The Dark Philosophy of Cormac McCarthy

this video is sponsored by Aura a digital security and privacy Suite I am incredibly fond of while I am working with aura my recommendation of this weite goes far far beyond any working relationship and with my audience gaining a two-e free trial this is something that I wholeheartedly recommend you take advantage of as many of you know I am a huge proponent of digital autonomy privacy and the agency we deserve within an Ever intrusive internet so why should I use Aura AA combines the most core aspects of digital security and privacy into a single cost

effective Suite the first is a data broker Protection Program go search your name on Google go see all the vast information you can find about yourself online data that spammers hackers and even worse stalkers can get a hold of these data Brokers don't want you to know this but they're legally obligated to delete your information if you opt out Ora handles this for you it offers an encrypted password manager a central place where you store your passwords in a safe manner allowing you to create more robust unique passwords for your account that you not have

to remember they offer identity theft monitoring and insurance a VPN antivirus and more check out the link below for a completely free [Music] trial what is the central Locus of men is this centrality predefined if so is it biology by Society is there even a centrality at all these are all questions posited by McCarthy while all these things are subject to interpretation I feel as if the central Locust is not and what might be this Locust that Central Locust is our capacity for violence unfettered brutality thoughtless Slaughter Blood Sport blood Ritual from war to genocide

to business all the way to our favorite sports the endless cycle of brutality is not only something that continues to evolve something we've failed to overcome these themes are present and if not potentially popularized by McCarthy's work in No Country for Old Men the road and his incredibly dark thus far unfilmable Blood Meridian [Music] but it's not just violence McCarthy is concerned about it's our navigation around it the varied context meaning spawning from a world bent on Brutal domination and the varied ways in which civilization seeks to control it yet Let it Loose in Hidden

ways in order for us to go deeper into the weeds we should go into more around McCarthy himself McCarthy was born in Rhode Island to an upper middle class Irish Catholic Family but later in his childhood relocated to Knoxville Tennessee the setting to one of his most beloved novels Suri McCarthy lived in a relatively nice home but was surrounded by people living in what was described as two room Shacks smaller family dwellings inhabited by The Working Poor of Knoxville much of his childhood was spent rumaging through Knoxville and befriending children from his poverty stricken neighborhood

McCarthy was known to throw school to the Wayside as a child focusing on the things he felt more significant such as Reading Writing and drinking this persisted up until the time that he went to the University of Tennessee where he later dropped out yet continued writing and made it a central focal point in his life McCarthy was known for his rather austere lifestyle famously he lived with with his ex-wife and what she deemed a shack with no heat after separating McCarthy continued to live in poverty riding away and taking life in his own accord McCarthy

also remarried but had no plans of jeopardizing his writing career with the hustle and bustle of a 9 to5 his second wife recounts much of their marriage as also living in a shack dwelling in the Smoky Mountains with no running water or heat hilariously his second wife recounts this time with we were bathing in the lake someone would call up and offer him $2,000 to come speak at a university about his books and he would tell them that everything he had to say was there on the page so we would eat beans for another week

like many writers McCarthy never saw tangible success until decades later of writing it was only after his release of All the Pretty Horses did McCarthy gain widespread recognition with his prior novels such as blood Meridian and Suri garnering a claim decades later McCarthy isn't a philosopher proper and in my mind that's what makes the writer particularly interesting from people like Kafka to Bowski Philip K dick The Narrative ambiguities allow us to parse questions Ironically in a much more direct manner it allows us to experiment with the implicit text meaning or context that isn't exactly in

front of us I have personally been looking forward to covering cormack McCarthy on this channel and it seems so have my patrons which do subscribe and gain the chance to choose future videos as well by the way McCarthy at this point is arguably my favorite author there hasn't been an author who has captivated my attention quite like him the endless themes ambiguous tones layered writing things that structure a type of philosophy we can siphon from him McCarthy has published a non-fiction work called the the kulle problem which I believe it's how it's pronounced that alone

likely necessitates a separate video though it is here we will focus on his library of novels the things he is best known for before we go much further I will add that I will not add spoilers here McCarthy's novels are incredibly important to me and the last thing I want to do is jeopardize one's ability to dive head first that said we'll add context and explore the theme set by McCarthy with the large catalog of works from McCarthy I'll likely lean heavily into the works of his that felt most pertinent to me texts such as

