The Philosophy of True Detective

by Mason Leaver

This article contains minor spoilers for the first season of True Detective

   The first season of the anthology series True Detective is, at its core, an exploration of philosophical concepts, wrapped in the shroud of a compelling murder mystery thriller. The two main characters, Rustin “Rust” Cohle, and Marty Hart, represent two worldviews which are antithetical to each other. Marty is a fairly typical “every-man”. Marty describes himself in the first episode as “just a regular type dude…”. He attends church, prays before meals, has a wife and kids, but he’s also involved in an affair. Marty represents the sort of man that’s common in America- he believes that his life has purpose and value, and he believes in good and evil, even if he can’t always follow his own guidelines. Rust is the absolute opposite of Marty. Rust lives alone, in a bare-bones house that just serves as a place to sleep. Rust describes himself as a pessimist- he does not believe in any kind of objective morality or purpose in life. There is no God, and there are no objective rules. What is ironic about this is that while Marty claims to believe in a greater purpose in life, he is a moral hypocrite, unable to act on what he claims to believe. Rust, however, follows his philosophy adamantly. Through Marty and Rust’s discussions, True Detective presents a number of interesting philosophical concepts, and also takes Rust on a journey of belief as his worldviews change.

​“I'd consider myself a realist, alright? But in philosophical terms I'm what's called a pessimist”.- Rust Cohle

   Pessimism is, philosophically speaking, an extension of nihilism. Nihilism is the view that life has no intrinsic meaning. Pessimism starts with this view, but takes it further, claiming that the very concept of progress is a myth- things are getting worse all the time. One very prominent pessimist is 19th century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer’s basic philosophy regarding pessimism came from a focus on the tension between the Will and Reason. Reason can be seen as the human capacity to act rationally. Reason is what we use when we engage in philosophy, in art, and if we always followed it, the world would be great; perhaps as great as it could possibly be. However, man is limited in their capacity to pursue reason, because of the Will. The Will, for Schopenhauer, was our most base urges- an endless, driving hunger which can never be satisfied. Heavily influenced by the Darwinism of his time, Schopenhauer saw the world as a place full of creatures in a struggle to survive and mate. As such, these desires, the Will, drive our every decision and desire. We cannot help but pursue these things. We are bound as perpetual slaves to the Will, and in being bound we find misery in our constant striving for more, unable to do anything else. As Schopenhauer famously said, “Man can do what he wills, but cannot will what he wills”. Rust sees himself, and all of humanity, as being stuck in a path laid out before them by their Wills. 

Rust Cohle in True Detective

“I think the honorable thing for our species to do is to deny our programming. Stop reproducing. Walk hand in hand into extinction… I tell myself I bear witness, but the real answer is that it's obviously my programming.”- Rust Cohle

   Besides Rust’s philosophical pessimism, he also holds to a school of thought known as anti-natalism. Anti-natalism is the view that humans should stop procreating, because bringing a human life into the world is ethically wrong. Without higher meaning in their ethics system, many nihilists create a system of ethics which focuses on reducing suffering in the world. The pessimist is inclined to see all of life as prolonged suffering, and as such, to cause someone to enter into this suffering would be morally wrong. Anti-natalists also argue that no one enters the world consensually, but is thrust into the world without having a say in it. As such, nonexistence is far better, and so we should not create any new beings. South African philosopher David Benatar likely first coined the term “anti-natalist” in his book Better to Have Never Been, where he argues that it would have been better for him, and indeed everyone, to have never existed. However, the anti-natalist sentiment is not necessarily new. Consider the Bible verse Ecclesiastes 4:3, which says “But better than both is he who has not yet existed, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun…”. Following his pessimistic outlook to it’s natural conclusion, Rust connects with the anti-natalist view, claiming that extinction is better than bringing another life into the world. 

“Transference of fear and self-loathing to an authoritarian vessel. It's catharsis. He absorbs their dread with his narrative. Because of this, he's effective in proportion to the amount of certainty he can project. Certain linguistic anthropologists think that religion is a language virus that rewrites pathways in the brain. Dulls critical thinking.”- Rust Cohle

    Nihilism has often tied in with it a great skepticism of, and animosity toward, religious institutions. Perhaps most famous among nihilists is the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who famously declared that “God is dead, and we killed him”. The world has no objective values, and God does not exist, and so religious organizations which seek to discourage or punish “deviant” behavior is clearly overstepping. In True Detective, Rust expresses this distrust for religious organizations when he and Marty enter a big-tent revival ministry, where he says that people who follow religions console themselves with a cosmic lie. Without God, there is no meaning in the universe, and our attempts to create values and enforce them are foolish. Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre even took the claim regarding God’s non-existence a step further. He claimed that even if God did exist, our lives would still ultimately be meaningless, as the values assigned by God would be arbitrary, and therefore meaningless. Based on his previous explanation of his pessimistic outlook about the fundamental nature of the universe, and how existence is at its core only suffering, it is safe to say that Rust takes the Existentialist position that even God’s existence could not bring meaning to our lives. 

