...not exactly.
"Nihilist \Ni"hil*ist\, n. [Cf. F. nihiliste. See {Nihilism}.] 1. One who advocates the doctrine of nihilism; one who believes or
teaches that nothing can be known, or asserted to exist."
"Nihilism (Doctrine in ethics) — Nihilism takes its name from the Latin word for "nothing" and is an extreme form of existentialism or pessimism which holds that life has no meaning and that even if you try to achieve your values, in the end your life must necessarily come to nothing — thus nihilism is similar to fatalism. In fact, however, nihilism is worse than fatalism because nihilists don't usually say that life comes to zero but to less than zero, since they hold that life really just consists of one thing: pain. Nietzsche (1844-1900) is often said to have been a nihilist because of his skepticism or perspectivism and his rejection of common, Christian morality, but
I think he was more positive than the nihilist label would imply, at least in his "middle period".
Nihilism is popularly taken to refer to wanton destruction for its own sake, a sort of activist irrationalism.
[References from deconstructionism, emotionalism, existentialism, fatalism, and immoralism.] |
