Moral nihilism (also known as ethical nihilism or amoralism) is the meta-ethical view that nothing is intrinsically moral or immoral. For example, a moral nihilist would say that killing someone, for whatever reason, is neither inherently right nor inherently wrong. Moral nihilists consider morality to be constructed, a complex set of rules and recommendations that may give a psychological, social, or economical advantage to its adherents, but is otherwise without universal or even relative truth in any sense.
Moral nihilism is distinct from moral relativism, which does allow for moral statements to be true or false in a non-objective sense, but does not assign any static truth-values to moral statements, and of course moral universalism, which holds moral statements to be objectively true or false. Insofar as only true statements can be known, moral nihilism implies moral skepticism.
Read more about Moral Nihilism: Forms of Moral Nihilism, Moral Nihilists in History, Criticisms
Famous quotes containing the words moral and/or nihilism:
““Obedience” and “law”Mthat is what one hears in all moral sentiments. But “caprice” and “freedom” might yet be the last sound that morality makes in the end.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Nihilism: any aim is lacking, any answer to the question “why” is lacking. What does nihilism mean?—that the supreme values devaluate themselves.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)