The passive nihilist values morality as a means to an end, not as an end in itself. Because the desire to belong and to be led outweighs the desire to have moral certainty, the passive nihilist cares only about the sense of direction and the sense of community that can come from accepting a moral system.
An active nihilist is someone who, when confronted with the exact same realization, rejoices at the freedom that it gives her. If there were a specific meaning to human life, then each of us would be bound to follow it.
Based on this passage one can see that the first three types of nihilism; moral, epistemological, and cosmic, each negate meaning from an important area of life where human beings have traditionally searched for it.
Passive and active nihilism, the former of which is also equated to philosophical pessimism, refer to two approaches to nihilist thought; passive nihilism sees nihility as an end in itself, whereas active nihilism attempts to surpass it.
While these are not the same, there are some overlapping ego-centric ideologies. Nihilism rejects the idea of God, embraces the meaninglessness of life, and rejects moral values. Narcissists often reject God since they perceive themselves as entitled humans with superhuman God-like powers.
Existential depression is rooted in nihilism, both emotional and imma- ture that can particularly occur in adolescents at a developmental stage who are seeking meaning in their lives.
According to Nietzsche, we can then become active nihilists and reject the values given to us by others in order to erect values of our own. Or we can become passive nihilists and continue to believe in traditional values, despite having doubts about the true value of those values.
And in addition to that, the nihilist is viewed as lazy and sad. They are lazy because they never pursue anything, which is, to them, a consequence of lacking a clear purpose in life. Sad because the nihilist, being so ridden of values and purpose, does not engage in the world around them.
The optimistic nihilist looks at a world lacking meaning and purpose and sees the opportunity to create their own. Optimistic nihilism can be an incredibly empowering belief. In embracing it, you have the power to change your experience from a negative one to a positive one.
Nihilists can have sympathy, empathy, and antipathy, but they cannot have apathy. Not caring is not the same thing as caring about nothing. The apathetic individual feels nothing. But the nihilist has feelings.
For Camus, the entire purpose of Existential philosophy is to overcome absurdity, or, more accurately, for man to triumph over the absurdity of existence. So Existentialism is the opposite of nihilism: the nihilist says "There is no god, no heaven or hell, so screw it: there can be no right or wrong.
Among philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche is most often associated with nihilism.
Nihilism means rejecting objective truth, moral values, and meaning in life. It is the belief that nothing has any inherent meaning or purpose. Nihilists do not believe in God and think life is meaningless. They also think that humans are animals and that we cannot know anything.
If you're nihilistic, you don't believe in anything — not religion, a moral code, love. Being nihilistic is also closely related to the political philosophy of anarchism, a belief that all social structures need to be destroyed before a new, better society can be developed.
To put it simply: Hedonic Nihilism is the belief that because there is no inherent value in living a good life, the only way I should live is to maximise my own sensational pleasure. It doesn't make sense to live "morally" because morality isn't tangibly objective.
Nihilism has existed in one form or another for hundreds of years, but is usually associated with Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th century German philosopher (and pessimist of choice for high school kids with undercuts) who proposed that existence is meaningless, moral codes worthless, and God is dead.
Rather than seeking to provide some account of what morality might actually be, moral nihilists reject the concept of morality entirely. Moral nihilists think there is no credible basis on which to think one's behaviour is guided by moral considerations.
Nihilism and self-righteousness are similar in that they are destructive, but they are opposed in the methods and purposes of their destructiveness. Between the self-righteous and the rest of society there arises a war of beliefs. However, such wars are typically short-lived if they even take place at all.
In The Will to Power, Buddhism is described as passively nihilistic with the purpose of acting as a temporary salve for those suffering (1968, 18).
Nietzsche recognized passive nihilism in the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer and in Buddhism. (Life is an “unprofitable episode,” in Schopenhauer's words.) It involves turning away from life and rejecting all the values of this world.
The paradox of nihilism is a family of paradoxes regarding the philosophical implications of nihilism, particularly situations contesting nihilist perspectives on the nature and extent of subjectivity within a nihilist framework. There are a number of variations of this paradox.
The most classic figure of nihilism is the statement that everything is devalued, de-symbolised and untenable in the face of death. It is an equalisation of the totality of everything that could be valued, faced with the radical ontological finitude that death represents.
Because nihilistic intellectualization is often colored by its sister-strategies of anger or depression, it is often aggressive, hostile, cynical, or pessimistic; whereas eternalistic justifications are typically cloying, simpering, naïve, and Pollyanna-ish.