the world of that skit and in a world in which the hijacker and his striving for precision are nothing more than a joke. A philosophy that reaches self-consciousness is a philosophy that simply becomes humor. In our world, that is philosophy enough.

  Coda

  A question has been raised as to whether I believe what I h
ave said here. In response I offer this:A nun walks into a bar and the bartender says: “So, what is this, a joke?”

  Do you believe it? However you answer that question, I answer the first one the same way.105

  18

  Monty Python’s Utterly Devastating Critique of Ordinary Language Philosophy

  GEORGE A. REISCH

  It would have been fascinating to be a fly on a wall (even in a bottle) near those philosophers who had watched Monty Python’s Flying Circus on November 9th, 1972. In that night’s episode, Michael Palin portrayed the host of a television program titled, The Bols Story: The Story of Holland’s Most Famous Aperitif.

  As soon as Palin introduces the program’s topic, he becomes mired in precise linguistic analysis:Good evening. Tonight we’re going to talk about, that is, I’m going to talk about, well, actually, I’m talking about it now. [pauses and laughs nervously]. Well, I’m not talking about it now, but I am talking.106

  By the time he reaches his fourth word, “we’re,” Palin is derailed. The problem is that there is no “we” who will be talking. Rather, viewers at home will be listening. He alone will be doing all the talking. And is it true that Palin is going to talk about a subject (in a moment or two), or is he in fact already talking about it? No, he decides, he’s not talking about it yet, but he is talking.

  But what, precisely, does talking consist in? There is room for confusion, here, too:I know I’m pausing occasionally and not talking during the pauses but the pauses are part of the whole process of talking. [pauses and chuckles] When one talks one has to pause. [pauses] Like that. I paused, but I was still talking. [pauses] And again there!

  So, the initial assertion, now qualified to mean, “Good evening, tonight I will in a moment or two be talking about . . .” must be further specified as, “Good evening, tonight, except for when I am pausing, I will be in a moment or two talking about . . . ” This qualification is important, after all, for viewers may misinterpret these pauses not as integral parts of the “whole process of talking” but as something else. Palin continues,No, the real point of what I’m saying is that when I appear not to be talking don’t go nipping out to the kitchen, putting the kettle on, buttering scones or getting crumbs and bits of food out of those round, brown straw mats that the teapot goes on, you know. Because in all probability, I’m still talking and what you heard was a pause. [pauses] Like there again!

  Now that this ambiguity and its potential dangers have been identified, we need some procedure to distinguish the two cases. Palin knows just the thing:Look, to make it absolutely easier so that there’s no problem at all, what I’ll do is I’ll give you some kind of sign, like this [he uncurls his arm toward the camera, as if he’s presenting to us something in his palm] when I’m still talking and only pausing in between words. And when I’ve finished altogether I’ll do this. [He folds his arms.] Alright?

  No, it’s not alright. Any discussion about words or gestures must respect the use-mention distinction, the difference between using a sign or word to communicate and merely mentioning it. When Palin first introduces his two signs, he does not use them—thankfully, for his audience would not know what they are intended to mean. Instead, he first mentions them so that he may explain the meanings they will have later on when he uses them. Yet someone at the BBC supposes that Palin mentions and uses this second sign. For just as he folds his arms “The End” appears and Palin lurches into linguistic damage control:Oh, no no! Sorry! Just demonstrating! Haven’t finished! Haven’t started yet. [pauses, and realizes he’s forgotten to use the new pause-gesture] Oh dear! [makes pause gesture] Nearly forgot the gesture! I hope none of you are nipping out into the kitchen getting bits of food out of those round brown mats which the . . .

  It doesn’t look good. Palin’s being sucked into a self-referential whirlpool of qualifications and explanations. But he refuses to be beaten. He takes a deep breath and begins again.Good evening [makes pause gesture]. Tonight I want to talk about . . .

  This time, all goes well until Palin reaches his eighth word, “about.” That’s when the BBC shuts him down: “We interrupt this program to annoy you and make things generally irritating.”

