Word.ws English Dictionary

impossibilism

impossibilism noun: a belief in unrealizable or impractical policies.

Noun

impossibilism (uncountable)

  1. A belief in unrealizable or impractical policies.
  2. (Marxism) A socialist doctrine that stresses the limited value of political, economic, and social reforms within a capitalist economy, arguing that the pursuit of such reforms strengthens support for the existing system.
  3. The view that free will does not exist and is simply impossible.
    • In the next section I examine five fatalist arguments for impossibilism and show that they all fail, and some for reasons more subtle than is usually thought.2013, Kadri Vihvelin, Causes, Laws, and Free Will: Why Determinism Doesn't Matter, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 35

Origin of impossibilism

From impossible + -ism.

Questions about impossibilism

What does impossibilism mean?
Impossibilism means a belief in unrealizable or impractical policies.
What part of speech is impossibilism?
Impossibilism is a noun.

Words near impossibilism in the dictionary

  1. imposition
  2. impositional
  3. impositions
  4. impositive
  5. impositives
  6. impossibilism
  7. impossibilist
  8. impossibilists
  9. impossibilities
  10. impossibility
  11. impossible

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: impossibilism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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