Nihilism manifests itself in various contexts—for example, individual and collective, historical and psychological—and different expressions, for instance, ontological, epistemological, ethical, political, logical, theological. Its types are also variegated:
- incomplete,
- complete,
- extreme,
- consummate,
- ecstatic.
I've also heard of
reactive,
active, and
passive.
These latter three appear in Deleuze, when he claims that the "higher man" is just a means for reactive men to deify themselves:
The prophet is a prophet... representative of passive nihilism, prophet of the last man... The ugliest of men represents reactive nihilism: the reactive man has turned his ressentiment against God, he has put himself in the place of the God he has killed (Nietzsche and philosophy p155)
What does each mean?