I don’t know what others may say, but in my opinion, I have not laughed harder or more joyful to a Monty Python skit than their The Philosophers’ Football Match between the top German philosophers on one team and the Greek on the other. Shown here, regretably not in its entirety; YouTube provides us with the final moments of the game in which Archimedes figures out the point of the game in the 89th minute and begins kicking the ball, passing it to Socrates, then back, then to Heraclitus; passing Hegel, and then back to Socrates who scores. Disputing the goal, the Germans argue the following as relayed by the commentator: “Hegel is arguing that the reality is merely an a priori adjunct of non-naturalistic ethics, Kant via the categorical imperative is holding that ontologically it exists only in the imagination, and Marx is claiming it was offside.”
I find it amusing how there’s no room for real philosophy in sports; otherwise, the rules of sports would be evaluated and revaluated to the point where playing sports would have no competitive meaning to them.
Actually, before I read the rest of your post that was past the link, I thought the men in togas were Christian martyrs. Then again, with so much influence by Plato, what really is the difference?
Funny shot.
Thanks
That is a possibility, given that he could have pulled the Germans together to think collectively rather than individually, their solution could have come sooner than Archimedes’ all by himself. Not to mention, Heidegger and Jaspers were the two most modern philosophers in the whole game while the Germans also had Franz Beckenbauer (a real soccer player and not a philosopher) playing for them. I find it philosophically impossible that the Germans did not win: they had the advantage of modern knowledge over the Greeks… and a real soccer player who could have done all the work for them. Was it perhaps that they were too stubbornly focused on their own individual thinking? Would it have been possible for Marx to pull them together, or would they begin disagreeing with each other? I would imagine the latter.
In summa:It was fun to watch, but in all seriousness, Greece had nothing on Deutschland…
marx could have convinced everyone but Nietche/ Schopenhaur/ they are too
free to follow.
really though i never read much philosophy so i couldn’t really comment on whether Marx could turn them over, he just looked the most energized(till he got in the game)
First, as to philosophy and sports, how about Plato’s role for music and gymnastic (which i just realised today are increasingly important factors in modern socio-politics)?
Second, as to the Germans beating the Greeks, the Germans aren’t even sure the ball exists. If you think time has made philosophy necessarily better, you don’t know anything about the history of…
Oh, sorry, that’s abuse. Argument’s in the next room.
Well that is a good point, and the Greeks were seen with footballs before the game actually started; all working up on their skills. That could be explained by whoever showed them the ball and told them what to do with it never bothered to explain the rules of the game, otherwise, Archimedes would have started sooner.
