nihilism
[nahy-uh-liz-uh m, nee-]
- total rejection of established laws and institutions.
- anarchy, terrorism, or other revolutionary activity.
- total and absolute destructiveness, especially toward the world at large and including oneself: the power-mad nihilism that marked Hitler's last years.
- Philosophy.
- an extreme form of skepticism: the denial of all real existence or the possibility of an objective basis for truth.
- nothingness or nonexistence.
- (sometimes initial capital letter) the principles of a Russian revolutionary group, active in the latter half of the 19th century, holding that existing social and political institutions must be destroyed in order to clear the way for a new state of society and employing extreme measures, including terrorism and assassination.
- annihilation of the self, or the individual consciousness, especially as an aspect of mystical experience.
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Origin of nihilism
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Related Words
atheism, lawlessness, anarchy, denial, rejection, disbelief, abnegation, renunciation, skepticism, disorder, repudiation, agnosticism, terrorismExamples from the Web for nihilism
Contemporary Examples
I think with that generation, so many of their hopes have been so dashed that nihilism is really a natural response.
It’s arguably the best film of the ‘90s—a postmodern pop culture smorgasbord awash in nihilism and dripping with retro cool.
The Secrets of ‘Pulp Fiction’: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About the Movie on Its 20th AnniversaryMarlow Stern
October 19, 2014
To understand better the nihilism of Thiessen's thinking, I must now quote his column at greater length.
Journey to the End of the Night does not offer readers much more than nihilism as a response to a detestable world.
Or better, and to speak like Nietzsche, art with a hammer that practices, and then reverses and reevaluates, nihilism.
Historical Examples
And once we are driven right on to nihilism we may find a way through.
Fantasia of the UnconsciousD. H. Lawrence
Nihilism was not to be rooted out by the removal of any particular set of men.
Rabbi and PriestMilton Goldsmith
A period of reaction has set in: Despotism and Nihilism meet face to face.
Rabbi and PriestMilton Goldsmith
All (p. 249) these years Alexander had battled with nihilism and revolution.
The Story of RussiaR. Van Bergen, M.A.
Nihilism is well named, for it means nothing and it ends in nothing.
Princess ZaraRoss Beeckman
nihilism
- a complete denial of all established authority and institutions
- philosophy an extreme form of scepticism that systematically rejects all values, belief in existence, the possibility of communication, etc
- a revolutionary doctrine of destruction for its own sake
- the practice or promulgation of terrorism
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Word Origin
C19: from Latin nihil nothing + -ism, on the model of German Nihilismus
Nihilism
- (in tsarist Russia) any of several revolutionary doctrines that upheld terrorism
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Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for nihilism
n.
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.
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
nihilism
(nī′ə-lĭz′əm, nē′-)- The belief that destruction of existing political or social institutions is necessary for future improvement.
- A delusion, experienced in some mental disorders, that the world or one's mind, body, or self does not exist.
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The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary
Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.
nihilism
[(neye-uh-liz-uhm, nee-uh-liz-uhm)]
An approach to philosophy that holds that human life is meaningless and that all religions, laws, moral codes, and political systems are thoroughly empty and false. The term is from the Latin nihil, meaning “nothing.”
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The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.