I think if your concept of nihilism holds that Socrates believing that justice is inherently good is nihilistic, it's not a very useful take on nihilism.
I think it's actually a great take. In my opinion there always has been something downright creepy about justice. The way some people talk about justice and the good society is eerily similar to Norman Bates in American Psycho or corporate modernity which the movie mocks.
There is a thin line where justice crosses over into complacency, maintaining order or just being a hollow PR slogan that instead of rallying people actually pacifies them.
I think the author is right that there is something liberating about pessimism and cynicism because they refuse to play, actually challening and mocking whoever claims to know what is just or correct.
You just took Socrates out of the conversation, though. I think the point is that you can only call Socrates a nihilist by refusing to treat him seriously. From the article:
> Thrasymachus’s cynicism is so compelling that Socrates spends the rest of the “Republic” trying to prove that justice is better than injustice by trying to refute the apparent success of unjust people by making metaphysical claims about the effects of injustice on the soul. Socrates is thus only able to counter cynicism in the visible world through faith in the existence of an invisible world, an invisible world that he argues is more real than the visible world. In other words, it is Thrasymachus’s cynicism that forces Socrates to reveal his nihilism.
The logic seems to be that such an invisible world is obviously false - so obviously false that not even Socrates himself could believe it. But the absurdity of calling Socrates a nihilist is easy to see as soon as you give that invisible world a little credibility, even if only to say that Socrates could have found the idea plausible.
Yeah I was a bit taken aback when reading that part and became increasingly concerned that the author didn't know what he was talking about.
Imagine your friend asks you to count the windows on a building, so you count the rows and columns and multiply them. When he asks you how you did it so fast, you tell him, and he responds with something like: "Oh, I didn't realize you were a Nihilist." He then explains that mathematics is immaterial, and therefore non-existent. You believing in such a thing apparently makes YOU the Nihilist?
No. Nihilism is not about holding supposedly "empty" beliefs. If anything, it's the opposite; Nihilism would hold that these beliefs in the immaterial are themselves empty. Your friend might be a Nihilist, but you certainly aren't.
There is a thin line where justice crosses over into complacency, maintaining order or just being a hollow PR slogan that instead of rallying people actually pacifies them.
I think the author is right that there is something liberating about pessimism and cynicism because they refuse to play, actually challening and mocking whoever claims to know what is just or correct.