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Nihilism is a family of views that reject or negate certain aspects of existence. [21] Different forms of nihilism deny different features of reality. For example, existential nihilism denies that life has a higher meaning and moral nihilism rejects the existence of moral phenomena.
One such reaction to the loss of meaning is what Nietzsche called passive nihilism, which he recognised in the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer's doctrine—which Nietzsche also referred to as Western Buddhism—advocates separating oneself from will and desires to reduce suffering.
Friedrich Nietzsche, in circa 1875. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) developed his philosophy during the late 19th century. He owed the awakening of his philosophical interest to reading Arthur Schopenhauer's Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (The World as Will and Representation, 1819, revised 1844) and said that Schopenhauer was one of the few thinkers that he respected, dedicating to him ...
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".
The last man, Nietzsche predicted, would be one response to the problem of nihilism. But the full implications of the death of God had yet to unfold: "The event itself is far too great, too distant, too remote from the multitude's capacity for comprehension even for the tidings of it to be thought of as having arrived as yet."
This leads to what Nietzsche calls "nihilism", where the previous foundations of meaning are exposed as baseless, leaving individuals in a state of existential crisis. [17] However, Nietzsche does not view the Void purely negatively. Instead, he sees it as an opportunity for the Übermensch (lit. 'Overman') to create new values and meanings.
Nietzsche found in classical Athenian tragedy an art form that transcended the pessimism and nihilism of a fundamentally meaningless world. Originally educated as a philologist, Nietzsche discusses the history of the tragic form and introduces an intellectual dichotomy between the Dionysian and the Apollonian (very loosely: reality as disordered and undifferentiated by forms versus reality as ...
Nietzsche thinks his notion of the will to power is far more useful than Schopenhauer's will to live for explaining various events, especially human behavior—for example, Nietzsche uses the will to power to explain both ascetic life-denying impulses and strong life-affirming impulses as well as both master and slave morality.