Rick Elmore
What motivates Rust Cohle's pessimism in the first season of True Detective? And what leads a person to be a pessimist at all? Is pessimism a principled philosophical position or the result of traumatic life experiences? The first season of True Detective offers conflicting answers to these questions. On the one hand, Rust's pessimism is linked to the tragic death of his daughter, implying that a profound, personal tragedy made him a pessimist. On the other hand, Rust never appeals to this tragedy or any other personal experience to justify his belief in the meaninglessness of existence, arguing always that it comes from a rational evaluation of reality. The question of to what degree pessimism is a principled, rational philosophy rather than a personal, affective perspective has been a major issue in recent work on pessimism.1
In particular, thinkers such as Joshua Foa Dienstag and Eugene Thacker argue that pessimism is a philosophical stance that can be usefully separated from personal psychology or perspectives, whereas pessimists such as Thomas Ligotti contend that pessimism is always a depressive and bleak “temperament” to which one is either born or not.2 Does pessimism tell us something about the nature of all human life or does it only tell us something about how some experiences (suffering, for example) can negatively shape our perception of life? At stake in this question is whether pessimism taps into something inherent within the nature of human life or is merely a fringe position of a few damaged individuals. However, this question also taps into the long-standing tendency in Western philosophy to contrast reason and emotion, objectivity and subjectivity, philosophical logic and personal experience.
In the history of Western philosophy, reason and emotion have often been opposed. In modern philosophy, this opposition is found, for example, in the influential debate between rationalism and empiricism. For rationalists, such as René Descartes (1596–1650), knowledge and truth are products of reason rather than experience; experience seems only able to give us limited impressions about how we happen to perceive reality and not necessarily knowledge of reality as it really is. For rationalists, reason is the faculty that allows humans to know and understand the logical structures of reality independently of experience. The philosopher, then, is the person who, through reason and deduction, follows out the inherent logic at work in reality.
In contrast to rationalists such as Descartes, empiricists, such as David Hume (1711–1776), argue that, despite the limited and unreliable nature of our experience, senses, and emotions, knowledge and truth can only come through experience, because experience is our only avenue for gathering any information about reality at all. For empiricists, sense experience is what provides our basic information about the world. The philosopher, then, is the one who sorts through the data provided by experience in order to deduce the nature of reality. Hence, the debate between rationalism and empiricism, like the debate over whether pessimism is a principled philosophy or personal worldview, is at root a debate about what role, if any, personal experience, feeling, and emotion ought to play in our philosophical thinking. Pessimists such as Dienstag take the more rationalist perspective, that it ought to have little to no role in philosophical pessimism. By contrast, pessimists such as Ligotti take the more empiricist position that personal experience has a necessary, even if problematic, role to play. In the context of the first season of True Detective, we see this debate played out in the relationship between Marty Hart and Rust Cohle.
Marty and Rust's partnership is one of the most entertaining aspects of the first season, the characters' witty and sarcastic exchanges making for some of the more memorable and quotable moments of the show. In addition, their partnership clearly associates their relationship with the debate between reason and emotion, rationalism and empiricism. More specifically, Marty embodies a person driven purely by personal experience and emotion. He is, as his last name suggests, all heart. He professes to be reasonable (to know all the rules, to be “steady,” and to be good with people) yet always acts as though the rules do not apply to him personally. For example, despite insisting in “Who Goes There” on the importance of family as what “gives one boundaries,” Marty is pathologically unable to stay within these boundaries. His infidelities and absence from his daughters' lives lead to the destruction of his family. Additionally, it is Marty who impulsively kills Reggie Ledoux after discovering the children imprisoned on Ledoux's compound, an act that undermines the chances of catching the real serial killer from the events that took place in 1995. Thus, despite his lip service to the importance of rules and boundaries, authority and family, reason and logic, Marty is, in fact, a man entirely directed by emotion and impulse. He is the embodiment of the rationalist's concern that, if you let personal experience and emotion have a role in your philosophical thinking, it will lead necessarily to contradictory, illogical, and damaging outcomes. In contrast to Marty, Rust is a character defined by a kind of rationalist adherence to logic and principle.
