True Detective and Philosophy

Introduction: Welcome to the Psychosphere ix
Jacob Graham and Tom Sparrow

Part I “It’s All One Ghetto, Man … a Giant Gutter in Outer Space”: Pessimism and Anti-natalism 1

1 Why Life Rather than Death? Answers from Rustin Cohle and Arthur Schopenhauer 3
Sandra Shapshay

2 Grounding Carcosa: Cosmic Horror and Philosophical Pessimism in True Detective 11
Christopher Mountenay

3 Hart and Cohle: The Hopeful Pessimism of True Detective 22
Joshua Foa Dienstag

4 Loving Rust’s Pessimism: Rationalism and Emotion in True Detective 31
Rick Elmore

5 Rust’s Anti-natalism: The Moral Imperative to “Opt Out of a Raw Deal” 42
Chris Byron

Part II “we Get the World We Deserve”: Cruelty, Violence, Evil, and Justice 53

6 Where Is the Cruelty in True Detective? 55
G. Randolph Mayes

7 Nevermind: Subjective and Objective Violence in Vinci 65
Luke Howie

8 Naturalism, Evil, and the Moral Monster: The Evil Person in True Detective 76
Peter Brian Barry

9 “But I Do Have a Sense of Justice”: Law and Justice in the Bleak World of Vinci 87
Beau Mullen

Part III “everybody’s Nobody”: Consciousness, Existence, and Identity 97

10 A Dream Inside a Locked Room: The Illusion of Self 99
Evan Thompson

11 I Am Not Who I Used to Be, But Am I Me? Personal Identity and the Narrative of Rust 108
Andrew M. Winters

12 “The Light Is Winning” 120
Sarah K. Donovan

13 The Tragic Misstep: Consciousness, Free Will, and the Last Midnight 132
Daniel P. Malloy

Part IV “this Is My Least Favorite Life”: Noir, Tragedy, and Philosopher-detectives 143

14 The Tragedy of True Detective Season Two: Living Our “Least Favorite Lives” 145
Alison Horbury

15 The Noir Detective and the City 158
Chuck Ward

16 Cohle and Oedipus: The Return of the Noir Hero 169
Daniel Tutt

Part V “Time Is a Flat Circle”: Time in True Detective 177

17 Time Is a Flat Circle: Nietzsche’s Concept of Eternal Recurrence 179
Lawrence J. Hatab

18 Eternal Recurrence and the Philosophy of the “Flat Circle” 186
Paul A. DiGeorgio

Known Associates 196

Index 201