Wednesday Wisdom

WHO?

John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman and Terry Jones formed the merry comedy crew called Monty Python’s Flying Circus which aired on the BBC in England from 1969 to 1974. Chapman, Cleese and Idle met at Cambridge University while Jones and Palin met at Oxford. American born Terry Gilliam filled out the collaboration, originally as the sketch artist and finally becoming a full member and director.

The crew, growing up post World War II and with their prestigious schooling were introduced to philosophy including Existentialism which gained notoriety post war. French philosopher Jean-Paul Satre was notable in this school of metaphysics where he explored the human existence through freedom of choice and the existential anxiety brought on by those choices. Another prominent writer and philosopher of existentialism was Frenchman Albert Camus. He brought existentialism view on the human condition from angst to the absurd. In his work “The Myth of Sisyphus”, Camus compares the human existence to that of Greek mythology figure Sisyphus, who offended the gods. Condemned to an afterlife of rolling a boulder up a hill everyday only to have it roll back down when he reached the top.

What they produced

Absurd you ask? The crew of Monty Python embraced existentialism in their comedy art form and delivered absurdity.

Their 1983 film “The meaning of life” ( metaphysical titled) is a great example of philosophy and comedy convergence. Consider the fish swimming in the aquarium at the beginning of Monty Python´s The Meaning of Life. The movie starts with fish in an aquarium, with human faces, and after everyday pleasantries they discuss their fellow fish, Howard, being eaten outside of the aquarium. 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.

The Monty Python crew intertwined philosphy in their sketches with “The conversation menu”, “The philosopher's soccer match” and “The Bruces”. In This sketch, Monty Python portrays a fictitious department of Philosophy and Cheese-eating at the University of Wolllomooloo in Australia. The skit absurdly centers around Australian stereotypes, all named Bruce wearing khaki shorts and shirts drinking foster beer. While mocking academic discussions and philosophy departments, the sketch ends with an irreverent ode to classic philosophers as a drinking song. The song goes like this:

Immanuel Kant was a real piss-ant who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table. ..

David Hume could out-consume Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.
There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach 'ya 'bout the raising of the wrist.
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, after half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away, half a crate of whiskey every day!
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
And Hobbes was fond of his Dram.
And René Descartes was a drunken fart:
"I drink, therefore I am."
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed.

2023- Why it’s still interesting

Ancient Greece presented theatre with two faces, the tragedy mask and the comedy mask. Aristotle discusses comedy and tragedy in his works “Poetics” describing that comedy and tragedy are two sides of the same coin, they stir emotions which lead to catharsis. This term catharsis means cleansing or purification from the ancient Greek language and Aristotle believed the art forms delivered catharsis.

It’s been said that Monty Python represents a coherent, Anglo-Saxon take on existentialism. French thinkers such as Camus and Sartre recognized the absurdity of life, but it took the English Monty Pythons to show that the right response is to laugh at it. More importantly, the Monty Python crew took the “meaning of life “on a cathartic journey of laughter.

And now you know...

Philosophy is the art of thinking, the building block of progress that shapes critical thinking across economics, ethics, religion, and science.

METAPHYSICS: Literally, the term metaphysics means ‘beyond the physical.’ Typically, this is the branch that most people think of when they picture philosophy. In metaphysics, the goal is to answer the what and how questions in life. Who are we, and what are time and space?

LOGIC: The study of reasoning. Much like metaphysics, understanding logic helps to understand and appreciate how we perceive the rest of our world. More than that, it provides a foundation for which to build and interpret arguments and analyses.

ETHICS: The study of morality, right and wrong, good and evil. Ethics tackles difficult conversations by adding weight to actions and decisions. Politics takes ethics to a larger scale, applying it to a group (or groups) of people. Political philosophers study political governments, laws, justice, authority, rights, liberty, ethics, and much more.

AESTHETICS: What is beautiful? Philosophers try to understand, qualify, and quantify what makes art what it is. Aesthetics also takes a deeper look at the artwork itself, trying to understand the meaning behind it, both art as a whole and art on an individual level. A question an aesthetics philosopher would seek to address is whether or not beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.

EPISTEMOLOGY: This is the study and understanding of knowledge. The main question is how do we know? We can question the limitations of logic, how comprehension works, and the ability (or perception) to be certain.