A History of Nihilism in the Nineteenth Century: Confrontations with Nothingness

by Jon Stewart

Nihilism – the belief that life is meaningless – is frequently associated with twentieth-century movements such as existentialism, postmodernism and Dadaism, and thought to result from the shocking experiences of the two World Wars and the Holocaust. In his rich and expansive new book, Jon Stewart shows that nihilism's beginnings in fact go back much further to the first half of the nineteenth century. He argues that the true origin of modern nihilism was the rapid development of Enlightenment science, which established a secular worldview. This radically diminished the importance of human beings so that, in the vastness of space and time, individuals now seemed completely insignificant within the universe. The author's panoramic exploration of how nihilism developed – not only in philosophy, but also in religion, poetry and literature – shows what an urgent topic it was for thinkers of all kinds, and how it has continued powerfully to shape intellectual debates ever since.

Genres: Philosophy, History, European History

336 pages, Hardcover

Published March 30, 2023

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. This profile may contain books from multiple authors of this name.

Other authors publishing under this name are:

Jon Stewart, Philosopher
Jon Stewart, Comedian
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart, Director of Communications for Government Relations and Health Policy at Kaiser Permanente
Jon Stewart, Econometrics
Jon Stewart, Photographer

Reviews

[mohave]

There is a serious ontological issue in this book. Since the author didn't define the term "nihilism", it's not even clear what he's even talking about. In the introduction it seems that nihilism, relativism, atheism, existentialism and anarchism are all synonymous and he considered all of them as "problems". What?
He doesn't provide a good account of Nietzsche's idea of nihilism either.