  What the Fly Saw

  After the episode was over, most philosophers would have returned to their nightly reading. Devotees of ordinary language philosophy, specifically, may well have opened Ludwig Wittgenstein’s (1889-1951) Philosophical Investigations to read passages like this:When I say: “My broom is in the corner,”—is this really a statement about the broomstick and the brush? Well, it could at any rate be replaced by a statement giving the position of the stick and the position of the brush. And this statement is surely a further analyzed form of the first one.—But why do I call it “further analyzed”?—Well, if the broom is there, that surely means that the stick and the brush must be there, and in a particular relation to one another. . . .

  Or this:It is easy to imagine a language consisting only of orders and reports in battle. . . . But why should I not on the contrary have called the sentence [in such a language] “Bring me a slab” a lengthening of the sentence “Slab!”?—Because if you shout “Slab!” you really mean: “Bring me a slab”.—But how do you do this: how do you mean that while you say “Slab!”? Do you say the unshortened sentence to yourself? And why should I translate the call “Slab!” into a different expression in order to say what someone means by it? And if they mean the same thing—why should I not say: “When he says ‘Slab!’ he means ‘Slab!’”?107

  With Palin’s performance fresh in their memory, at least a few of these philosophers must have looked up from their books and thought, “hey, wait a minute!” Palin’s joke, at least in part, was on them. Beneath the silliness of his character and the quality of his performance there lay the outlines of a pointed critique of Wittgenstein and his philosophical legacy, ordinary language philosophy.

  This critique is first suggested by Palin’s strikingly Wittgensteinian character and style. Both focus like a laser on words and their use, and both urge us to appreciate the complexities of this “whole process of talking.” Like Wittgenstein’s prose, moreover, Palin struggled to contain his rapid fire thoughts in the form of a dialogue with himself, in which he makes assertions, interrupts himself, offers objections or corrections, and poses questions and answers. Second, there is something deeply wrong with this Wittgensteinian performance precisely because it has no effect. Consider the Pythons’ better known satire about England’s Ministry of Silly Walks. Humor aside, this sketch offers a disarmingly accurate interpretation of bureaucratic life as a whirlwind of insignificant techniques and pointless procedures (in this case, involving walking). These silly styles of walking are plainly silly and pointless to us, but to the bureaucrats that cultivate and oversee them, they are serious business indeed. Palin’s obsession with linguistic precision, his dedicating all his concentration and intelligence to reducing ambiguity and clarifying meaning, is serious business as well. His skills and acuity make him a model ordinary language philosopher. Yet, like the bureaucrats in the Ministry, he never really achieves anything. For all Palin’s tortured efforts and analysis, he tell us exactly nothing about Holland’s most famous aperitif.

  The Story of Ordinary Language Philosophy: Britain’s Most Influential Philosophical Program

  “That’s not a critique,” ordinary language philosophers might reply. “That’s the whole point!” Indeed, Wittgenstein argued persuasively that the proper subject of philosophy was not aperitifs or anything else amenable to empirical or scientific study. Rather, the subject of philosophy was language. This is because, Wittgenstein argued, our so-called philosophical problems about nature, ethics, epistemology and so forth are really just tangles or confusions in our language and our linguistic habits. Through proper philosophical analysis they can be untangled and, once they are, they disappear and cease to perplex us. For the philosopher of ordinary language, therefore, philosophy is really a struggle of our own making, “a struggle
against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language” (§109).108 Much as flies find it difficult to find their way out fly bottles designed to catch them, we find it difficult to extricate ourselves from our verbal bottles. Wittgenstein asked himself, “What is the aim of your philosophy? And then he answered: “To shew the fly the way out of the fly bottle” (§309).

  Wittgenstein was not alone in promoting this linguistic revolution in philosophy in Britain. Others such as Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976) and J.L. Austin (1911-1960) took philosophy to be the study of our words and linguistic actions. There were differences and controversies about the proper methods and goals of philosophical analysis. But agreement was at hand that philosophy had found its calling in the analysis of language. A.J. Ayer, for example, who was no champion of ordinary language philosophy, wrote of the perennial problem of truth that “there is no problem of truth as it is ordinarily conceived.” He explained in his influential book Language, Truth, and Logic that “the traditional conception of truth as a ‘real quality’ or a ‘real relation’ is due, like most philosophical mistakes, to a failure to analyze sentences correctly.” 109