40 Fun Facts About Nihilism

Nihilism takes its name from the Latin word nihil, also the root of annihilate, meaning what?

Nothing is the literal sense of nihil, so the word amounts to an ideology of negation. It emerged in 18th-century Germany, first as a literary term and only later as a philosophical one.

Which Ivan Turgenev novel about a young medical student made the word nihilism popular in Russia?

Fathers and Sons sets a brash young nihilist against the genteel older generation of his friend's family. Some Russian revolutionaries later took its hero as their role model.

Albert Camus made which boulder-pushing figure of Greek myth his emblem of life's pointless toil?

Sisyphus must shove his rock up a mountain forever, only to watch it roll back down each time. Camus's 1942 essay argues that such a fate calls for revolt rather than despair.

Which Coen brothers comedy has a bowling slacker called the Dude menaced by German nihilists?

The Big Lebowski has its nihilists demand ransom for a woman who had simply gone out of town. They post a severed toe as proof and later set fire to the Dude's car.

Which art movement from wartime Zurich voiced nihilism through nonsense and a urinal shown as art?

Dada emerged during the First World War as a rejection of established moral, social and artistic standards. Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, a readymade urinal, became one of its most iconic pieces.

Which Dostoevsky novel follows Raskolnikov, an ex-student who kills a pawnbroker to prove a theory?

Crime and Punishment has its hero argue that extraordinary men may commit crimes for the sake of higher goals. The murder brings him no greatness, only mental anguish and isolation.

Which Shakespeare character, as an army nears his castle, calls life an empty tale told by a fool?

Macbeth delivers the bleak soliloquy on learning that his wife has died. The speech has been read as a summary of the nihilist's outlook on life, and Macduff kills him soon afterwards.

In Everything Everywhere All at Once, nihilist Jobu Tupaki builds a black hole in the form of what?

A bagel with everything on it becomes a singularity that could destroy the multiverse, and Jobu hopes it will let her truly die. Evelyn turns back after her husband pleads for kindness.

Mereological nihilism denies composite objects, dissolving which ancient puzzle of replaced parts?

The Ship of Theseus asks whether a vessel is still the same once every timber has been swapped. If only particles exist and no ships at all, the question never gets started.

Which film noted for its nihilism stars Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden, a charismatic soap salesman?

Fight Club adapts Chuck Palahniuk's 1996 novel, with Edward Norton as the unnamed narrator who falls under Tyler's spell. Their Project Mayhem sets out to erase debt records with explosives.

In which 1882 Nietzsche book does a madman run through a marketplace announcing that God is dead?

The Gay Science takes its title from a Provençal phrase for the craft of writing poetry. Nietzsche repeated the famous pronouncement soon afterwards in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

In Nietzsche's parable about the death of God, what does the mocked madman smash on the ground?

A lantern is in his hand as he runs about crying that he is looking for God. When the crowd only laughs, he smashes it and decides that he has come too soon for them to understand.

In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche offers which ideal as the goal humanity should set for itself?

The Übermensch became Superman in a 1909 English translation that borrowed the word from a George Bernard Shaw play. Scholar Walter Kaufmann blamed that choice for confusion with the comic-book hero.

Which notion did Nietzsche first pose as a demon's challenge, then call the fundamental idea of Thus Spoke Zarathustra?

Eternal recurrence asks whether you could bear to relive your life, unchanged, innumerable times. In Nietzsche's 1882 thought experiment a demon puts the question in your loneliest hour.

Which Nietzsche phrase for humanity's main drive titles a book his sister compiled from his notes?

The will to power was assembled after his 1889 breakdown by Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche and his friend Peter Gast. He had named that drive as the real motive behind belief systems.

Nietzsche named his prophet Zarathustra after the founder of which ancient Persian religion?

Zoroastrianism traces itself to the Iranian reformer better known in the West as Zoroaster. Nietzsche's version is a hermit who spends ten years on a mountain with an eagle and a serpent.

In which Italian city did Nietzsche break down in 1889, reportedly after embracing a flogged horse?

Turin was one of the Italian cities where he spent his winters, and police found him causing a disturbance in its streets. He never recovered his mind and died in 1900, cared for by his mother and then his sister.

Which Nietzsche book holds his famous warning about fighting monsters and gazing into an abyss?

Beyond Good and Evil appeared in 1886 and is well known for that one often-quoted line. Its point is that whoever battles monsters risks turning into one.

Which German pessimist, an early influence on Nietzsche, saw the world as the work of a blind will?

Arthur Schopenhauer drew on Indian philosophy and advised renouncing desire instead of affirming life. Nietzsche first discovered his work in 1865.

Which thinker warned that a life of pure pleasure ends in nihilism and urged a leap of faith?

Søren Kierkegaard mapped out spheres of existence through which people look for meaning. The Danish writer judged the aesthetic one, given over to the senses, a road to emptiness.

