Monty Python and Philosophy by Gary Hardcastle (best novels for beginners .TXT) 📗

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.

Philosophy as an Answer

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:

WAITER: Good evening! Uhh, would you care for something to . . . talk about?

MR. HENDY: What is this one here?

WAITER: Uhh, that’s ‘philosophy’.

MRS. HENDY: Is that a sport?

WAITER: Aah, no, it’s more of an attempt to, uh, construct a viable hypothesis to, uh, explain the meaning of life.

MR. HENDY: Oh, that sounds wonderful. Would you like to talk about the meaning of life, darling?

MRS. HENDY: Sure. Why not?

WAITER: Philosophy for two?

MR. HENDY: Yup. Uhh,—uh, h—how do we—

WAITER: Oh, uhh, you folks want me to start you off?

MR. HENDY: Oh, really, we’d appreciate that.

WAITER: Okay!

MR. HENDY: Yeah.

WAITER: Well, ehh, . . .

MR. HENDY: Mhmm.

WAITER: . . . look. Have you ever wondered . . . just why you’re here?

MR. HENDY: Well, we went to Miami last year and California the year before that, and we’ve—

WAITER: No, no, no. I mean, uh, w—why we’re here . . . on this planet.

MR. HENDY: Hmmm. No.

WAITER: Right! Aaah, you ever wanted to know what it’s all about?

MR. HENDY: Nope.

MRS. HENDY: No. No.

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