Despite being presented as a deeply damaged, antisocial drug abuser, Rust is, in practice, a profoundly rational and principled character (maybe the only truly principled character in the entire show). As he says in “Haunted Houses,” he is a man who “knows exactly who he is” and refuses to compromise his character or principles for anyone. It is precisely this uncompromising honesty and clear-eyed objectivity that make Rust so good at getting confessions out of people, his ability to put his own feelings aside and “look at someone and think like they think” being the secret to his success as a “boxman” (“The Locked Room”). In addition, Rust repeatedly refuses to compromise his principles even when doing so would be to his advantage—for example, with his bosses at the precinct, with whom he constantly butts heads. Hence, Rust appears as a figure of reason and principle in contrast to Marty, who appears as a figure of impulse and emotion. This would seem to support the notion that not only Rust's character but also his pessimism are rationalisms based on reason and principle rather than empiricisms based on emotion and personal experience. However, one also sees Rust's rationalism in his arguments against religion.
Although many rationalist philosophers, such as Descartes, were religious, rationalism's focus on reason and logic over dogmatic faith and belief associates rationalism with secularism and, often, atheism, an association one also finds in True Detective. In “The Locked Room,” having tracked Dora Lange's activities to the Friends of Christ ministry, Rust and Marty visit one of the congregation's tent revivals in order to question some of its members. In one of the most powerful scenes of the first season (and one of my personal favorites), they debate the function of religion in society and what this function tells us about the nature of human existence.
Rust opposes religion to reason, arguing that religion “dulls critical thinking” and hides the truth of existence from people: “What's it say about life,” he questions Marty, “you gotta get together, tell yourself stories that violate every law of the universe just to get through the goddamn day?” What it tells Rust is that religion is a defense against the “fear and dread” of existence, encouraging people's “capacity for illusion” by selling them the hope that things will work out: “the ontological fallacy of expecting a light at the end of the tunnel, that's what the preacher sells.” Religion falsely promises that, if we simply believe, we will be rewarded, and it can, therefore, promise us a meaningful existence. However, for Rust, if life really had a meaning that could be rationally shown, or if the suffering in our lives could be rationally justified, we would not need to tell ourselves improbable, illogical, and irrational stories in order to prove this meaning and justify our suffering. As he says in response to Marty's objections: “If the common good's gotta make up fairy tales, then it's not good for anyone.” For Rust, religion is a problem because it stops us from being able to see and admit how things really are, replacing reason and facts with faith and beliefs, a concern implicit in rationalism's emphasis on reason.
In contrast to Rust's rationalist critique of religion, Marty defends religion as both an outlet for “community” and “the common good” and, most centrally, as a practical defense against the “freak show of murder and debauchery” that would ensue if people “didn't believe.” Whether or not religion contains truth, for Marty, it serves a key role in controlling people's inherently base desires by making them feel like a part of something greater than themselves. It gives people rules and direction, without which, Marty is confident, they would act only in their own self-interest. Hence, for Marty, the importance of religion has little to do with truth and much more to do with the need to control people who are, like him, completely driven by their own selfish desires and feelings. Now, it is interesting that, in many ways, Marty's conception of human nature appears bleaker than Rust's. Marty sees humans as inherently selfish, violent creatures whereas Rust sees humans as victims of their own frailty and fear. Marty sees everything, including religion and Rust's attack on religion, as personally and emotionally motivated. Thus Marty's attack on Rust's critique of religion focuses on what he sees as Rust's elitism: “Can you see Texas from your high-horse? What do you know about these people?” In response to this accusation, Rust asserts again the rationalism of his position as “just observation and deduction,” a logical analysis of the facts. Yet Marty sees Rust's account as personally motivated, a result of Rust's book-smart “fucking attitude.” Again, Marty is associated with personal feelings and subjective attitudes whereas Rust is associated with depersonalized, objective rationalism. However, this rationalist orientation of Rust's character and critique of religion is also a central aspect of his pessimism.
In perhaps the most iconic scene of the first season, on the car ride back from the Dora Lange crime scene in “The Long Bright Dark,” Rust explains his pessimism to Marty. Specifically, Rust believes that human life is something that “should not exist by natural law.” Evolution took a “tragic misstep” with the emergence of human consciousness, creating a form of self-awareness “separate” from the rest of nature. It is this separateness from nature that marks the paradox of “personhood” and human existence. For Rust, humans are creatures evolved to tragically experience themselves as something they are not, beings produced and determined by biological forces but who simultaneously see themselves as exceptions to those forces: “biological puppets” programmed to forget that they are puppets, as he says in “The Locked Room.” For Rust, pessimism has nothing to do with personal disappointment, depression, or negativity; rather, pessimism is a logical response to the realities of human life and its evolutionary development. Rust emphasizes this point further by referring to himself as a “realist,” someone who operates and thinks from the perspective of the objective reality of the world. Hence, in this initial account of his pessimism, Rust is clearly committed to the notion of pessimism as a rational philosophical position rather than a personal perspective, and the show's consistent characterization of Rust as the clear-eyed, principled, and rational figure in relation to Marty's rash impulsiveness further cements this picture. Hence, these scenes and the rational nature of Rust's character seem to support the picture of pessimism as an objective and rationalist position more than a subjective or personal perspective. Yet how does this characterization of pessimism deal with the prominent role the show also gives to personal tragedy, and, most centrally, the death of Rust's daughter?
