Wordie: Nihilism: Comments

Comment by rolig, 9 months ago

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 23:43:17 +0000

Thanks, mollusque. I think it was Turgenev who first used it in the sense of a political philosophy; I am pretty sure that it was from his use of the word in his novel that it came into use among Russian anarchists (or their opponents) and from them, more generally, into European political polemics.

Comment by mollusque, 9 months ago

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 19:27:03 +0000

The word itself is older; OED2's first citation is from 1812. The destructive sense may well date from Turgenev.

Comment by rolig, 9 months ago

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 15:56:23 +0000

Coined, presumably, by Ivan Turgenev in his novel Fathers and Sons (1862).

Comment by OrbitalCombustion, about 1 year ago

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 19:04:58 +0000

The legacy of Nietzsche