Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Existential nihilism is the philosophical theory that life has no objective meaning or purpose. [1] The inherent meaninglessness of life is largely explored in the philosophical school of existentialism, where one can potentially create their own subjective "meaning" or "purpose".
In other words, a single person's life is, ultimately, not important or worthwhile in itself, but is good only as a means to the success of society as a whole. Some elements of Confucianism are an example of this, encouraging the view that people ought to conform as individuals to demands of a peaceful and ordered society.
The first English use of the expression "meaning of life" appears in Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus (1833–1834), book II chapter IX, "The Everlasting Yea". [1]Our Life is compassed round with Necessity; yet is the meaning of Life itself no other than Freedom, than Voluntary Force: thus have we a warfare; in the beginning, especially, a hard-fought battle.
Existentialism is a family of philosophical views and inquiry that study existence from the individual's perspective and explore the struggle to lead authentic lives despite the apparent absurdity or incomprehensibility of the universe.
Moral nihilism (also called ethical nihilism) is the meta-ethical view that nothing is morally right or morally wrong and that morality does not exist. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] Moral nihilism is distinct from moral relativism , which allows for actions to be wrong relative to a particular culture or individual.
In metaphilosophy and ethics, metaethics is the study of the nature, scope, ground, and meaning of moral judgment, ethical belief, or values.It is one of the three branches of ethics generally studied by philosophers, the others being normative ethics (questions of how one ought to be and act) and applied ethics (practical questions of right behavior in given, usually contentious, situations).
The term naturalistic fallacy is sometimes used to label the problematic inference of an ought from an is (the is–ought problem). [3] Michael Ridge relevantly elaborates that "[t]he intuitive idea is that evaluative conclusions require at least one evaluative premise—purely factual premises about the naturalistic features of things do not entail or even support evaluative conclusions."
The distinction of evil from 'bad' is complex. Evil is more than simply 'negative' or 'bad' (i.e. undesired or inhibiting good) as evil is on its own, and without reference to any other event, morally incorrect. The validity of 'moral evil' as a term, therefore, rests on the validity of morals in ethics.