Nihilism
Etymology
From Latin "nihil," "nothing." The word was popularized by Ivan Turgenev’s 1862 novel “Fathers and Sons,” describing a young generation that rejected all inherited authority. Friedrich Nietzsche then made it central to philosophy in the late 1800s — not as something he endorsed, but as a crisis he predicted would follow the collapse of religious belief, “the death of God.”
noun · /NY-uh-liz-um/
The belief that life, morality, or knowledge has no inherent meaning, value, or foundation.
What it names
A name for the vertigo of concluding that nothing ultimately matters — and for the cultural mood that follows when old certainties collapse and nothing replaces them.
Example
His cheerful nihilism was almost enviable: if nothing means anything, he reasoned, why not enjoy the ride?
Related idea
Absurdism starts from the same void but refuses despair — where nihilism concludes nothing matters, absurdism says live fully anyway, without pretending the universe supplies meaning.