10 Things I Learned from Watching Monty Python

Let me be honest with you: I have spent a considerable portion of my adult life in the company of dead philosophers and very serious books. Kant before breakfast. Heidegger on the train. Wittgenstein in the bath, which I do not recommend.

And then there is Monty Python.

For years I maintained, as any self-respecting academic must, that the Pythons were merely comedians - gifted, certainly, but not philosophers. I was wrong. What follows is my formal retraction, dressed up as a listicle, which is, I think, the epistemically appropriate format for the digital age.

Each lesson is philosophically genuine. I checked.

01 THE HOLY GRAIL · THE WITCH TRIAL

Monty Python - Inductive Reasoning Has Serious Limitations

Sir Bedevere's proof that the woman is a witch - she weighs the same as a duck, therefore she is made of wood, therefore she is a witch - is, structurally, a parody of inductive inference so precise it would warm Hume's cold, sceptical heart. The form is valid. Every step follows. The conclusion is completely mad.

"What also floats in water? Very small rocks. Churches. Lead. A duck."

This is precisely what happens when we mistake formal validity for soundness. The villagers are not stupid; they are doing exactly what we all do: accepting premises that feel intuitively right, then following the logic wherever it leads. The lesson is that logic is a vehicle, not a destination. You still have to worry about where you start.

Hume said we cannot justify induction by induction without circularity. Bedevere demonstrated this. Hume did not have the good sense to use a duck.

02 LIFE OF BRIAN · THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT

The Hermeneutics of Reception Are Entirely Out of Your Hands

"Blessed are the cheesemakers" is, of course, a misheard beatitude. But the crowd's subsequent decision that this must refer to all manufacturers of dairy products is not mere silliness. It is a remarkably clean dramatisation of Gadamer's hermeneutical insight that meaning is never fully controlled by the author. It is produced in the encounter between text and interpreter, each bringing their own horizon of understanding.

Brian says nothing about cheese. He has no theory of cheese. And yet cheese theology is born. This will be familiar to anyone who has ever published a paper.

The text does not speak; it is made to speak. Gadamer understood this. So did the people at the back who couldn't quite hear.

The philosophical implication is sobering: you may spend thirty years refining a nuanced position on the nature of consciousness, and someone will walk away convinced you said something about dairy.

03 THE HOLY GRAIL · THE BLACK KNIGHT

Cognitive Dissonance Is a Formidable Force

The Black Knight loses both arms and both legs in single combat, and at each successive dismemberment reassures Arthur - and himself - that the situation remains entirely under control. "It's just a flesh wound." "I'm invincible." "I'll bite your legs off."

Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance predicts exactly this: when reality contradicts a deeply held self-image, human beings do not revise the self-image. They revise their interpretation of reality. The Knight is not deluded; he is managing the psychological cost of being wrong about himself, which is the most expensive thing there is.

We encounter the Black Knight constantly - in seminars, in politics, in the mirror after a poor career decision. The Python genius is to render the mechanism visible by making it physically literal. Philosophical argument made flesh. Or, in this case, flesh without limbs.

04 THE HOLY GRAIL · CONSTITUTIONAL PEASANTS

Political Legitimacy Requires a Theory, Not Just a Sword

Dennis the peasant's objection to Arthur's claim to kingship: "Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government" is, philosophically, impeccable. It is a Lockean point. Legitimate political authority cannot rest on force, miracle, or theatrical aquatic encounters. It requires consent.

"Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony."

Arthur responds by grabbing Dennis and shaking him, which is, incidentally, also how many actual political arguments are resolved. Dennis, undeterred, continues: "Now we see the violence inherent in the system!" He is not a lunatic. He is doing political philosophy at the speed of speech, in a field, in the rain. I have heard postgraduate students who performed worse in tutorials.

05 LIFE OF BRIAN · "HE'S A VERY NAUGHTY BOY"

The Existential Burden of Freedom Is Genuinely Uncomfortable

Brian begs the crowd to think for themselves. The crowd, with one voice, chants back: "Yes! We are all individuals!" One small voice adds, "I'm not." He is the hero of the scene and nobody notices him.

This is Sartrean existentialism rendered as farce. Sartre's radical freedom, the nauseating realisation that we are condemned to choose, that there is no script, no authority to outsource our choices, is precisely what the crowd is fleeing. It is far easier to follow Brian, or a guru, or a political party, or indeed a philosophical society, than to sit with the vertiginous openness of genuine autonomy.

The Pythons understood that freedom is not comfortable. People will follow a man trying to escape them rather than face a Tuesday afternoon with no instructions.