Which tsar, who had freed Russia's serfs, was killed in 1881 by bombers widely labelled nihilists?

Alexander II had already survived several attempts on his life, including a bombing of the Winter Palace. He was carried back to that palace to die, twenty years after signing the emancipation edict there.

Which Russian radical wrote a novel in a St Petersburg prison cell as his reply to Ivan Turgenev?

Nikolay Chernyshevsky got permission to write his 1863 novel while held in the Peter and Paul Fortress, shortly before years in Siberia. Lenin was among the revolutionaries it impressed.

Which Dostoevsky novel attacking nihilism was inspired by a real murder inside a revolutionary cell?

Demons grew out of the killing of a Moscow student named Ivanov by the followers of a young agitator. Dostoevsky was horrified by the news and vowed to write a political novel about it.

Which Russian wrote the Catechism of a Revolutionary, holding that the ends justify any means?

Sergey Nechayev drew up the programme in 1869, calling for the merciless destruction of society and the state. He had won over older exiles in Geneva by posing as an escaped prisoner.

Which Russian revolutionary shot St Petersburg's governor in 1878, only to be acquitted by a jury?

Vera Zasulich acted after the governor had a political prisoner flogged for failing to remove his cap. Her acquittal by a sympathetic jury showed how unpopular the government had become.

Which Irish writer's first play was Vera; or, The Nihilists, a tragedy set in tsarist Russia?

Oscar Wilde saw a planned London staging cancelled, so the play opened in New York in 1883. It was withdrawn after a single week because it did not pay.

What secret tool, named after the Russian nihilists of the 1880s, helped them plot against the tsar?

A cipher bearing their name scrambled messages by hand, using a grid of letters known as a Polybius square. Soviet spy rings were still using improved versions of it during the Second World War.

Women in Russia's nihilist movement of the 1860s set themselves apart by doing what to their hair?

Cutting it short went with large plain dresses and blue-tinted glasses. The men, by contrast, let their hair grow bushy and dressed to look like unpolished workers.

Which German thinker brought nihilism into philosophy's vocabulary in a 1799 letter against Fichte?

Friedrich Jacobi used the word to brand any philosophy that, in his view, ended by denying existence and meaning. He saw it as the inevitable result of Enlightenment thought.

Which French writer tried to refuse a Nobel Prize and held that people must invent their own values?

Jean-Paul Sartre argued that humans have no inborn essence, so they give life meaning through the free choices they make. He was awarded the 1964 literature prize despite his attempt to turn it down.

Which Samuel Beckett play, first staged in Paris in 1953, is set beside a lone tree on a country road?

Waiting for Godot keeps Vladimir and Estragon expecting a man who never arrives. Beckett wrote it in French, and a 1998 National Theatre poll named it the 20th century's most significant English-language play.

Which Albert Camus novel follows Meursault, a man who shows no grief at his own mother's funeral?

The Stranger, also published in English as The Outsider, appeared in 1942. Weeks after the funeral its narrator kills an unnamed man in Algiers, and he tells the story in two parts.

Which Providence horror writer built his tales on cosmicism, a creed of human insignificance?

H. P. Lovecraft is best known for creating the Cthulhu Mythos. His outlook resembles nihilism, but it stresses how small humanity is more than it denies any greater purpose.

Which HBO drama cast Matthew McConaughey as Rust Cohle, a nihilistic homicide cop in Louisiana?

True Detective paired him with Woody Harrelson as his partner Marty Hart in a first season that aired in 2014. That season has been read as an examination of philosophical pessimism.

Which form of nihilism holds that human life as a whole has no objective meaning or higher purpose?

Existential nihilism goes beyond saying that some people fail to find meaning in their lives. It holds that every effort, achievement and sorrow is ultimately pointless.

Which approach of Jacques Derrida challenged the existence of absolute truth and stable meaning?

Deconstruction set out to expose the hidden assumptions and biases behind claims to fixed meaning. Derrida introduced most of its ideas in his 1967 book Of Grammatology.

Which German philosopher held that Nietzsche's bid to overcome nihilism only made it more complete?

Martin Heidegger saw nihilism as a movement running through Western thought since the ancient period. He turned to the early Presocratic philosophers to recover an understanding of being free of it.

Which Sicilian Greek sophist, dubbed the Nihilist, argued against existence itself in a lost work?

Gorgias went on to argue that even if something did exist it could not be understood, and if understood it could not be communicated. How far the label fits his philosophy is still disputed.

Which forerunner of nihilism wrote The Ego and Its Own under a pen name about his forehead?

Max Stirner wrote the 1844 book while supporting himself as a teacher. The most-reproduced portrait of him is a cartoon that Friedrich Engels drew from memory forty years later.

Which Adult Swim cartoon about a cynical scientist and his grandson dwells on human insignificance?

Rick and Morty sends the pair through an infinite number of realities by portal and flying saucer. The show plays cosmic horror and dread against everyday family drama.