Monty Python and Philosophy (17 page)

This is dark humor at its best, making us simultaneously gasp, wince, and laugh. Its point, of course, is that little Jenkins’s church (of a piece, as it is, with his school), the institution charged with comforting Jenkins in what will be one of the most difficult times of his life—charged, in fact, with providing his life, and his mothers’, with a meaning sufficient for Jenkins to continue his life—has less concern for his emotional needs than it has for the school’s (apparently wooden) cormorant. So much for
this
institution as a guide to the meaning of life.

But the Python critique goes deeper, to a critique of this axial approach to the meaning of life itself, the approach that regards the meaning of life as a journey to some destination. It’s worth reminding ourselves that Monty Python emerged with, and hastened along, what was at the time called “the countercultural revolution.” To what culture was it counter? “Mainstream” is a very insufficient answer to this question. The counterculture (more recently termed “postmodernism”) sought to break down hierarchies and reverse traditional priorities. The Pythons fit this agenda almost as if they invented it on their own. The “spiritually” high and mighty, particularly the pompous, were parodied, especially if they had little to offer beyond platitudes they did not live by. And an audience of quite ordinary people, the supposed sheep of the flocks, were laughed into seeing the institutions around them, especially the supposed “meaning purveyors,” as silly or empty, or hilariously both.

Amidst very serious political issues, matters of sexual liberation, and the unencumbered pursuit of experiences, then, a
metaphysical
revolution had been underway as well. Its enemy, in fact, was the axial way of understanding the meaning of life: life as a
journey, more a pilgrimage, in which
here
does not matter as much as
there
, and
now
does not matter as much as some upcoming
then
. This journey suggested—no,
mandated
—targeted travel, thus conjuring the notion of postponements and delays requiring discipline and restraint, strict itineraries, painful detours and fixed resting places. Exceptional patience, along with the ability to read and obey a map, would be needed. One ought always to be in purposive transit, monitored from lowest position in the company, organization, or institution, so to speak, to its highest executive rank: chairman of the “bored.” And who could not fail to become stilted and bored, having to go through all the rigmarole—a favorite target for Python spoof—to get to the top, to membership on the oh-so-privileged board, in the first place? Since there was said to be no salvation outside of the company, there could be no escape, no exit from earnestness, in any case. Such was the burden imposed by an axial reading of the meaning of life.

As part of the counterculture, Monty Python helped break down mystifying hierarchies and eliminate a culture of deference. It was now okay to fart in church. The service stank anyway, and the bishop was no better positioned, knew no more than anyone else. What mattered was not getting to the pearly gates on time but
being here now
and enjoying unrestricted explorations. And who was to say anyway that any one thing was more fulfilling than any other?

It would not be ridiculous to say that the meaning of life is simply to enjoy this life we have. After all, lots of fun and funny things, interesting experiences and adventures, happen during it. Seriousness about life, on the other hand, can make it far less enjoyable and make us susceptible to tunnel-vision and even a little boring. A good argument might be presented that we should just live our lives, hopefully be able to live them
up
, and not think too much about any destination or purpose. It’s one thing to strategize for more money and thereby more of the “good things of life,” but it’s another to brood and brood over “what it all means.”

Consider the fish swimming in the tank at the beginning of
Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life
. Among other things, they note their
fellow fish, Howard, being eaten outside of the tank. But they make no connection between that event and their own likely fates, and they wonder, casually if not benightedly, what life is all about. Have they missed something? Have we?

Considerations of death provide an alternate account of the meaning of life. There are, of course, at least two ways to regard death. It can be an event that happens (mostly to others) at some indeterminate time or other, or something that will happen to me, at any time, and might very well result in—might
mean
—my very and altogether permanent extinction. But this second alternative has an even stronger form. It is found in the philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and, more generally, among philosophers who have been labeled
existentialists
. On this stronger rendition, you understand something in terms of its
end
, that towards which it moves, and which might at least in some cases be called its
goal
. So to understand your life you must also understand your death. That, after all, is where your life inexorably leads.

One has to be careful here, for “end” and “goal” are not the same thing. For example, starting as an “assistant” professor I became an “associate” professor and am now a “full” professor. If and when I retire I will become an “emeritus” professor. But now things get tricky. Whether I retire or not, someday I am going to be a “dead” professor. That is my end, like it or not. This last step on the professorial ladder does not sound appealing in the least, for I will have become a compatriot of Howard the fish. This could hardly be called my goal.

On the other hand, Socrates says that the art of living, philosophy itself, is “learning how to die,” meaning that death is at least our only
obvious
ending point and its attainment is even a goal of sorts. The Socratic implication is that knowing this might help us live a fuller and a better life in the meantime. The analogy is imperfect, but if you
know
that you only get three weeks in Paris and presumably will never return again, you will probably take more advantage of your time there.

