nihilism

noun

1. (uncountable, usually)The view that all endeavours are devoid of objective meaning.

   “But there was also about him an indescribable air which no mechanic could have acquired in the practice of his handicraft however dishonestly exercised: [...] the air of moral nihilism common to keepers of gambling hells and disorderly houses; [...]”

   “Anger at the system turned to anger against art. Damn that foolery too, which took, but never gave. A promise of achievement always withdrawn; an assurance of dignity and ease for ever vanishing over the skyline. The virus of communistic nihilism simmered within him, wishing to submerge all effort in an easily filled belly.”

   “[T]he band members sweat hard enough to earn their pretensions, and maybe even their nihilism.”

   “[W]hat is most terrifying—including the perennial threat of cowardly terrorists—is the insidious growth of deadening nihilisms across political lines, nihilisms that have been suffocating the deep democratic energies in America. In Race Matters, I examined the increasing nihilism in black America as the "lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaninglessness, hopelessness, and (most important) lovelessness."”

2. (uncountable, usually)The rejection of, or opposition to, religious beliefs, (inherent or objective) moral principles, legal rules, etc., often due to the view that life is meaningless (sense 1).

   “[T]he dire portent of Nihilism, which some persons regard as little more than an extreme protest against absolutism in Government, [...] is an execrable conspiracy against all religion and morality.”

   “Seen through all these glasses Russia is judged, or rather misjudged, by the western world; no wonder, therefore, that it is believed to be a barbarous country, governed by tyrants, inhabited by a savage population; a mixture of indolence, ignorance, despotism, and nihilism, without one of the redeeming features of culture or civilization.”

   “Most Christians cannot embrace such radical extremes as the current nihilisms that deny all spiritual and ethical truth. How can a Christian look to Jesus Christ and deny that there is truth? He is the truth.”

   “[Robert] Jenson observes that treating "other animals like humans is also to treat humans like other animals … Anthropological nihilism [seems] relatively harmless in … the 'animal rights' movement, but has been tested in frightful adult practice," e.g., Nazi socialism, or modern anthropological nihilisms evident in abortion on demand, euthanasia, and infanticide.”

   “Although Lexiteers have little patience for the national nihilism of “Davos Man,” the globalist elite, we are no xenophobes.”

3. (uncountable, usually)The rejection of non-proven or non-rationalized assertions in the social and political spheres of society.

   “As with the original American historicists, they accept only historical references and deny all extrahistorical references, including those implicit in idealism and positivism. [...] They deny both authoritarian and subjectivistic nihilisms, and they affirm the responsibility of the subject.”

4. (uncountable)A delusion that oneself or the world, or parts thereof, have ceased to exist.

   “Individuals with schizophrenia often cycle between nihilistic and solipsistic moods—when in the grip of nihilism they appear to have lost experiential contact with their very existence, [...]”

   “Melancholia is the most typical and classical presentation of depression with several compelling features such as impoverishment of emotional life and delusions of nihilism or guilt.”

5. (Russia, alt-of, historical, uncountable)Alternative letter-case form of Nihilism (“a Russian movement of the 1860s that rejected all authority and promoted the use of violence for political change”).

   “The Government took up the word, and used nihilism to stigmatize all revolutionary, and ultra democratic and socialistic tendencies; and we have seen it play its part in the recent investigations into the attempted assassination of the Emperor.”

6. (countable, uncountable)A doctrine grounded on the negation of one or more meaningful aspects of life; in particular, the view that nothing in the world actually exists.

   “This great metaphysician [John Locke] considered, our ideas were derived from sensation and reflection; and preserved the distinction between these two sources of knowledge with great care; but by a perversion of his theory, his followers reduced them to sensation alone;—which by a necessary gradation leads to materialism, atheism and nihilism.”

   “This view may be styled Religious Nihilism. It affirms that Theism, or faith in an Almighty and All-wise Creator, Pantheism, and Atheism, are alike mere guesses in the dark, and that nothing is or can be known of that mysterious Something, which is the origin of the universe.”

   “Psychological nihilism is a vulgar reaction to the difficulty of knowing the world, but it is also a way of reacting to the fear of nihilism. What is more, the vulgar threat of nihilism is overcome by [Friedrich] Nietzsche's authentic antinihilism. And yet false categories of information induce psychological nihilism, since we only value, as Nietzsche argues, a fictitious world.”

   “If, in its origin, nihilism is a will to escape from the immanent "chaos" to a transcendent, illusory world, with modernity, or, with the "death of God," this originary nihilism divides itself into two: radical and passive nihilism. [...] There is therefore a strange symmetry between the two nihilisms, between (Ahab's) willing nothingness and (Ishmael's) annihilation of will.”

7. (countable)Something that is regarded as meaningless.

   “This mock reasoning proves that those deliberately making use of it are, during the process, insane; inasmuch as they are attempting to reason by means of suppositions, by means of nihilisms, negative quantities.”

   “At one fell swoop such persons would away with the idle songs of the poets, away with our heroes in fiction, away too with the examples left us in the lives of great men. For it substantially amounts to this; if they have no influence in moulding thought and directing action, they are in the economy of intellect mere nihilisms, dead forces, and when read or studied can of themselves be the occasion of neither good nor evil.”

   “She [Susan Sontag] has honored beauty and justness, and she has chronicled how they were almost extinguished in the most devastatingly genocidal century to date. Without her, the dead Iraqi child on al-Jazeera would be just one of many, a signpost pointing toward the twin nihilisms of inevitability and ignorance.”

name

1. (Russia, historical)A movement of the 1860s that rejected all authority and promoted the use of violence for political change.

   “The Government took up the word, and used nihilism to stigmatize all revolutionary, and ultra democratic and socialistic tendencies; and we have seen it play its part in the recent investigations into the attempted assassination of the Emperor.”