Blood Meridian suer No Country for Old Men the road and even his newest the [Music] passenger Blood Meridian is what I believe to be his most McCarthy esque if you will and is personally my absolute favorite novel of all time Blood Meridian follows the life of a character primarily referred to as the kid a lone Wanderer who experiences the full brunt of the violent history of the American West this book can be summed up as one of the most violent texts ever written much of the mainstream attention Blood Meridian has received is its inability to

be filmed and made into a movie from its incredibly unorthodox plot points and narratives to esoteric characters and most of all its extreme depiction of violence and genocide yet amidst the surface of narrative violence there's an underground central figure that I think infiltrates all when it comes to McCarthy and that is Thomas Hobbs of this video I find that Hobbs may be the most defining figure in relation to McCarthy so much so in one scene in McCarthy's newest text the passenger there is a passage where the protagonist reads Thomas Hobs defining piece the Leviathan it's

Sneaky but karthy absolutely threw that book in there for a reason Thomas Hobbs was writing from the early transitional state of monarchy into pre- liberal Enlightenment political philosophy hundreds of years later it can be easy to skin past the historical anxiety in these periods but at the time of Hobbs the Leviathan this was at the Forefront Hobbs was concerned about the state of nature what is nature in its purest form to Hobbs nature is a constant state of War a state of all against all Hobbs famously says life in the state of nature solitary poor

nasty brutish and short and the condition of man is a condition of war of everyone against everyone again the historical place here is important at the time of the 15th century Hobbs was concerned about the newer type of governance that was being proposed one away from monarchy and into a liberal political philosophy of Rights or in many ways in hobbs' mind the lack of governance Hobbs was most concerned about Society falling returning to the brutish state of nature that haunted him the king the Monarch the Leviathan was the one centerpiece holding everything together both authoritarianism

in nature were brutish to Hops but he thought one to be much much worse we see this clearly within Blood Meridian the entire text follows a meta Narrative of war from the early Pages surrounding paternal abuse to the Relentless pursuit of what is described by Blood meridians Infamous character the judge as blood ritual I'll leave the explicit context of this for all who decide to read Blood Meridian it's not as simple as it seems these things are present in the context of the Wild West Within 19th century America the lack of any cohesive order one

of genocide the ruthless destruction of Native American peoples and culture throughout the American continent Blood Meridian is known for some of its more esoteric content and writing but one of its more challenging notoriously confusing and in my mind brilliant sections is the epilogue but to many it's incredibly short cryptic and confusing here's the entire thing in the dawn there is a man progressing over the plane by means of holes which he is making in the ground he uses an Implement with two handles and he Chucks it into the hole and he enkindles the stone in

the hole with his steel Ho by hole striking the fire out of the rock which God has put there on the plane behind him are The Wanderers in search of Bones and those who do not search and they they move haltingly in the light like mechanisms whose movements are monitored with escapement and pallet so that they appear restrained by a Prudence or reflectiveness which has no inner reality and they cross in their progress one by one that track of holes that runs to the rim of the visible ground and which seems less the pursuit of

some continuance than the verification of a principle a validation of sequence and causality as if each round and perfect hole owed its existence to the one before it there on that Prairie upon which are the bones and the gatherers of Bones and those who do not gather he strikes fire in the hole and draws out his steel then they all move on again there is debate on exactly what this entire epilog means besides creating the world's largest run-on sentence of all time I believe this to to be McCarthy envisioning fence layers settlers or Ranch hands

in the west digging post holes Upon A Barren land that has seen War genocide and the Very brutish elements deep from within Hobs after the violent Odyssey we witness in Blood Meridian McCarthy leaves us with this the process of History many describe Blood Meridian as a work of anti-colonialism in a way this is what I was expecting yet the narrative and speak a bit different I want to posit a different approach here something much more dark an explicit sociopolitical or moral analysis I believe is missing something critical to the text that being you cannot be

against something that is inherent to all of us and you cannot Escape it you can certainly try and try we should but at the end of the day it's all we really can do McCarthy almost posits a metaphysics of violence thus the only way to curtail violence is to then subvert it into newer means things that we don't typically see as violent phenomenon happenings such as business indoctrination Civil Society itself yet even this to McCarthy or even Hobs is much more desirable than the former state of nature it's a recognition that we should build human

organization up but be completely prepared to face our violent impetuses in newer lights [Music] this brings us to No Country for Old Men arguably the most well-known work of McCarthy's as it was adapted by the Cohen Brothers into really one of the best films ever made the story is a neow western revolving around Sheriff Bell an oldtime World War II veteran turned peaceful Sheriff who lives a relatively easy life in an easygoing town with minimal crime he's presented with a situation that turns his life life upside down and makes him question Notions of progress Civility

and even mortality there is so much Synergy between Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men I feel it accurate to call the latter a distant sequel what happens when the American West is conquered after the events of Blood Meridian is it really so much of Blood Meridian and No Country for Old Men follow the century old philosophical concept of the eternal return or Eternal re occurrence n a modern revor of the eternal return speaks on this question here this life as you now live it and have lived it you will have to live once

