Nihilism

Nihilism is a way of thinking which rejects meaning, concepts, or life.^[1] It can be a philosophical position or a condition. Nihility means "nothingness", and "nihil" is the Latin word for "nothing".^[2] Nihilism can mean the belief that values are meaningless ideas. It can also mean the belief that nothing has any meaning or purpose.^[3] There are many different beliefs that can be called nihilism. Friedrich Nietzsche was a German thinker who wrote many things about nihilism. What he wrote is often called the most important explanation of nihilism. Nietzsche wrote that nihilism comes from questioning traditional values until they fall apart. This is called "value destruction".^[3]

Russian thinkers like Mikhail Bakunin and Dmitry Pisarev inspired a lot of nihilists because they believed this kind of destruction was good.^[4] The word "nihilism" was also made popular by a Russian novel called Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev. The hero of the story is a nihilist named Bazarov.^[5] Russian nihilism inspired many revolutionaries, like Sergei Nechaev and Vladimir Lenin. The Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky was almost also a nihilist. But he became an anti-nihilist after ten years in exile. He wrote about nihilism in many novels such as Crime and Punishment.^[6][7] The people who assassinated the Russian emperor, Tsar Alexander II on 13 March 1881, are often called nihilists too.^[8]

Nietzsche thought value destruction had bad results but couldn't be stopped. He also thought Christianity had made value destruction happen, and called it a type of nihilism. He thought Christianity was nihilistic because it was life-denying, meaning it has a negative and unhealthy attitude towards living.^[9] Religious thinkers have instead said that nihilism comes from rejecting religion. Sometimes people think parts of Buddhism are like nihilism, even though other parts reject nihilism. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the word "nihilism" was mostly used against people who rejected religion or believed in nothing. Either way, nihilism is often seen as a word for life-denying beliefs.^[10]

1. ↑ Crosby, Donald A. (1998). "Nihilism". Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Taylor and Francis. doi:10.4324/9780415249126-N037-1. ISBN 9780415250696. As its name implies (from Latin nihil, 'nothing'), philosophical nihilism is a philosophy of negation, rejection, or denial of some or all aspects of thought or life.
2. ↑ "Nihility". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. Retrieved November 4, 2020.
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1} Pratt, Alan. "Nihilism". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Archived from the original on 2010-04-12.
4. ↑ Edie, James M.; Scanlan, James; Zeldin, Mary-Barbara (1994). Russian Philosophy Volume II: the Nihilists, The Populists, Critics of Religion and Culture. University of Tennessee Press. p. 3, 65.
5. ↑ "Nihilism". Encyclopædia Britannica. March 13, 2020.
6. ↑ Frank, Joseph (1995). Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865–1871. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01587-2.
7. ↑ Petrov, Kristian (2019). "'Strike out, right and left!': a conceptual-historical analysis of 1860s Russian nihilism and its notion of negation". Stud East Eur Thought. 71 (2): 73–97. doi:10.1007/s11212-019-09319-4. S2CID 150893870.
8. ↑ Hingley, Ronald (1969). Nihilists; Russian radicals and revolutionaries in the reign of Alexander II, 1855-81. New York, NY: Delacorte Press. pp. 87–126.
9. ↑ Deleuze, Gilles (1962). Nietzsche and Philosophy. Translated by Tomlinson, Hugh. London: The Athlone Press (published 1983). ISBN 978-0-231-13877-2.
10. ↑ Veit, Walter (2018). "Existential Nihilism: the only really serious philosophical problem". Journal of Camus Studies (2018 ed.): 211–232.