I’ve read a letter that McCarthy had sent to a friend of his wherein he claimed to have read 300 books over a 3-4 year span for research on Blood Meridian

6:01 I've had experiences like this in University where I've met people that I found completely and utterly disgusting in their beliefs and yet they're so charismatic I kept help but be drawn to them. It's a baffling experience.

Judge seems like that type of character where his mere presence causes the hidden dark side of people’s nature to ooze out. Like when he openly accused the preacher in the revival tent of absolutely heinous acts, no one stopped to say ‘wait, where the hell is your proof?!’. Someone in the congregation with a g*n just took that as a signal to go right ahead and k*ll the preacher. And the guy in the bar who shot and k*lled the bear. Would the bear have been k*lled anyway? Or was Judge’s mere presence in the bar what caused the bear to be k*lled?

Really great stuff. I like the bit about Holden being a baby representative of our infancy in regards to mental evolution. I Read most of Nietzsche in my late 20s (I’m 40 now) and totally resonate with your take. That’s exactly how I took his work. Loved the video. Keep doing what you’re doing my friend

The ten words every lit bro wants to hear: “We’re going to go deeper by bringing Nietzsche into this”

this is definitely one of my favorite channels at the moment.

I've definitely been a nihilist and I've tried to move past it, but what I find most difficult is finding a thing or things that feel worthwhile of investing my time and knowledge into.

@writeconscious Dude you’ve been cracking me lately…”Bob Dylan are you fucking kidding me?!??” “I like to think of myself… not as a psychopath” “We’re all just one blow job away from being judge Holden” “Cormac Mccarthy was the biggest nerd of all time”

I'm reading Blood Meridian for the first time. I live in San Antonio, Texas and in Chapter Two when The Kid arrives in San Antonio I know exactly where he was. It brought chilling memory. Ghostly...

Excellent video man. I loved hearing your thoughts on this iconic character. I could've listened to 4 hours of this.....little disappointed you stopped. lol

You're killing it!

Just stumbling upon your channel. Love the Meridian stuff so far! Greatest book of all time.

Also I was about to ask if you thought the Judge was more similar to the Gnostic Demiurge or Milton's Satan but after you mentioned you were going to do a theological interpretation of him I figured that's where you'll place it.

The thing i dont understand about BM is Judge Holdens origins, forget about his philosophy and whats driving him, to begin with what the hell is he?? He hasn't aged a day in 25 years at Fort Griffin and appears to be immortal and more than human but then his body is sun burned after the Yuma massacre, this doesn’t sound like a Djinn or an ubermensch or whatever you call it.

Definitely did not expect this video to get motivational at points, but i like what you say about nihilism and how we as a society can deal with those feelings in a positive way

It seems like the Judge is an active nihilist because he's exploring his creative freedom to perfect what he calls "the dance". To the Judge, killing is a creative art form that has an inherent beauty. The Judge isn't running away from his own nature; he's embracing and acting out the realities of his own world view. To the Judge, "Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak". There is no need or desire for the Judge to morally examine himself if morals don't exist and if morals are an arbitrary invention that disenfranchises the powerful (himself). The Judge would consider the act of morally examining himself as a conscious act of hypocrisy. The Judge doesn't revert to Christian morality, he reverts to the philosophy of Thrasymachus (might makes right). Nihilism is still the Judge's philosophical foundation, but because no one can build any logically consistent moral structure on the nihilistic foundation, he falls back on the "might makes right" philosophy while stealing the use of Christian terminology as a means of creatively expressing his own blend of nihilism and cynical realism. These two philosophies (nihilism and cynical realism) have no moral contradictions. Blending Christianity and nihilism, on the other hand, would be logically impossible. There is no need for the Judge to morally purify himself in the Christian sense because war was the god he chose to worship and he always acted in accordance to his own god. If the Judge's worldview is true, then it would be a mistake to assume that Judge's stance on violence is dumb or illogical. If the Judge's worldview is true, then the Judge's stance on violence is logically and morally consistent with his nihilist worldview.

