That's a good point. Though (it's been a while since I've read it), I don't recall him abandoning a wife or children; my recollection is that he was something of an ascetic who just rejected taking on those obligations in the first place. I don't know, it turns on what 'masculine ideal' means to anyone. People tend…

There's a lot. Oxford University Press publishes a lot of introductions/companions to theology that are usually useful. You can find a lot of good bibliographies on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy site too. But some names off the top of my head:
Charles Taylor, John Haldane, Peter van Inwagen, Nancey…

It felt like that and a few other things were going on in True Detective that was refreshingly uncommon. Cohle's easily one of the most interesting characters I've ever seen in a TV show.

Not almost too manly, you don't think?

Riker was an arrant, trombone-playing cad. Always lurking in Ten Forward, trolling for ass. Taking sex vacations by himself to Risa.

It's when your fucking ex-wife asks you to take care of her fucking dog while she and her boyfriend go to Honolulu and you tell her to go fuck herself. Why can't she board it?!

I was sort of thinking of them all in toto, though he was more like grim reality itself. Probably more of a Suttree or a Grady Cole.

Who'd have imagined Steve Doocy could somehow inspire, if never actually participate in, a thoughtful discussion?

Good choice. It emphasized that he exhibited a high level of self-knowledge and self-possession, combined with a depth of thought (which all seem like ideal masculine virtues), that were signally absent in Hart.

A series of characters in Cormac McCarthy's best novels. Really just McCarthy's own cadence throughout them. Reminds of G. M. Hopkins describing Dryden as 'the most masculine of our poets'; I think McCarthy is one of the most masculine of living novelists (without trying to define the term rigorously). Something to…

I wasn't saying he was the only great singer, just that there are few others, to my mind, that were as good.

It's no use when he's in on the joke. Kid's a bonafide monster.

Agreed. There's a good book by Coetzee called The Lives of Animals in which he argues just that. Even where you can demontrate rationally that a particular treament of an animal is unethical, people can understand that but they won't stop until something engenders real emotional solidarity with the animal.

I can't say I'm familiar with those. I mean, there are serious challenges to a thoroughgoing genetic determinism as well. But at the end of day, we have to concede that we have very little idea how to scrutinize conscious (as opposed to brain) states scientifically, and that it may be impossible to do so in…

Twas ever thus.

I think that's probably true. We have higher level cognitive abilities that other animals don't; it's unclear that any other animal is capable of ascribing genuine intentionality to others. On the other hand, the actual causal efficiacy of those abilities is pretty mysterious. It's possible that instinct preceeds…

This is genuinely good to hear, of course. I watched Au Hasard Balthazar recently, and it was very compelling in the way it demanded that the viewer empathize with the donkey protagonist (who's featured in a circus for a time) without it being anthropomorphised in the way that typically happens in film.

Don't set yourself up for disappointment like that.

*queues up 'South Tacoma Way'*

Yeah, they'd be a fun duo, I think.