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:
“When our kids are young, many of us rush out to buy a cute little baby book to record the meaningful events of our young child’s life...But I’ve often thought there should be a second book, one with room to record the moral milestones of our child’s lives. There might be space to record dates she first shared or showed compassion or befriended a new student or thought of sending Grandma a get-well card or told the truth despite its cost.”
—Fred G. Gosman (20th century)
“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)