Oliver Wendell Holmes and the Culture of Conversation (review)

In accord with the now fashionable academic trope, Gibian's work on Oliver Wendell Holmes Senior (father of Justice Holmes), assumes as a matter of course that diversity is the essence of democracy. Gibian therefore celebrates Holmes Senior's playful, confrontational, "dialogical" conception of "the conversation of culture." But Gibian has picked the very worst moment in American history to celebrate in the name of the agreement to disagree. It was the time when not Holmes Senior but John C. Calhoun, the ideologue of slavery, was the most vocal spokesman for this view. Not surprisingly, the term monologue—tinged as it is in this book with inherent autocratic authority—designates the antidemocratic pole. Gibian gracefully selects Holmes the son, in contradistinction to the father, to personify the monist nondialogical stance. This choice narrowly saves the book from the too-harsh daylight of historical fact. For, at that time, it was not Holmes Junior but Abraham Lincoln who was the most conspicuous spokesman for that view. It was Lincoln, alas, who imposed a monologue on those who supported slavery in the name of diversity, minority rights, "concurrent majority" theory, and finally secession. So although Gibian is enamored of Richard Rorty's idea of democracy as "exciting and fruitful disagreement," the Civil War is a sad reminder that some disagreements are just too exciting, and that democracy is sometimes preserved by disagreeing to disagree on fundamentals.