Crossword clues for nihilism
nihilism
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Nihilism \Ni"hil*ism\, n. [L. nihil nothing: cf. F. nihilisme. See Annihilate.]
Nothingness; nihility.
The doctrine that nothing can be known; scepticism as to all knowledge and all reality.
(Politics) The theories and practices of the Nihilists.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1817, "the doctrine of negation" (in reference to religion or morals), from German Nihilismus, from Latin nihil "nothing at all" (see nil), coined by German philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819). In philosophy, an extreme form of skepticism (1836). The political sense was first used by German journalist Joseph von Görres (1776-1848). Turgenev used the Russian form of the word (nigilizm) in "Fathers and Children" (1862) and claimed to have invented it. With a capital N-, it refers to the Russian revolutionary anarchism of the period 1860-1917, supposedly so called because "nothing" that then existed found favor in their eyes.
Wiktionary
n. 1 (context philosophy English) A philosophical doctrine grounded on the negation of one or more meaningful aspects of life. 2 (context ethics English) The rejection of inherent or objective moral principles. 3 (context politics English) The rejection of non-rationalized or non-proven assertions in the social and political spheres of society. 4 (context politics historical English) A Russian movement of the 1860s that rejected all authority and promoted the use of violence for political change. 5 The belief that all endeavors are ultimately futile and devoid of meaning. 6 Contradiction (not always deliberate) between behavior and espoused principle, to such a degree that all possible espoused principle is voided. 7 The deliberate refusal of belief, to the point that belief itself is rejected as untenable.
WordNet
n. a revolutionary doctrine that advocates destruction of the social system for its own sake
the delusion that things (or everything, including the self) do not exist; a sense that everything is unreal [syn: nihilistic delusion]
complete denial of all established authority and institutions
Wikipedia
Nihilism ( or ; from the Latin , nothing) is a philosophical doctrine that suggests the lack of belief in one or more reputedly meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism, which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value. Moral nihilists assert that morality does not inherently exist, and that any established moral values are abstractly contrived. Nihilism can also take epistemological, ontological, or metaphysical forms, meaning respectively that, in some aspect, knowledge is not possible, or that reality does not actually exist.
The term is sometimes used in association with anomie to explain the general mood of despair at a perceived pointlessness of existence that one may develop upon realising there are no necessary norms, rules, or laws. Movements such as Futurism and deconstruction, among others, have been identified by commentators as "nihilistic".
Nihilism is also a characteristic that has been ascribed to time periods: for example, Jean Baudrillard and others have called postmodernity a nihilistic epoch, and some Christian theologians and figures of religious authority have asserted that postmodernity and many aspects of modernity represent a rejection of theism, and that such rejection of their theistic doctrine entails nihilism.
Nihilism is a philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Nihilism may also refer to:
- Existential nihilism, the theory that life has no meaning
- Mereological nihilism, disbelief in objects with proper parts
- Metaphysical nihilism, a philosophical theory
- Epistemological nihilism, disbelief in knowledge
- Moral nihilism, disbelief in objective moral facts
- Nihilist movement, a cultural movement in 1860s Russia
- Political nihilism, a branch of nihilism that rejects the necessity of fundamental social or political structures
- "Nihilism", a song by Rancid from their 1994 album Let's Go
Usage examples of "nihilism".
But even apart from this perversity, his philosophy itself inclines towards a nihilism akin to Satanism.
It abandons us in this contradiction with no grounds either for preventing or for justifying murder, menacing and menaced, swept along with a whole generation intoxicated by nihilism, and yet lost in loneliness, with weapons in our hands and a lump in our throats.
And in that case, incidentally, what makes flagellantism worse than nihilism, Jesuitism, atheism?
What in the midst of the crisis in the 1920s appeared as transcendence against history, redemption against corruption, and messianism against nihilism now was constructed as an ontologically definite position outside and against, and thus beyond every possible residue of the dialectic.
This form of nihilism, despite appearances, is still nihilism in the Nietzschean sense, to the extent that it is a calumny of the present life to the advantage of a historical future in which one tries to believe.
This new Rousseauist nihilism of Gershenzon found a poignantly sincere expression in his part of that remarkable dialogue of letters in which he took part in 1920 with Vyacheslav Ivanov when the two were lying in a nursing home near Moscow.
Nagarjuna, the deconstruction of relative truths leaves not nihilism but Emptiness: it clears away the conceptual rubble in the mind's eye and thus allows the space of nondual intuition to disclose itself, and thus it follows to the limit the whole point of the IOU game: if you don't want to be a complete self-contradiction, then you must come to rest in infinite Emptiness, which alone redeems all IOUs, and which alone sets the soul free on the ocean of infinite Mystery.
The striking signs of confusional breakdown we see around us--the spreading use of drugs, the rise of mysticism, the recurrent outbreaks of vandalism and undirected violence, the politics of nihilism and nostalgia, the sick apathy of millions--can all be understood better by recognizing their relationship to future shock.
Illiterate punks defacing public property with spray-painted graffiti, suicide bombers, semicoherent pop stars selling rage and nihilism set to an infectious beat, attorneys specializing in tort law and filing massive class-action suits with the express intention of destroying major corporations and age-old institutions, serial killers, drug dealers, crooked cops, corrupted corporate executives cooking the books and stealing from pension funds, faithless priests molesting children, politicians riding to reelection by the agitation of class envy: All these and numerous others, working at different levels, some as destructive as runaway freight trains hurtling off the tracks, others quietly chewing like termites at the fabric of civility and reason, were necessary to cause the current order to collapse into ruin.
On April 28, while Dillinger loaded his gun and the kachinas of Orabi began the drum-beating, the Acapulco Gold-Diggers arrived, followed by the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Dracula and His Brides, the Iron Curtain, the Noisy Minority, the International Debt, Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, the Cloud of Unknowing, the Birth of a Nation, the Zombies, Attila and His Huns, Nihilism, the Catatonics.
Nihilism even more often born of a walk through the Old Town in mid-August.
Illiterate punks defacing public property with spray-painted graffiti, suicide bombers, semicoherent pop stars selling rage and nihilism set to an infectious beat, attorneys specializing in tort law and filing massive class-action suits with the express intention of destroying major corporations and age-old institutions, serial killers, drug dealers, crooked cops, corrupted corporate executives cooking the books and stealing from pension funds, faithless priests molesting children, politicians riding to reelection by the agitation of class envy: All these and numerous others, working at different levels, some as destructive as runaway .