more and innumerable times more and there will be nothing new in it but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you all in the same succession and sequence now in isolation this can be and often is interpreted as a personal singular question something merely of one's own life but n has broader implications here you've never been in trouble before and has you never been arrested before that's right judge what about your family Joe your father and mother oh they

swell do we ever escape anything do we ever truly Escape trauma how might we bear the weight of understanding that life doesn't truly have chapters where things are permanently cordoned off how do we cope with the understanding that our every release into the world will be felt over and over again this is where many stop with n and why he has been incorrectly bastardized as a self-help philosopher but this question isn't merely personal n has metaphysical and historical implications here at least within some later interpretations via individuals such as to lose this Echoes the whole

time is a flat circle Mantra happenings destined to repeat itself sure history can progress but at the same time it falls back within itself a sphere that spins yet moves in a linear fashion in this vein there's a specific cryptic well-renowned scene in No Country for Old Men where Sheriff Bell describes his dreams to his wife and Tom I'll be polite all right then two of them both had my father in them it's peculiar I'm older now than he ever was about 20 years so in a sense he's the younger man anyway the first one

I don't remember too well but it was about meeting him in town somewhere he give me some money I think I lost it the second one it was like we was both back in old older times and I was a horseback going through the mountains of the night going through this pass in the mountains it was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on going never said nothing going by I just rod on past and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down when he

rode past I seen he was carrying fire and Horn the way people used to do and I I could see the horn from the light inside of it about the color of the Moon and in the dream I knew that he was going on ahead he's fixing to make a fire somewhere out there and all that dark and all that cold I knew that whenever I got there he'd be there then I woke up I think this scene is brilliant as it highlights Sheriff's Bell's subconscious grappling with these themes a metaphysics of violence an eternal

return to a root of our nature one visualized with his father an understanding of time bent upon repeating itself in different form but let's get into the person the self with McCarthy there is an immense psycho analytic existential tonality throughout McCarthy's text we see this with one of the most underexplored passages throughout Blood Meridian and is a later scene where the kid and the judge characters in Blood Meridian are talking in a saloon one could well argue that there are not categories of no ceremony but only ceremonies of greater or lesser degree and deferring to

this argument we will say that this is a ceremony of a certain magnitude perhaps more commonly called a ritual a ritual includes the letting of blood rituals which fail in this requirement are but mock rituals here every man knows the false at once never doubt it that feeling in the breast that evokes a child's memory of loneliness such as when the others have gone and only the game is left with its solitary participant a solitary game without opponent where only the rule rul are at Hazzard don't look away we're not speaking in Mysteries you of

all men are no stranger to that feeling The Emptiness and the despair it is that which we take arms against is it not I think this leads us into a perfect segue around McCarthy's existentialism an existentialism that encompasses this lack in some Corners many consider McCarthy's Su to be his magnum opus something in completely different tone than Blood Meridian or No Country for Old Men but I'd argue the themes are completely present they just contend with them in different ways sucher follows a fisherman who lives on a houseboat in Knoxville Tennessee who abandon his wife

and children alongside his wealthy family sucher can be seen as a type of autobiography of McCarthy a lone man who lives in poverty by choice and a type of person who just cannot absolutely cannot help himself but to get into trouble you all know someone whether growing up God forbid an adult who just cannot help finding themselves in bad situations with the law within relationship even if it's not entirely their fault well that's suery suery is the Incarnation of one's closeness or realization of lack a story of violence within civilized parameters from punitive institutions his

time and prison to police brutality throughout the story religious institution to his impoverished friends who find themselves at the mercy of others there is this constant question in the background of Suri amidst your suffering why continue this perhaps is highlighted even more so in McCarthy's newest text the passenger which in my mind feels like a spiritual successor to Suri both the protagonists Bobby and Suri are cont ending with a world hinged upon violence within confines of Civility and yet not just explicit violence per se but nature itself there's a subtext within the passenger that I

think mirrors the work of Michelle Fuko immensely Concepts such as biopolitics power and Madness it's actually uncanny how much it does Bobby is faced with a world hinged upon regulation and taboo a world with the start categorization found found in modernity the pursuit of normaly creates a violent threshold that squeezes our ability to be well human the pathological deeply violent human effect from social ethics and Norms founded in regulation of difference such as disabled queer or non-anglo individuals Bobby is a troubled Vietnam veteran yet his time in Vietnam as violent as it was wasn't the

thing that troubled him he's able to Grapple with the concept of war war is the lack of Regulation such that Bobby can parse it but he cannot grapple with is the loss of his sister of which both were deeply in love with one another Yes you heard that correctly Bobby seems to struggle within the ways in which we deal with our hsian state of nature the categories of right and wrong we bring into our world ones that are at odds with ourselves and yet in a Twist we can argue there's a level of a cartisian