Thank you! I like your point of view that the judge is like a child, that infantilism is related to nihilism. It does not seem to me obvious

Thank you for this my friend🧡 He's such a fascinating character. If they do make the movie I really hope they find somebody that could play his part. The way it should be done

What's the track at the beginning of the video????

Excellent! I’m remembering “analysis paralysis”: incredible term to describe dumb people futilely attempting to become geniuses : used to be called “contemplating one’s navel”

The kid was never in the descriptions of the gang's violence of raping and pillaging. He was only present in some of the less important violent scenes. I guess the worst thing he does is shooting that one kid years later, and it was self defence. I think he never took part in those rapings and pillagings. I was always looking to see what he was up to during those parts but he really didnt show up in those scenes. He shows mercy at times, thats why its easy to see him as the opposite to the judge as the better side of the cast. Along with being illiterate, he is also quiet and doesnt seem to have a philosophy for life, just choosing in the moment to help or kill. The opposite is the judge who always talking to the gang and is suoer educated and has a solid if evil philosophy for life.

Good pep talk. I kinda squandered my gifts.

Been watching all your videos and enjoying them! I looked back at recent Cormac interviews- one with David Krakauer listed as 7 months ago and he looks vibrant and energetic. There is another one from 6 months ago from the origins podcast where he looks much thinner and less energetic. Do you know the actual time line of these two interviews? It is difficult to imagine that they were one month apart. Thanks!

You’re a self proclaimed genius!

I wish that more channels would normalize their audio. I want to listen to this at work but the difference in the music and speaking makes it impossible.. I could fix it too 😢

Villeneuve's Baron sourced from the Judge!?

My favorite McCarthy story is when he was on the phone with James Franco after Franco bought the film rights to blood meridian and wanted to pick his brain. Franco supposedly went on and on about the metaphysical interpretation of parts of the novel, Franco breathlessly went on and on about what McCarthy’s thoughts were when he wrote it and when Franco was all done and Franco was like “what were you thinking about when you wrote this part?” And McCarthy just replied “I don’t know Frank, somethin’ stupid I guess” 😂😂😂😂😂

ive Enjoyed Your Videos... Keep Up^ the Good Work

10:50 Who's account was this?

8:00 Priceless! You should design a t-shirt.

Would you go as far as saying Dune is Mcarthy tier literature (not of equal quality but approximating it) as it too succeeded in depicting Nietzsche's idea's?

Banger intro

15:38 what about Tobin? He conquered the "judge" Holden's grasp on them through faith in Jesus Christ because only God can Judge. that doesn't get mentioned by any youtube video convering this amazing classic but still you're my favorite literature related account on this platform and i love the encouragement you're giving to everyone watching to keep reading/writing/learning even if we have a different view on the novel as a whole please don't change after the many more views come in the future with your videos you're not doing this for image board likes or upvotes we can see this is coming from the love of the scribbles on paper.

Very happy to discover this channel. Great stuff. Can you provide references that demonstrate that McCarthy is a conservative?

You know where you speak about agency? I’m not sure you’re always correct. I’m sure some of what you’re saying are just throw away comments but… For example, you mentioned people “checking out of modern society” for better or worse because they’ve lost their agency? I kinda feel like when people make a choice like that they have a lot of agency. I could be way off on this as I’m in the middle of a work out!

What makes one a "lit bro"? Never heard the term

In the western philosophical tradition, anything that can be named and measured can be controlled. Thats the judge's mindset to me.

Judge Holden is as good an example as I can think of of how literature differs from film or painting. I have never seen a reproduction, an image, of Holden which resembles the Holden which I saw in my head as I read this book. I think this is why Kafka said that his Gregor should never be represented on any book cover, there's just no way that the reproducible image can compete in allusory valence with imagination. Think Les Murray combined with Januarius Jones and with true albinism and alopecia.

"What to do kids symbolize other than hope and possibility?" Innocence? Purity? Curiosity?

