Abstract
The article analyses the accusation brought against Johann Gottlieb Fichte who has allegedly formulated a nihilistic philosophy. This accusation has been formulated in an open letter by Friedrich Jacobi in 1799.
With this, nihilism became, long before made famous by Nietzsche, a topic of philosophical disputations and broader cultural discussions focusing on the nature of modern philosophy. The author examines the criticism of this concept on the background of Jacobi's philosophy: Jacobi emphasizes the importance of sentiments in experiencing the world and others, and thus, a form of a sentiment (and the cultivation thereof) is considered a bulwark against nihilism.
The author then turns to the treatment of nihilism in Dostoyevsky's work. Here again, we meet a comparably strong emphasis on emotions, these being considered a source of an argumentative strategy against so called nihilistic philosophies.
In the last part of the text, the author turns to contemporary phenomena, primarily to acts of terrorism that are structurally analogous primarily to the Russian strand of nihilism.