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

for guidance from a variety of social institutions. For example, many people draw on their religion to help them figure out how to lead an ethical and meaningful life. The members of Monty Python draw humor from the challenges involved in making proper use of the guidance these institutions provide, usually by showing the dismal failure of our efforts. We can explore some of the most influential of these institutions and their relationships to moral theories by taking a tour through the works of Monty Python and examining the themes they discuss.

Markets and Motives: Utilitarianism and Monty Python’s Flying Circus

One social institution that seems to provide guidance is the marketplace. According to the famous image given by the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790) in his 1776 work The Wealth of Nations, the marketplace acts as an “invisible hand” that guides people motivated by their own self-interest to make contributions to the greater good of society. On this view, people work primarily to accumulate wealth for themselves; however, in a market setting the only way to gain this wealth is by providing goods and services that others value, resulting in a happier and more prosperous society overall. This approach suggests that we can lead good lives by vigorously pursuing our own interests in the context of the marketplace. The appeal of this approach can be understood in terms of the moral theory known as utilitarianism . As Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), the eighteenth-century founder of this view explains, the fundamental axiom of utilitarianism is that “it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.” The marketplace, if it can lead people to make contributions to overall happiness as they pursue their own interests, ends up being a good utilitarian moral guide. On the other hand, critics have noted a number of limitations to the marketplace, and these limitations are a popular subject of sketches in Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

A merchant banker is perhaps the ultimate market participant, and the Pythons choose this role to explore the mindset that the market promotes. In the “Merchant Banker” sketch (Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Episode 30, “Blood, Devastation, Death, War and Horror”) a man enters the merchant banker’s office to request a pound to help the orphan’s home. The merchant banker is quite puzzled—is this a loan? Is he buying a stock? Once the idea of a charitable donation is clarified, he frowns and says, “I don’t want to seem stupid, but it looks to me as though I’m a pound down on the whole deal.” Here we see the first important limitation of the marketplace—there are important social needs which it simply cannot meet. The marketplace can only work when all the participants have something to exchange. To handle the social problems associated with poverty, a utilitarian who wants to promote overall happiness will have to turn to some other institution, whether it be private charity or the government.

Limitations of the marketplace show up even when we have something to trade. There are some interactions that the market does not seem suitable for. This point is brought out vividly in the “Job Hunter” sketch (Episode 24, “How Not to Be Seen”). A man enters an office to apply for a job as an assistant editor. Before he can even get started, however, the interviewer starts bargaining with him for his briefcase and umbrella. The interviewer says, “take a seat” and then says “I see you chose the canvas chair with the aluminum frame. I’ll throw that in. That, and the fiver, for the briefcase and the umbrella.” In frustration the job hunter says that his briefcase and umbrella are not for sale. The interviewer replies “‘Not for sale’, what does that mean?” We laugh at this scene because we recognize that some interactions cannot be understood as market transactions. Unlike charity, which is logically incompatible with market exchange, these interactions are at least compatible with the market. However, to treat every interaction as a negotiation is to lose important dimensions of human relationships. Some parts of our lives, such as family relations, friendship, and even many of the daily interactions we have with fellow members of our community, cannot be treated in market terms without a loss of value.

Important criticisms of the marketplace have come from Marxist thought, and the Pythons show a serious interest in the critical resources Marxism makes available. They draw particular attention to market ideology—the various ways that the capitalistic system shapes the very beliefs and desires that we form. A particularly ironic illustration is provided in the “Communist Quiz” sketch (Episode 25, “Spam”). We see Karl Marx and a collection of famous Marxist leaders (Mao, Lenin, Castro, and Che Guevara) on a talk show. We assume that it is a standard, BBC-style serious discussion. Instead, the various thinkers are asked sports trivia questions about British football. As in many game shows, the contestants are battling for living-room furniture—a traditional object of bourgeois consumer ambition. The skit draws a sharp contrast between the seriousness of the leaders and the triviality of cultural obsessions with sports and consumer goods. This contrast highlights the way that our desires are shaped by market ideology even as it reveals the sometimes troubling conflict between the market ideology and our non-commercial beliefs and values.

The Marxist theme of alienation is another subject that the Pythons frequently explore. A common theme in the sketches is the longing for a job with greater significance. The head of the Careers Advisory Board says, “I wanted to be a doctor, but there we are, I’m Head of the Careers Advisory Board. Or a sculptor, something artistic, or an engineer, with all those dams, but there we are. . . . I’m the Head of this lousy Board” (Episode 5, “Man’s Crisis of Identity in the Latter Half of the Twentieth Century”). A chartered accountant takes a series of tests that indicate the job he is perfectly