In reducing ideas to "memes" that propagate by various kinds of "misfiring," Dawkins is, willy-nilly, courting what some have called Darwinian nihilism.

It is not much of a stretch to define Leopardi as the father of what would eventually come to be called nihilism.

Lack of faith in objective values may lead to a paralysis of the will, an inability to prefer anything over anything else; this is what Nietzsche sometimes called nihilism.

My point is that all these different outfits share a growing,common interest in what I can only call nihilism, and I don't think there's much doubt it stems from Anu's input.

Although the variety of opinion may not have easily fitted into the safely respectable mainstream politics the authors prefer, this can hardly be called true nihilism.

But would I be doing more than playing with words which sound agreeable to me, 'dignity', 'freedom', 'responsibility', to describe what could still just as well be called nihilism?

One such reaction to the loss of meaning is what Nietzsche calls 'passive nihilism', which he recognises in the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer.

Henry Flynt's work devolves from what he calls cognitive nihilism; a concept he developed and first announced in the 1960 and 1961 drafts of a paper called Philosophy Proper.

He is perhaps most famous for his account of nihilism (or what is called partial mereological nihilism), according to which, chairs and trees and things like that do not exist.

The position is called moral nihilism and can lead to amoralism, if nonrational reasons for ultimate goals are dismissed.