17:20 ~ 25:33

any respectable scalp hunter woulda shot this judge goof for talking too much

Judge Holden is Peter Boyle in Young Fronkensteen.

I had a dream about the Judges supernatural powers One being the ability to morph into the darkness/travel into the shadow realm where he can lurk invisibly, this is why the Judge is seen as a phantom In my dream I was the Judge and I was running across a grass field, in this field each stride I took was enough to catapult me forward with incredible speed, I imagine this is how the Judge caught up to the guys on horse while on foot I’ve had more dream of the judge and his escapades but I will leave it with that Also if you are interested in another nihilist antagonist of evil I suggest checking out Johan from Monster, reminds me a little of the Judge truly a force to be reckoned with…

I didn't really view the novel's epilogue as being necessarily a negation of what Holden was at least attempting to propagate. While it can be argued that the epilogue represents the end of the Old West in which Holden and so many like him thrived, the philosophy of war being god is something that nevertheless carried on even with the solidification of civilization as the twentieth century dawned. Sure, you don't have the same level of lawlessness as the Old West in America, but the twentieth century saw to two World Wars and a Cold War with several proxy conflicts embedded in there. So even as the U.S. and many other countries achieved a sense of internal harmony, war and chaos would still go on to ravage the planet in ways that people prior to the twentieth century would have found to be unbelievable. In conclusion, I viewed the epilogue as less of an end to an epoch of violence in which Holden had lived under and more of a transformation into a civilization with a veneer of lawfulness as the violent extremes of freedom being replaced by the more strict and confining rules of a society with tighter police and national forces. And, in turn, the violence that characterized settings such as the 19th century Old West would go on to be channeled into the conflicts of the twentieth century and, to an admittedly lesser extent, the conflicts going on in this century. I imagine that if Holden's claim of him never dying were true, he would probably live on to be some bloodthirsty general in one or all of the conflicts that I just mentioned.

Cool intro, Ian

Consider this: Danny McBride as Judge Holden. I think his arc in This is the End supports his ability to pull this off.

“Why is the Judge so into geology? What is the geological significance? Because what geology is just about the control of the land.” Whoa, slow your roll there! Saying this as someone who just discovered your channel and with much respect and admiration of what you’re putting out on Cormac MacCarthy. On the other hand I’m a geologist, and well….no, just no. Rather than just criticize this underbaked comment, can I offer a suggestion? Do an episode on MacCarthy - Geology and Geomorphology. Like all of MacCarthy’s writing, as well of the subject of geology itself, there are so many layers. Start here: [T]he judge took one of the packanimals and emptied out the panniers and went off to explore the works. In the afternoon he sat in the compound breaking ore samples with a hammer, the feldspar rich in red oxide of copper and native nuggets in whose organic lobations he purported to read news of the earth’s origins, holding an extemporary lecture in geology to a small gathering who nodded and spat. A few would quote him scripture to confound his ordering up of eons out of the ancient chaos and other apostate supposings. The judge smiled. Books lie, he said. God don’t lie. No, said the judge. He does not. And these are his words. He held up a chunk of rock. He speaks in stones and trees, the bones of things.

The past tense of forgo is forwent, not "forgoed."

@22:00 you also can unask the question, or question your whole supposition there. We do not live in an unjust world. We live in a very diverse rich world, there is injustice and there is also justice, if you look around. Neither is the injustice perfect injustice, nor is the justice we see perfect. Kind of makes you think a good purpose in life to is improve things, and not choose to be a dopey nihilist.

Good commentary but I would like to point out that FN did not say that the Uber man or Superman actually existed in our times and they may never exist. He is a future human. That will be far beyond anything that exists now. And there can be no, so-called Superman In this present epoch of human existence.❤

“If you’re a random citizen you’re not really tied to the actions of the United States government” unless you pay taxes, which most everyone does.

@writeconscious you're the man

Yes very good about being active with your knowledge. You don’t want to remain locked in the toilet with the Judge…..

