Thanks to counterorder.com for the image.

Nihilism: The Moral System that Lacks Morals and Rejects the System

Nihilism is a belief that all values are baseless and absolute knowledge is impossible. The word "nihilism" comes from the Latin word "nihil," which means "nothing." The term was first known to be used by Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, a German philosopher, who used it to characterize rationalism saying that all rationalism eventually reduced to nihilsim and should be avoided. Nihilism was adopted in early 19th century Russia in association with rejection of the government and authority among the lower class. The concept of nihilism was expanded in the late 19th century by the German-Polish philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche(seen at right). Nietzsche claimed that there is no structure and order in the world except what we give it. Some later philosophers have expanded this idea to say that life is completely meaningless. Historians have even used this view of the world to show collapses in ancient civilizations. (see the antifoundationalism section) Today, nihilsim is a popular philosophical position, especially among the "educated," and people worldwide have adopted its moral and ethical teaching.

Moral and ethical nihilism are fairly basic. They can be considered extreme forms of skepticism, which maintains that ethical claims are either outrightly false or else they cannot be sufficiently justified, and relativism, which maintains that morals are subjective to each society, culture, and person. In other words, every individual decides for themselves what is right and wrong, but what is right for them might not be for someone else, and that is fine. Moral and ethical nihilism can also be considered as the rejection of all values and authority. Nihilism claims that morals are unjustified and ungrounded because absolute knowledge and truth are impossible. Since there are no truths and no knowledge, there is no premise to base moral claims on. Morality itself actually does not even exist because it is baseless, unable to be supported by any evidence because evidence does not exist.

If our world followed the belief of moral and ethical nihilism, there would be no laws. People would be able to do whatever they wanted to because they think it is right. If I wanted to kill a person I could, even if others said it was wrong, but what I did could not be called right either. This is because all bases of right and wrong are gone, left up to each individual. In a more realistic sense for us today, moral nihilism applied to a party might go something like this:

Person 1: "Hey, how you doin'?" Person 2: "I think I am fine, but I do not know if fine to me is fine to you, but to me I'm fine." P1: "Okay. That's cool with me, but I don't know if that's cool to you because my view of cool is probably different from your view of cool." P2: "Yea. So.....anyway, ya wanna beer." P1: "No, I don't think drinking is right for me now." P2: "Oh, well, it is for me." (As he pounds the first can of a twelve pack) P1: "I think I'm just gonna go and see what the girls are doin' in the back. Maybe I'll get some a** tonight." P2: "How can you do that?!? You don't drink but will have sex with random girls? That doesn't even make sense. It isn't right." P1: "To you it might not be right, but to me herre and now, it is. See ya, if the girls will let me leave."

Thanks to dol2day.de for the image. Thanks to yosemite-sam.net for the image.

This could quite possibly, with a few changes, be a conversation at a party. The second person has chosen to drink the night away, while person one refuses alcohol and instead goes on a quest to get laid. Person two is confused by person one's morals and cannot see how they can be right. HE DOES NOT HAVE TO. That is the major point of Moral Nihilsim (an oxymoron to its fullest extent). What is right to person two might not be right to person one, but neither are incorrect because they are choosing individual what is best for themselves at that point in time.