'The Nihilist' by Raff Donelson in Seth Vannatta (ed)
The Pragmatism and Prejudice of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr (Lexington Press, 2019) 31-48
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Scattered skeptical remarks and a general austerity that infused his writings have given Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes a reputation as some type of nihilist. Noted commentators such as Richard Posner and Albert Alschuler have claimed as much. This article seeks to correct this misunderstanding. Holmes was not a nihilist in the sense of being melancholy due to a belief that the world has no absolute moral values or gods. Instead, Holmes was a pragmatist in the spirit of William James and John Dewey. While Holmes had doubts about moral truth and deities, he ultimately thought that their existence (or non-existence) should have no bearing on our behavior or the law. We must, through our collective efforts, find values that work for us.
Donelson argues
This chapter demonstrates that Holmes was no Nietzschean nihilist. Such an accusation is triply mistaken. Holmes was no nihilist, nor was he a Nietzschean, and there is no such thing as a “Nietzschean nihilist” because Nietzsche was no nihilist either. xxx
This chapter begins with offering a definition of “nihilism” that will serve as a touchstone for the proceeding discussion. Only with the definition of “nihilism” fixed can we have a productive conversation about whom should have the label. After this preliminary work, I turn to the three main tasks of the chapter: showing that Holmes was no nihilist, that he was no Nietzschean, and that Nietzsche and Holmes are both anti-nihilists. On the first task, I not only offer textual support for a non-nihilist reading of Holmes, but I also try to explain why some commentators have erroneously called Holmes a nihilist. On the second task, I argue that the differences between Holmes and Nietzsche are too great – and the similarities too few and commonly found – for it to make sense to call Holmes a Nietzschean. The final task of the paper aims to show that both Nietzsche and Holmes are anti-nihilists. As I show, those commentators who label Nietzsche a nihilist are making a similar kind of error as those who call Holmes a nihilist. Both kinds of critics miss the fact that both Holmes and Nietzsche are in different ways responding to nihilism. Thus, the final section of this chapter serves to underscore the message of the first two: Holmes is not a Nietzschean precisely because he is a different kind of anti- nihilist