Toward the end of “Seeing Things,” we get the story of how Rust's daughter was tragically killed when she was struck by a car while riding her tricycle:
Sophia, my daughter. She was on her tricycle in our driveway. We lived down where'd a little bend in the road, and [… long silence]. They said that [… long silence]. Anyway, afterwards, Claire and I turned on each other, you know? We resented each other for being alive.
This event frames the first season of True Detective from beginning to end: the discovery of Dora Lange's body in episode one occurring on Sophia's birthday and Rust's apparent surrender to optimism in the show's finale, prompted by his near-death experience of her “love.” In addition, this event paints a vivid picture of Rust as a deeply damaged individual who, in the wake of his child's death, throws himself into his work, loses his marriage, and is hospitalized after he “emptied a nine into a crankhead for injecting his infant daughter with crystal. Said he was trying to purify her.” Hence, even though Rust is presented as a figure of reason and never appeals to his daughter's death as a justification for his pessimism, viewers are led from the beginning to connect her death and Rust's self-destructive behavior to his bleak view of existence. Insomnia, drug use, and his hesitancy to meet Marty's family are just the most outward signs of the havoc this event still wreaks on his life and the ways it forms his view of existence. Hence, the prominent role of Sophia's death seems to challenge the notion that Rust's pessimism is just the result of a rational philosophical account of reality. In fact, the symbolism of Sophia's death implies a fundamental separation between pessimism and philosophy as such.
“Sophia” is the Greek word for “wisdom” and is, etymologically, the root of the word “philosophy” (“love of wisdom”). Sophia is symbolically a figure of wisdom and philosophy in True Detective, and the prominent narrative role her death plays suggests that it is precisely the death or loss of wisdom and philosophy that is fundamentally at stake in Rust's pessimism. Following out this symbolism, Rust appears as the father of wisdom, suggesting a causal link between pessimism and philosophy: that one cannot be wise without first entertaining doubts about the meaningfulness of existence. On this reading, the relationship between Rust and Sophia presents pessimism as, symbolically, the father of philosophical wisdom, a notion that would seem to support the idea that Rust's pessimism is fundamentally philosophical. This emphasis on doubt as giving rise to philosophical thinking relates back to rationalism, the arch-rationalist philosopher Descartes insisting in the Meditations that philosophy must start by doubting all previous knowledge about the world.3 However, in True Detective one cannot forget that it is Sophia's death, and symbolically therefore the death of wisdom and philosophy, that is at stake, suggesting that Rust's doubts about the meaningfulness of existence are, perhaps, less those of the father of wisdom and more a result of the loss of wisdom. This implication is powerfully brought home in the season finale, where it is Rust's experience of Sophia's “love”—which is to say, Rust's experience of the “love of wisdom” or philosophy—that leads him away from pessimism and back to the light of optimism. Hence, the symbolism of Sophia's death suggests that pessimism is not fundamentally philosophical (or about wisdom) but is the result of the death of philosophy (or loss of wisdom), a fact that challenges the reading of Rust's pessimism as a rationalist, philosophical position. Moreover, the rationalism of Rust's pessimism is further troubled by the fact that Sophia's death is the death of a child, and, for Rust, childhood implies a time of innocence before pessimism strikes.
Having detailed the event of Sophia's death and his time working deep undercover afterwards, Rust ponders the significance:
I think about my daughter now, you know, what she was spared. Sometimes I feel grateful. Doctors said she didn't feel a thing. Went straight into a coma, and then, somewhere in that blackness, she slipped off into another, deeper kind. Isn't that a beautiful way to go out? Painlessly, as a happy child. Yeah, trouble with dying later is you've already grown up. Damage is done. It's too late. (“Seeing Things”)
Rust has come to see his daughter's death as a kind of blessing, one that saved her from a life of suffering and saved him, as he goes on to say, from “the sin of being a father.” Rust sees childhood as a time of innocence and beauty before one enters the damage and horror of existence, a “happy” time before the fall into suffering that constitutes growing up. Childhood is a time before one can doubt the meaninglessness of existence, the recognition of this meaninglessness requiring an experience of suffering and damage that, for Rust, Sophia thankfully avoided with her premature death. Now, putting aside whether Rust is right about the nature of childhood as a time of innocence, this characterization poses huge problems for understanding Rust's pessimism as a form of philosophical rationalism.
