Nihilism

Nihilist political philosophy rejected all religious and political authority, social traditions and traditional morality as standing in opposition to freedom, the ultimate ideal. In this sense, it can be seen as an extreme form of anarchism. The state thus became the enemy, and the enemy was ferociously attacked. After gaining much momentum in Russia, the movement degenerated into what were essentially terrorist cells, barren of any real unifying philosophy beyond the call for destruction.

Nihilism greatly resembled anarchism, though there are three main points of difference:

1. Nihilism advocated violence as the best method to affect political change. This is not necessarily the case with anarchism (see Emma Goldman).
2. Nihilism was characterized by a rejection of all systems of authority and all social conventions. This is not necessarily the case with anarchism. In fact, many forms of anarchism rely on the existence or creation of a strong community.
3. As a political movement, nihilism was primarily a Russian phenomenon.

Nihilism in philosophy

According to the nihilist, the world and especially human existence are without meaning, purpose, comprehensable truth, or essential value. Nihilism in most of its forms can be contrasted with postmodernism in that nihilism tends toward defeatism, while postmodernism finds strength and reason for celebration in the varied and unique human relationships it explores. Nihilism can also readily be compared to skepticism as both reject claims to knowledge and truth, though skepticism does not necessarily come to any conclusions about the reality of moral concepts nor does it deal so intimately with questions about the meaning of an existence without knowable truth.

Epistemology and nihilism

As an epistemological view, nihilism represents an extreme form of skepticism or relativism with regards to the knowability of truth and the legitimacy of claims to knowledge. In this respect it is identical with skepticism, though while skepticism does not necessarily make any specific moral claims or represent a single worldview, nihilism cannot be divorced from its moral conclusions and outlook.

Nihilism and Nietzsche

Though often called a nihilist, Friedrich Nietzsche defined the term as any philosophy that, rejecting the real world around us and physical existence along with it, results in an apathy toward life and a poisoning of the human soul. He describes it as "the will to nothingness" - in this sense the philosophical equivalent to the Russian political nihilism mentioned above: the irrational leap beyond skepticism, the desire to destroy. He saw this philosophy as present in Christianity and Christian morality, which he describes as slave morality, and in asceticism and excessively skeptical philosophy.

Nietzsche is referred to as a nihilist in part because he famously announced "God is dead!" What he meant by this oft-repeated announcement was not that God has passed away in a literal sense, but that we don't believe in God anymore, that even those of us who profess faith in God really don't believe. God is dead, then, in the sense that his existence is irrelevant to the bulk of humanity. "And we," he says in The Gay Science, "have killed him." Nietzsche recognized that, even though he viewed Christian morality as nihilistic, without God humanity is left with no epistemological or moral base from which we can derive our beliefs. Thus, even though nihilism has been a threat in the past, through Christianity, Buddhism, Platonism and any other philosophy that devalues human life and the world around us, Nietzsche tells us it is also a threat for humanity's future.

Nietzsche strongly placed himself opposite nihilism, advocating a remedy for its destructive effects and a hope for humanity's future in the form of the Übermensch, a position especially apparent in his works Also Sprach Zarathustra and The Antichrist.

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