What is Nihilism:
As nihilism is called the current of philosophical thought that denies all beliefs, principles or dogmas, whether of a religious, political or social nature. The word, as such, comes from Latin nihilwhich means ‘nothing’, and is composed with the suffix -ismwhich means ‘doctrine’ or ‘system’.
Nihilism maintains that existence is meaningless, and that there is, as such, no superior or supernatural entity that gives it meaning, objective or purpose in itself. There is, therefore, no higher meaning for life, since it lacks a verifiable explanation.
In this sense, nihilism contains a profound criticism of the values, customs and beliefs on which our culture is built, to the extent that these participate in the meaning of life denied by this philosophical current.
On the contrary, nihilism postulates the idea of an existence conceived as a constant evolution of objective history, in which there is no higher purpose.
Thus, nihilism is favorable to the idea of an existence that does not simply revolve around a certain higher meaning of things, but rather remains open to the multiple possibilities of existence.
As such, antecedents of nihilistic thought can be traced back to Ancient Greece, in which school of cynics founded by Antisthenes in the 4th century BC. of C., as well as in the doctrine of skepticism.
In the 19th century, Russian intellectuals took the concept of nihilism as a reaction to romanticism and certain religious, metaphysical and idealist conceptions prevailing in their time. However, it would be the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who would provide nihilism with a formal articulation in the field of philosophical thought.
At the end of the 20th century, postmodernism took shape, taking the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche with a current perspective defined as modern nihilism.
See also:
Active and passive nihilism
Friedrich Nietzsche proposed that in nihilism there were two opposing attitudes toward accepting the meaninglessness of existence: active and passive nihilism.
He active nihilismalso called positive, is one that proposes the destruction of all the traditional values that gave meaning to existence, mainly the belief in God, to replace them with others that inaugurate a new moment in history, for the emergence of a new morality. and a new man.
He passive nihilism or negative, on the contrary, is that which arises as a consequence of the death of God and the crisis of meaning that it generates.
In this sense, passive nihilism manifests itself with attitudes such as hopelessness, inaction and renunciation of the desire to live, since life, which until then had a supernatural entity, external to it, which gave it meaning, is then unsustainable. , empty and meaningless.
See also Superman.