Remember that, for rationalists, philosophical knowledge ought not to rest fundamentally on experience but on logic and reason alone. However, for Rust, if one cannot understand pessimism or be a pessimist without experiencing the damage and suffering of “growing up,” then it would follow that experience would be necessary for one to be a pessimist at all. On this reading, Rust's pessimism would have much more in common with empiricism rather than rationalism, insofar as experience, and particularly the experience of suffering, would be required for one to have pessimistic knowledge at all. Hence, the symbolism of Sophia's name and death, as well as Rust's characterization of childhood, undermines the presentation of Rust's pessimism as purely or even primarily rationalist, a fact that suggests fundamental problems for the project of seeing pessimism as a principled philosophy rather than an empirical worldview. This picture of pessimism as more personal than philosophical and more subjective than objective, more empirical than rational, seems to be confirmed in the season finale, where it is the experience of Sophia's love, a metaphorical return from the damage and suffering of her death, that leads Rust back to optimism. Because this is how the show ends, the question of whether pessimism is the result of philosophical reason or personal experience in True Detective might seem settled. And yet …
In the season finale, Rust has a near-death experience that leads him away from pessimism and back to optimism. Central to this event is his experience of Sophia's love:
There was a moment, I know, when I was under in the dark. … It was a vague awareness in the dark, and I could feel my definitions fading. And beneath that darkness, there was another kind … 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. … It was like I was a part of everything that I ever loved, and we were all … 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 still feel her love there, even more than before. Nothing. There was nothing but that love. Then I woke up.
In the darkness of his coma following his run-in with the Yellow King, Rust lies on the verge of death, his “definitions fading.” In that darkness, he feels his daughter's love not in a partial or conditional way but completely and unconditionally: “there was nothing but that love.” It is this experience that leads him back to the light of hope and optimism, the show ending with his proclamation that even though “the dark has a lot more territory,” the fact that there is any light at all is proof that “the light is winning.” One might see this finale as a selling out of Rust's pessimism, his surrender to optimism catering to a desire for a happy ending. On this reading, the season finale presents Rust's pessimism as ultimately more the result of personal experience than philosophical reason, the profound emphasis on “feeling” and “love” highlighting the pain and absence of love that gave rise to his pessimism from the start. Yet, when we remember the show's symbolic link between Sophia's name and philosophy, this conclusion seems problematic.
If, as the etymology of her name implies, Sophia is the figure of wisdom and philosophy in True Detective, then Rust's experience of her love at the end would be an experience of the unconditional “love of wisdom”—that is, an experience of pure philosophy or a pure philosophical experience. Rust's feeling of Sophia's love, on this reading, would not be a turning away from philosophy but a turning toward philosophy or perhaps a turning toward a different notion of philosophy than the one found in rationalism or empiricism. In this experience of pure philosophy, Rust both “knows” and “feel[s his] definitions fading,” feeling a breakdown in the distinction between himself and the world but also a breakdown in the distinction between “feeling” and “knowing,” reason and emotion, philosophical principle and personal perspective. In this experience of pure philosophy, all definitions and distinctions fade, merging into one another, philosophy being as much felt as thought, subjective as objective, optimistic as pessimistic. In this moment, the experience of philosophy would be the feeling of being, paradoxically, both a pessimist and an optimist at the same time. Hence, in this final scene, the show throws us a fantastic philosophical curveball.
Having led us to think the whole time that Rust's pessimism must be the result either of reason or emotion, philosophy or personal experience, logic or impulse, it turns out that philosophy appears to belong to both sides of this supposed opposition, a fact that would suggest that pessimism too is as much the result of reason as emotion, objective knowledge as personal experience, logic as impulse. Hence, in the end, pessimism in True Detective is properly on the side of philosophy, but in a totally different way from what the show had led us to believe, and in a way that challenges the attempt to make pessimism philosophical only by removing its personal, affective elements. And what if this is the real lesson of True Detective, and the real lesson of pessimism: that the meaningfulness of existence can always be doubted precisely because this doubt, this pessimism, does not belong solely to reason or affect, rationalism or empiricism, or principle or experience, since, in the end, pessimism will always lead us to doubt the very meaningfulness of this distinction? What if the real power of pessimism, like the real power of philosophy (and perhaps also the real power of love) is that it challenges us to rethink everything, to see, as Rust says at the end, that all of this—pessimism, philosophy, reason, affect, rationalism, and empiricism—are “all one story, the oldest, dark versus light?”