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 the masculine mystique is pulling boys and men out into the world to growl manly noises at one another, the only power with a stronger pull on the male psyche is maternally induced guilt. The guilt is quite necessary for our moral development, but it is often uncomfortable.”
—Frank Pittman (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.”
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