Mind Body dualism here Bobby's psyche couldn't care less about the regulations and categories we hold ourselves to he deeply misses his sister yet throughout the story he interacts within those regulations and categories nonetheless making his psychological disposition null and void within materiality he has no choice but to Grapple with social bounds regardless again McCarthy posits a negative metaphysics of violence he pushes us to see violence Beyond mere killing and the continual artifices we build up around ourselves we've talked extensively around the concept of lack from metaphysics to phenomenology or lon's concept of the real the

empty Chasm the Baseline of our genuine reality our metaphysics being rooted in the philosophical concept of negation which is to say nothing the predisposed emptiness we are all running from Life Society relationships our perceptions are not but things to cover this Chasm if you are new to Concepts like negation lack or the concept of lon's real I'll leave some resources for you this is the Baseline for McCarthy a central void The Emptiness we all feel the only quote unquote real thing we have the state of nature from there the artifices we use to construct our

reality the normatives categories ideology that we impose upon ourselves the last main work I want to focus on McCarthy's philosophy is the road as a literary piece it's arguably his most popular a postapocalyptic story of the man in the boy who find themselves within an utterly destroyed world it's not explicitly stated why why the world ended albeit I've personally settled on a conclusion but I won't mention that here McCarthy often keeps setting and even characters within a shrouded Veil something that needs to be further pressed through reading but McCarthy's insistence on lack on hobbs' state

of nature is certainly visualized most directly here the thing about the road that hit me the hardest and what I imagine to many will also do is that it truly shows how catastrophic an apocalyptic scenario like this would be the road more than nearly anything else shows how much of a hollywoodized Mythos Renditions of Apocalypse that is quietly infested in all of our brains disaster movies with Heroes villains Happy Endings quick deaths video games such as Fallout that focus on the comedic irony of situation of capitalism and the characters therein the road is much more

terrifying than that side note we should have a thing where the minute politicians start talking about nuclear warheads as a mean of legitimate foreign policy is the minute we should probably force them to sit through something like the road alongside their family book or movie either one will probably get the point across it really cannot be understated how dismal the visual of this book is and ironically beautifully so but like so many others within McCarthy's text it reflects metaphysically he walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the

absolute truth of the world the cold Relentless circling of the interstate Earth Darkness implic the blind dogs of the Sun in their running the crushing black vacuum of the universe in somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground foxes in their cover borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it spite the crushing tone and and Pros McCarthy brings forward the road is arguably the most hopeful and even optimistic of McCarthy's primarily McCarthy's use of existentialism here an existentialism that challenges some thought seen and absurdism we can see the world as a

void one lack of meaning as it exists within a default state that without our own intervention our perception our being but it's our subjectivity as people that matter I'd argue McCarthy goes beyond that we haven't spoken about McCarthy's spiritual influence in his text from almost mystical like figures and characters such as the judge or Anton Sher Spirit as an entity a concept however we might describe it is often visualized within characters in the road I'd argue McCarthy centers this into the setting because of the Decay because of the quite literally lack of of Life of

all in the book we must go beyond Sight and Sound into the sublime Beyond sense Beyond Reason Beyond logic we see this with the boy and the man's promise to one another to always carry the fire this is a mantra shared throughout the text we don't technically know what the fire is it's never explicitly stated yet as collective humans as the reader we still understand it the road encompasses a Restless Spirit of humanity that contends with this lack this void and a modern sense much of McCarthy can be seen as not exactly but a type

of postmodern author at least in his narrative form the road flips this and is probably McCarthy's most modernist work much of this video has been a bit more vague than my others but there is a direct reason for this McCarthy's Pros tends to be vague and that's what makes his art damn powerful in my mind the balance between the ambiguous and the explicit he embodies this more than many writers and I think it fair to carry that form throughout this video at the end of all of this I think we can sum up McCarthy as

one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century and hopefully this video did him and his writing Justice thank you all for watching and making it the end I've always wanted to make a video on McCarthy forever now and I was happy to see that patrons here obliged as always I want to make a huge Quest these videos would not be possible without the help of all my patrons and people in the YouTube memb sections consider pledging a few bucks a month here it allows us to keep all of these videos possible and flowing most

of all though I want to give an extra shout out to Jay Roberts Kate and Keith Gaylor thank you all so much you truly have gone above and beyond for everyone else I hope to see you in the next one