I’m not surprised he’s a conservative. I feel that political label has a natural affinity with environment. A conservative NOT supported by petro-lobbyists would want to conserve nature. What you are saying about the links between the domination of matter and evil is very interesting. I wonder if that’s why McCarthy said he was ‘mostly’ a materialist. The Judge is omnipotent, lord over all real things. Yet he also embodies nihilism. Almost as if McCarthy is saying that the study of the phenomenology of stuff in the world can reveal vast nothingness. The human mind can transcend real stuff, so why is any of it important? You can know the names and chemistry of all living things in order to manipulate at will, but what is their above or around is that limits us? Knowledge in that case would be a kind of tyranny, an essential evil. Now I think about it, the more it is a Garden of Eden metaphor for the knowledge of good and evil, sourced from the fruit of a tree. A paradise lost.

judge holden was a prior incarnation of edgar cayce.😮. yes he was... yes he was.. also... what the hell is a lit bro?.. dont answer that..

"plum cen-tray"

I thought Holden was the manifest Lucifer

Fantastic analysis.

'Active nihilism' as a sensible lifestyle choice is IMO one thing Thomas Metzinger worries/warns about in the face of the fact that our ordinary sense of self is an illusion. A better alternative lifestyle direction is IMO illustrated by e.g. the Tao Te Ching

Lotta great work here, Holden is a mystery for sure I do take issue w a few of your points however. For one, I don’t think the judge is acting or behaving in any way that suggests he is avoiding his own inadequacy or shortcomings or insecurities at all. This would be a humanizing explanation and one that the text does not imply. It does imply that he was ever and wholly contained at all times. That he was to the greatest meaning of the word, uncanny. Inhuman. And Evil at that. He is not to be understood as a man. He is something else (like the great whale, Moby Dick) Obviously it is not an unpopular opinion that he is the devil incarnate-the text itself alludes to many moments and intertexts which confirm this assessment. But it is curious because there are just as many which suggest he is a god of some kind-and in the darkest frame of Christian depiction at that. Nothing existing without his permission suggests that he is god as christian understanding would also depict their god. He is the judge too after all, and who is the judge but god? The devil is the accuser, not the judge Wrestling with who the judge is, and what he means, is more important than the conclusion, but I do think god and the devil here are but one terrifying vision And it’s partly the reason why I most sharply disagree with the analysis of the Epilogue of the book. The story ends, not with his defeat, but him dancing. To have his end unwritten and the holes in the earth as some implication of progression forward is an imposition of meaning imo, and not in step w the book at large, nor in line w McCarthy’s collection of fiction either If the story is a meditation on violence and the violence of expansionism, and the judge the personification of violence itself, then the epilogue suggests that hell was being systematically wrought out of the earth. It doesn’t not suggest an end of violence. Only a sophistication of it-a sophistication and a democratizing force. It is no longer the judge’s secret knowledge to make fire, but all of us are capable w the tools to drag fire from the earth. The evening redness can be read as a sunset, but I think it holds more narrative impact to mean that the even-ing is of violence. The west is red w blood. If the violence of the sky was meant to suggest violence was over, then nightfall should be in the title. But the even-ing is about the effects on all of us. Blood is in the sky. We till hell

How come nobodh ever talks about the road. Its a fucked up book

Your videos feel like watching, nay, partaking in a philosophical and artistic action car chase; one which occurs in slow motion, because I can follow you, even though you are my superior.

He is an anarchist and it doesn’t mean what you think it means in left wing parliance

26:22 "Kids are cruel jack"

I had a dream about the Judges supernatural powers One being the ability to morph into the darkness/travel into the shadow realm where he can lurk invisibly, this is why the Judge is seen as a phantom In my dream I was the Judge and I was running across a grass field, in this field each stride I took was enough to catapult me forward with incredible speed, I imagine this is how the Judge caught up to the guys on horse while on foot I’ve had more dream of the judge and his escapades but I will leave it with that Also if you are interested in another nihilist antagonist of evil I suggest checking out Johan from Monster, reminds me a little of the Judge truly a force to be reckoned with…