NIHILISM, in Russian history, an intellectual movement that flourished during the 1860’s. Russian nihilism (from Latin nihil, meaning “nothing”) was primarily a rejection of tradition and authoritarianism in favor of rationalism and individualism. The nihilist as a type of Russian intellectual was presented to the general reading public in Ivan Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons, published in 1862. The hero of the book, Bazarov, is a nihilist, a man who defers to no authority and accepts nothing on faith.

虚无主义，在俄罗斯的历史中，蓬勃发展于19世纪60年代的一场知识分子运动。俄罗斯的虚无主义（来自拉丁语虚无，意思是“什么都没有”）主要是拒绝传统和权威主义，赞同理性主义和个人主义。作为俄罗斯知识分子一种类型的虚无主义者在1862出版的伊万·屠格涅夫的小说《父与子》中出现在公众面前。该书的男主角巴扎罗夫就是一位虚无主义者，一位不遵从权威，不接受任何信仰的人。

The term nihilist was frequently used in a derogatory sense, whereas the nihilists more frequently referred to themselves as “thinking realists” or “new men.” With at least as much fervor as they opposed authoritarianism in politics, religion, and morals, the nihilists rejected what they regarded as the sentimental and romantic idealism of the preceding generation of intellectuals.

虚无主义者这个术语经常被用于贬义，然而虚无主义者更经常地将他们自己称为“有思考力的现实主义者”或“新人”。至少与他们在政治、宗教和道德方面反对的权威主义一样热情，虚无主义者拒绝了他们认为的前一代知识分子的多愁善感和浪漫的理想主义。

Philosophically they were ardent materialists, convinced that reason and science were sufficient guides in life. They scorned as valueless any art or literature that was not dedicated to social or revolutionary aims.

在哲学上，他们是热切的唯物主义者，确信理性和科学是生活的充分指南。他们鄙视任何非致力于社会或革命目标的无价值的艺术和文学。

Their thinking was shaped in part by Nikolai G. Chernyshevsky’s book What Is to Be Done? (1863) and by the writings of Nikolai A. Dobrolyubov. The leading exponent of nihilism was Dmitri Pisarev, who advocated equality of the sexes, denied the claims of parental authority, and regarded art as a largely futile diversion from the study of the natural sciences. He contended that only through the natural sciences could the cultured minority learn how to solve the social and political problems of the day.

他们的思想在某种程度上成形于尼古拉·G. 车尔尼雪夫斯基的著作《该怎么办？》（1863年）和尼古拉·A. 杜勃罗留波夫的作品。虚无主义的主要倡导者是德米特里·皮萨列夫，他拥护性别平等，拒绝亲权的要求，并将艺术在很大程度上视为一种来自自然科学研究的徒劳消遣。他主张，只有通过自然科学，有教养的少数人才能学会如何解决当今的社会和政治问题。

By the end of the 1860’s, nihilism as an intellectual movement had begun to fade, though some of its ideas found new life among the agrarian reformer populists (narodniki) of the 1870’s.

到19世纪60年代末，虚无主义作为一种知识分子运动已经开始逐渐消失，虽然它的一些理念在19世纪70年代的土地改革的民粹主义者（俄国民粹派）中找到了新生命。

                                      2024年10月7日译

（译者注：该词条位列《大美百科全书》1985年版，第20卷，第344页）