iOkay, my memory’s a little fuzzy here but I believe Nietzsche (in some sense of the word) delineated the different nihilisms. As I remember he said that there was religious nihilism, like Christianity, which imbues value into a world beyond this world, ie totally ignoring this world and embracing one which is, for all intentsive purposes, nonexistent.
Then there is active nihilism; Nietzsche would regard this as Dionysus relative to Apollo. Active nihilism is the ACT (not an all-encompassing ideology) of destroying values, usually on a temporary basis and usually fueled by the foundation of some other ideology. Most revolutions have a period of active nihilism where the values of the previous institution must become subject to iconoclasm to make way for the erection of new schematic structures.
Lasty, is complete nihilism. If one were to read Nietzsche or Sartre from the context in which they where written, that is a modern context, one immediately assumes history to be very progressive and unilinear; but as indicated my postmodernism, history is in fact multifaceted and in no fashion is it heading in a straight line. Therefore, Nietzsche’s prophetic ramblings sound, from a modern standpoint, to be the simple prediction of the fall of the Western, Judeo-Chistian, heirarchial system which is to be replaced by the ideals of the Ubermensche; ideals that ride on the will to power’s coattails. From this perspective, only two nihilisms can possibly exist, one of religion and one which offers no foundation in and of itself. Thus, existentialism is born to deny objectivity as active nihilism does, but then replaces such destruction with ‘personal freedoms’ and ‘choices’ much like religious nihilism. For the modern man’s mind, this works.
But from a postmodern perspective, where such a linear progression of events (which, might I add, individual’s such as Karl Marx were equally prophetic about) is somewhat irrelevant. We get a brand new concept of nihilism: complete nihilism. That is, Nietzsche’s Ubermensche isn’t the replacer of ideals in place of newer, ‘better’ ones, but rather he signifies the point at which humanity truly sees the world from all angles. He ceases the dialectic cycling of theses, antitheses, and syntheses. He becomes, in a quasi-Buddhistic sense, enlightened. Instead of become Dionysian temporarily to restore Apollonian order, the Ubermensche accepts and embraces foundationlessness and chaos, drowning himself in Dionysus’ wine.
This is why I think (philosophical) Buddhism and Taoism are essentially varying forms of nihilism (postmodern nihilism, not modern nihilism). It is the eternal regression of affirmations; as soon as you hit one level of acceptance, there is constantly a subsequent level of subjective affirmations until the day we die; when we become inanimate objects. Instead of simply coping with infinity like existentialism and religion, where they intentionally (existentialism) or inadvertantly (religion) uphold spheres of finiteness for out monkey brains to comprehend, nihilism and Buddhist philosophy (IMO) try to BECOME infinity (note: to try is an affirmation in and of itself, causing an obvious dilemma for the nihilist, which is up to the nihilist to always accept but never to come to terms with).
The fallacy for non-nihilists and uninformed self-attirbuted nihilists is that they make the, very modern, assumption that nihilism makes some sort of ‘conclusion’ or ‘framework’ bywhich to build something on. Nihilism, much like Buddhism, is rather an ever-evolving, ever-reducing path (<<< bad terminology) where one must never expect for conclusions to be asserted. To is infinite apathy. To want without wanting. To breathe without breathing. To regress without regressing.