Abstract

In the third episode of season one of True Detective, "The Locked Room", detective Rust Cohle explains the life. This predicament makes him not just a "pessimist" also a "nihilist"‐someone who denies that life has meaning. The idea that life might be a dream is one of humanity's oldest and most enduring philosophical thoughts. The oldest versions of these ideas come from Indian philosophy. In Western philosophy, the thought that life could be a dream is linked not so much to reflections on life, death, and transcendence as it is to the problem of whether it is possible to have certain knowledge. One way to draw together the Eastern and Western philosophical threads is with the following line of thought, taken from Wendy Doniger's classic book on Indian and Western views of dreaming, Dreams, Illusion, and Other Realities.