Socrates is close to saying that death is actually part of life, if it is where life leads, so to know how to live fully you must know how to die properly. This doesn’t mean learning how to load a gun or knowing which poison is painless. But it does mean learning what will be lost through our death and the extent to which the things that will be lost matter. Supposedly we will come to see that
nothing will always be with us, for we will not be able to remain permanently with anything. Those things that really
do
matter in life we will then be more prone to linger with and devote ourselves to. We have all heard of trivial pursuits; this should help us achieve trivia avoidance.

Heidegger and some of the existentialists take this one step further. Their claim is that each of us has our own unique and special possibilities in life. The meaning of our lives is largely found through pursuing these opportunities. But we must first know what in fact they
are
, and knowing that death is part of our life—at least in the sense of telling us that nothing, including ourselves, lasts forever—is supposed to reveal our own unique and special possibilities to us. On the basis of this revelation we can then pursue the meaning of our lives. This meaning may have more to it than these special possibilities of ours, but they are essentially part of it.

We’ve considered the Christian version of the axial answer to the meaning of life as well as the perspective invited by impending death. But we might be accused of overlooking an obvious candidate: philosophy. Philosophy was described by the ancients not only as
knowing how to die
, but as
the love of wisdom
. What do the Pythons have to say about philosophy?

The fish at the beginning of
Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life
do not connect death with
what life is all about
, with what life
means
. Similarly, the couple examining the philosophy menu in the restaurant in the film show no more than the most idle of curiosities regarding philosophy:

If wisdom were to result from consuming philosophy—which the menu has on offer—you would think that their interest would be keen and their appetite great. Shouldn’t they be almost passionately involved in ordering? Could you ever be more voraciously hungry, excited or intensely careful, if what you were ordering was
wisdom
?

What this scene suggests is that just as religion had, for many, become conventional and humdrum in its forms and rituals, deadening in fact, philosophy, especially in the Pythons’ England, had become very removed, sophisticated and “picky.” It appeared on the menu, but aroused next to no excitement. Above all it was patronizingly detached from those questions that really mattered, the most central of which remains:
what is the meaning of life
? Rather than pursuing wholeheartedly the meaning of life, thereby seeking true wisdom, philosophy had become a very refined and detached examination of what are humanly irrelevant bits and pieces of this and that, impressively articulated trivia.

What an awful situation! Religion, the supposed vehicle of
answers
, seems to have gone stale, offering anesthetized or outrageous answers to people who, claiming to believe in them, nonetheless act as if the proposed answers are not worth a passing nod, let alone living by. And philosophy, supposedly the major vehicle for
asking
life’s fundamental questions, appears as an arcane, sophisticated domain for “cultured” people, initiates in command of a specialized, often formal, vocabulary.

Something needs to be done. Stale answers to life’s questions can make us forget the questions. If passed down through generations without consideration of the questions they are said to resolve, answers can become anaesthetizing. They can put us to sleep. In becoming merely conventional formulae, such dogmas render us spiritually unconscious, all in the name of awakening us to reality.

The Pythons offer zany and irreverent comedy that can liberate us. We can distinguish the joyful laughter that comes over us when we feel happy from laughter that arises from the often sudden and intense recognition of an incongruity, the flash of awareness that “things don’t add up.” This is especially the case when words and actions move in different directions. In the space this opens up, a Pythonesque space, a newfound freedom becomes available.

Consider the following situation. Preaching abstinence, the minister, we discover, is attached to an intravenous tube that leads to a down-turned whisky bottle. Meaning in his sermon to say, “drinking is sinful,” he slurs “thinking is simple.” And in the course of his remarks he says a great number of all too simple things. We laugh, but at the same time we are opened to a space once closed. The minister’s bumbling benightedness and hypocrisy open a door previously shut, perhaps not even known to have been there, and we are liberated to think without fetters, or maybe for the first time. What is going on here? An unrecognized, but nonetheless stifling obligation to passive acceptance is lifted. The preacher’s slurred remark that “thinking is simple” invites open questioning. The minister and what he represents is all too simple, even simpleminded, and we come to believe that
questioning itself—maybe a little drinking, too, who knows?—is liberating and not routine. This might well get us out of the trap of packaged solutions to problems that, however crucial to our lives, we didn’t quite know existed. We gave the problems away to supposed experts.

Liberation can, of course, be
from
and
for
. If freed
from
pieties and dogmas, we can become free
for
questioning. The latter is, perhaps, most important. According to the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), the questions regarding life’s meaning define our humanity, and if we do not expose ourselves honestly to these questions we not only betray our humanity, we impoverish it. In part, and precariously, the Pythons understood this, making these questions (and their far more ridiculous, though conventional, answers) available to a larger audience. At times their laughter in its most delightful aspects was something simply for its own sake. This is, quite curiously, related to the thinking of philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Jacques Derrida (1930-2005), whom we will discuss briefly.