Rust admires birds

     The idea that religion is a “language virus” is an idea that is tied to Richard Dawkins’ idea of “memes”. Dawkins’ meme theory suggests that cultures evolve similarly to biological creatures, and that the ideas which spread the best become the most popular. These ideas which rapidly spread across populations are known as “memes”. One easy example of this could be children’s playground rhymes. Things like “Jingle-bells, Batman smells…” or “Ring around the rosie” had to start somewhere, and their spreading is a result of their effect on the person that hosts them. In this way, ideas can spread like a virus. In his book The Selfish Gene, Dawkins suggests that religion is one of, if not the most potent of all memes. Rust agrees with Dawkins on this topic. To Rust, religion’s popularity is not because of anything true that it says about the world, but instead it is a result of the chemical effect which religion has on our brains. To Rust, religion is like a virus we have come to love, and want to share with others.

 “In eternity, where there is no time, nothing can grow. Nothing can become. Nothing changes. So Death created time to grow the things that it would kill. And you are reborn, but into the same life that you've always been born into. I mean, how many times have we had this conversation, detectives? Well, who knows? When you can't remember your lives, you can't change your lives, and that is the terrible and the secret fate of all life. You're trapped by that nightmare you keep waking up into.” - Rust Cohle

   Here, Rust is referring to a concept Nietzsche introduced, known as the Eternal Recurrence of the Same. Nietzsche addresses this concept in both The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The idea of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same is that, as Rust describes, the universe repeats itself infinitely, over and over again, eternally. Each of our lives has been, is being, and will be lived out again infinitely many times, exactly the same as it did last time. In Nietzsche’s writing it is difficult to tell whether he meant this concept to be an actual cosmological theory about the nature of time, or if it served more as a thought exercise to tell if one is living a good life now. Perhaps Nietzsche meant for us to ask if we would actually be happy if our life would live out the same way forever. Or perhaps he was suggesting an alternative way for the universe to exist (eternally recurring it’s own existence) without God’s creation. At another point in the season, a character (who will go unnamed to avoid spoilers) quotes Nietzsche by saying “Time is a flat circle”, which is to say, it repeats forever. Regardless of what Nietzsche meant, it seems that Rust takes this idea very seriously. In fact, it seems that this concept plays a part in Rust’s pessimism, suggesting that he may believe that the Eternal Recurrence is actually, literally real. 

Marty and Rust on an investigation

“There was a moment-- I know when I was under in the dark that something... whatever I'd been reduced to, you know, not even consciousness. It was a vague awareness in the dark, and I could-- I could feel my definitions fading. And beneath that... darkness, there was another kind. It was--it was deeper, warm, you know, like a substance. I could feel, man, and I knew, I knew my daughter waited for me there. So clear. I could feel her. [Voice trembling] I could feel... I could feel a piece of my--my pop, too. It was like I was a part of everything that I ever loved, and we were all... the 3 of us, just-- just fadin' out. And all I had to do was let go... and I did. I said, Darkness, yeah, yeah." And I disappeared. But I could-- I could still feel her love there, even more than before. Nothing... There was nothing but that love. Then I woke up.” - Rust Cohle

   At the end of the season, after a near death experience, Rust describes having a sort of out-of-body experience where he encountered the love of his dead daughter and father. This experience radically changes Rust’s worldview. Where Rust used to be a pessimist and an atheist, he now seems to be an optimist, and a sort of pantheist. Rust later says that it “seems like the light is winning”, suggesting that he is beginning to believe that things are getting better, not worse. His reference to light, which is winning over darkness, also suggests a sort of objective morality that he might now believe in. Rust’s reference to his daughter and father’s love being at the very core of existence, where there was “nothing but that love” suggests that he might believe that they still exist, in some disembodied sort of way. While this is not stated explicitly, I would suggest that Rust believes that “God” is in everything and is everything, a sort of pantheism, which, when we die, we participate in. It is an absolutely radical change in worldview for Rust, but one that the show helps to set up throughout the season. Through Rust’s character development, True Detective also exposes us to a huge host of philosophical worldviews, exploring them deeply and tactfully, not just through exposition, but also the actions of the characters. 

Fans of True Detective may also like Prisoners, Twin Peaks, Fargo (2014), and Zodiac. 

​Works Cited

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, et al. The Gay Science. Dover Publications, Inc., 2020.
​
Guignon, Charles B., et al. “The Humanism of Existentialism.” Existentialism: Basic Writings, Hackett, 2001.

​Benatar, David. Better Never to Have Been: the Harm of Coming into Existence. Clarendon Press, 2013.

​Schopenhauer, Arthur, et al. The World as Will and Representation. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

​Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press, 2016.

​“True Detective.” IMDb, IMDb.com, www.imdb.com/title/tt2356777/episodes?season=1.