Moral nihilism

Moral nihilism is the philosophyor ideologythat there are no such things as right, wrong, good, or evil. It contends that moral statements are neither true nor false. It is the diametric opposite of moral absolutismand also distinguished from moral relativism. Machiavelliis sometimes presented as a model of moral nihilism, but that is questionable. His book The Princewas silent on moral matters, which shocked a European tradition that throughout the Middle Ages had inculcated moral lessons (about the divine right of kings, etc.) in its political philosophies. But silence isn't tantamount to nihilism. Machiavelli could have acknowledged moral values and even their having an essentially motivating character, as moral internalistsaffirm, while judging that the Prince must override moral reasons in favor of power-maintaining reasons of State. This might have been a mistake -- perhaps morality must always trump other considerations, even in politics. But it's not quite the mistake that moral nihilism makes. Similarly, nihilism should not be equated with emotivism. The latter is a doctrine about the meaning or function of moral language, and as such it is compatible with acknowledgement of moral value: "There are moral truths, but it is not the function of moral discourse to refer to such truths; its function rather is to express feelings of approval or disapproval, to recommend similar feelings to others, and so forth." This is an awkward position, but it is not incoherent. Moral nihilism's denial of moral value is also distinct from moral skepticism'squestioning it, just as atheismis different from agnosticism. Closer to being a poster boy for moral nihilism is Thrasymachusin Plato's Republic, but he can be interpreted as offering a revisionary account of justice (Justice is the interest of the stronger), in which case he is simply stripping away some illusions from morality, revealing its essence. Thrasymachus the moral nihilist says rather: "What Socrates and ordinary folk call justice is really nothing but the interest of the stronger." On this interpretation justice is totally an illusion, not salvageable by a revisionary account. (Compare the parallel distinction between reductive materialismand eliminative materialism.)

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It uses material from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral+nihilism Wikipedia article Moral nihilism.