Five Types of Nihilism

Hi. There are five types of nihilism I think you should be familiar with.
They are: political, moral, epistemological, cosmic, and existential nihilism.
I'll summarize the five quickly here and say a little bit more about them in other videos.
First, political nihilism. Political nihilism is the conviction that the present social and political order is
so corrupt that it must be destroyed rather than being reformed or changed.
It will often issue in acts of revolutionary violence, assassination, and terrorism.
Moral nihilism is a family of views which denies the existence or the rationality of morals.
It would hold variously that one must live without moral principles or that there is
no non-arbitrary way of choosing between rival moral claims.
Epistemological nihilism holds that truth claims are entirely relative to individuals or to groups.
Or it might hold that the intelligibility of such truth claims
is limited by incommensurable conceptual schemes.
It will often produce a kind of practical skepticism and a denial of the possibility
of knowledge, as opposed to just opinion.
Cosmic nihilism denies that there’s any meaning to be found in the cosmos.
It can do this either absolutely, by saying there is no meaning in the universe at all,
or relative to us, by holding that the universe cannot support the kind of meaning-finding
activities that humans naturally engage in.
Existential nihilism holds that human existence is meaningless.
There is no reason to live but also no reason to die or to commit suicide.
Anyone who claims to find meaning in their life, says the existentialist nihilist, is
either deluded or lying, and in either case is failing to face up to the harsh reality
of human existence.
What each of these five types of nihilism has in common is the denial of some important
feature of human life.
The political nihilist denies the present social structure, and the views and institutions
that inform it.
The moral nihilist denies moral obligation and the objectivity of moral principles.
The (epistemological) nihilist denies the possibility of any kind of widely shared truth,
any truth that goes beyond the individual or the small social group.
The cosmic nihilist denies the intelligibility of the universe, conceiving of it as being
either indifferent to, or actively hostile to, human existence.
And the existentialist nihilist denies the meaning of human life from the inside, as it were.
So that's my quick summary of five different kinds of nihilism: political, moral, epistemological,
cosmic, and existential. I hope you found this helpful. Thanks for watching today; goodbye.