06 MONTY PYTHON'S FLYING CIRCUS · THE ARGUMENT CLINIC

An Argument Is Not the Same as a Contradiction

Mr Praline pays for a five-minute argument and receives instead a series of flat contradictions. When he protests, his interlocutor points out that contradiction is an integral part of argument. Praline corrects him: "No it isn't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition."

He is right. And this is more than wordplay. The sketch dramatises a distinction that collapses daily in public discourse, on social media, in parliament, and occasionally in philosophy seminars: the difference between actually engaging with a position and simply asserting the opposite more loudly. Dialectic requires that you understand what you are refuting. Mere negation is theatre.

Socrates knew this. So does Mr Praline. The difference is that Socrates charged nothing for the hemlock.

07 THE HOLY GRAIL · THE BRIDGE OF DEATH

Knowing What You Do Not Know Is Harder Than It Sounds

The Bridgekeeper's three questions are: "What is your name?" " What is your quest?" "What is your favourite colour?" Sir Galahad, attempting to answer the third with appropriate epistemic precision - "Blue! No, yellow!" - is hurled into the Gorge of Eternal Peril. Not for being wrong. For being uncertain.

And yet Socrates built an entire philosophical reputation on the claim that his wisdom consisted precisely in knowing what he did not know. The Oracle at Delphi agreed. The Bridgekeeper did not.

The lesson here is not that uncertainty is bad, but that the world frequently punishes those who express it honestly and rewards those who answer blue with confidence. This is an important thing to understand before entering academia, politics, or bridge crossings guarded by old men.

08 LIFE OF BRIAN · "WHAT HAVE THE ROMANS EVER DONE FOR US?"

Motivated Reasoning Survives Contact with Counter-Evidence

Reg's rhetorical question, "What have the Romans ever done for us?", is designed to produce revolutionary outrage. Instead it produces a comprehensive list of Roman improvements to Judean life: sanitation, roads, medicine, education, public order, irrigation, fresh water, and wine. At each addition, Reg concedes the point and asks again. He ends with "Apart from sanitation, roads, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, fresh water and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"

This is a live demonstration of motivated reasoning: the prior conclusion (Romans are bad) remains intact regardless of accumulating contrary evidence. The goalposts move. The frame adjusts. The conclusion stays. Psychologists have a name for this. The People's Front of Judea had a meeting about it.

09 FLYING CIRCUS · DEAD PARROT

Language Can Be Used to Construct Reality as Much as Describe It

The Pet Shop Owner does not merely deny that the parrot is dead. He generates an increasingly baroque taxonomy of alternative descriptions: pining for the fjords, resting, stunned, bereft of life, passed on. Each new phrase is not a lie exactly; it is a linguistic performance designed to reconstitute the situation, to make a dead parrot into something that, within the frame of the conversation, is at least ambiguous.

Austin's speech act theory is directly applicable here. Language performs as well as describes. The Pet Shop Owner is performing a world in which the transaction was legitimate. He is not confused about the parrot's vital signs. He is deploying language as a tool of reality management which is, when you think about it, what politicians, lawyers, estate agents, and, occasionally, philosophers do for a living.

The parrot is dead. The conversation about the parrot is very much alive.

10 LIFE OF BRIAN · FINAL SCENE

Always Look on the Bright Side, Which Is Itself a Philosophical Position

Eric Idle's closing hymn, sung cheerfully by men being crucified, is either the most nihilistic or the most Stoic piece of popular philosophy of the twentieth century. I have been arguing with myself about this for years and I am no closer to resolution, which is probably the point.

The Stoics, Marcus Aurelius especially, held that we cannot control what happens to us, only our response to it. Epictetus, who was a slave, argued that inner freedom is available regardless of outer circumstance. The whistling crucifixion chorus is either a vindication of this view or a savage parody of it. Perhaps it is both simultaneously, which is, philosophically speaking, the most interesting kind of thing to be.

What I can say with confidence is that "always look on the bright side of life" is not escapism. It is a considered stance on the relationship between the will and the world. It simply happens to have a very catchy tune, which Kant's Groundwork regrettably lacks.

A closing confession: I watched the entire Python canon in one sitting to write this piece. I am calling it fieldwork. My supervisor, I suspect, will call it something else. The Philosophical Society: Oxford has events year-round. We do not, as a rule, begin with the parrot sketch. But perhaps we should.

© The Philosophical Society: Oxford  ·  All opinions are the Chair's own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Society, Monty Python, or the parrot.