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

Yet Brian’s “sermon” reflects not only the Sixties but also a principle basic to most modern philosophy, and especially the eighteenth-century movement called the Enlightenment, namely, the principle that individuals should think for themselves. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is often taken to identify the motto of the Enlightenment in his slogan: “Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own reason!”5 But Brian’s central principle can also plausibly be seen to represent a kind of existentialism. Existentialists maintain that human beings have no intrinsic purpose or essence; there is no such thing as “human nature.” Therefore it is up to each individual to determine the meaning of one’s own life and to take responsibility for one’s actions. In fact, every individual is “condemned” to do so. Existentialist philosophers like Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) were all, in different ways, interested in seeing how individuals could live authentic lives, how one could be true to oneself. Brian’s “sermon” certainly fits this tradition. And one might go even further and also see Brian’s teaching, like that of many of the existentialists, as a form of humanism. This is the view that human beings are the fundamental source of value, and that improving this world should be the primary focus of human activities. Whether Brian intends this or not, this is what Judith sees in him when she tells Mandy that Brian will “lead them with hope to a new world, a better future.”

Brian does not say much about the nature of God, but he is not necessarily teaching secular humanism. His message could be a religious or theistic humanism. Theistic humanism combines the belief in God with humanist values.6 It is the view that meeting “this-worldly” human needs is the primary thing that God wants of his followers. On this view, God’s primary interest is in feeding the hungry, healing those who are ill, caring for widows and orphans, and so on. If Brian thinks this way, then he would be teaching humanism not because he lacks faith in God but precisely because he has that faith. Perhaps he gets his humanism, as he got the idea that one should not judge lest one be judged, from Jesus. For example, in what is sometimes called “the Sermon on the Plain” (Luke 6: 17-49), Jesus is portrayed as having a profoundly humanistic regard for the poor, the hungry, and the excluded. It is possible, then, that Brian is not trying to be anti-religious but instead is trying to improve the religion of his followers. The idea that Brian’s teachings are meant to agree with a specifically Christian humanism comes through in this comment from Graham Chapman (who played Brian): “We did want to annoy [many churches] quite frankly because we felt they’d rather got the wrong end of the stick. They seem to forget about things like loving one another—more interested in joining their own little club and then thinking of other people in terms of ‘that lot won’t go to heaven, just us’ which is really stupid and rather unChristian . . . . That movie, if it said anything at all, said think for yourselves, don’t blindly follow, which I think isn’t a bad message and I’m sure Mr. Christ would have agreed” (The Pythons: Autobiography by the Pythons, pp. 286-87). Monty Python’s Life of Brian therefore criticizes religious belief, not when it involves belief in God, but when it is gullible and careless with the message.7

To the extent that one can say that Brian has any philosophy to offer, then, it seems to be an existentialist humanism, not necessarily divorced from belief in God.

“Life’s a Piece of Shit”: The Question of Heroism

Many Christians have been humanists; several have been existentialists. But, even if Brian’s “teachings” are not incompatible with an authentic religious faith, one might have the sneaky suspicion that the movie as a whole has an anti-religious or anti-theistic or even nihilistic view. The movie as a whole seems to present life as meaningless or absurd.

As it happens, there is a philosopher, Albert Camus (1913-1960), who is famous for his embrace of both an existentialist humanism and the view that life is absurd. So now a question about this movie’s philosophy can be asked clearly: Is Monty Python’s Life of Brian teaching Camus’s philosophy?

In Camus’s novels and essays, the term ‘absurd’ does not mean silly, like a Prefect named Biggus Dickus or a food vender who sells ocelots’ earlobes. To say that life is absurd means that it has no pre-given meaning—events happen that can crush the individual, events that are not part of a greater plan, that are not “meant to be.” Camus does not believe that ours is a universe in which human beings have much importance; this is not a benevolent and rational universe. As Bob Lane has eloquently put it, Camus

sees human beings as small and mortal specks on a minor planet, in an ordinary solar system, located no place in particular, in infinite space, and subject to all sorts of dark irrational forces, over which we have little control. Human beings must therefore live and die with the fear and anxiety, the frustration and futility that people today know. One must live in the present moment and attempt to find out the actual, bare, given facts of human existence; to find them out, to face them and to live with them.8

People long for life to make sense, and they long for happiness, but the universe fails to add up. In response to human longing, the universe is silent.

I think it’s fair to say that this is the vision of Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Brian lives and moves in a world in which, as Camus says, life is absurd. One sees Camus’s influence in the film whenever events seem meaningless or suffering calls out for remedy, but one sees it above all in the ending of the movie.