1
The value of our values must be questioned
CoreOn the Genealogy of Morals Preface, §6
States the task directly: the value of our values must itself be questioned.
Published 1887
Book guide and reading edition →Back to all themes
Revaluation of Values and Philosophizing with a Hammer
Revaluation is the broadest name for Nietzsche’s mature project. It begins critically by sounding out idols, moral certainties, and truth-claims to see what sustains them. But it is not merely destructive: if values are historical creations, then they can also be ranked, tested, and recreated. This theme gathers Nietzsche as diagnostician, genealogist, and future legislator.
Edited by Bob Smith
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2
Truth as an old seduction
CoreBeyond Good and Evil Preface
Opens the critique by treating philosophical truth-claims as moral seductions.
Published 1886
Book guide and reading edition →3
The collapse of the true world
CoreTwilight of the Idols How the 'True World' Finally Became a Fable
A model hammer-piece: a whole metaphysical structure is sounded out and dissolved.
Published 1889 · Written 1888; first published 1889.
Book guide and reading edition →4
Priestly revaluation
CoreThe Antichrist §24
Shows revaluation historically, as priestly reversal of noble values.
Published 1895 · Written 1888; first published 1895.
Book guide and reading edition →5
Peoples create values
CoreThus Spoke Zarathustra On the Thousand and One Goals
If peoples create values, then value-creation becomes a human and historical act.
Published 1883–1885 · Parts I–III published 1883–1884; Part IV privately printed 1885 and publicly issued 1892.
Book guide and reading edition →6
Philosophers as commanders and legislators
CoreBeyond Good and Evil §211
Transforms critique into a positive task of future legislation.
Published 1886
Book guide and reading edition →The Will to Power
Notebook cross-references.
These related sections come from the posthumous compilation and should be read as Nachlass material beside the finished works above.
Open the work guideNihilism and the loss of the why
Nietzsche compresses nihilism into the collapse of inherited aims: the old highest values no longer answer the question of purpose.
The decline of cosmological values
Nietzsche analyzes how goal, unity, and true world lose their authority, leaving becoming without a guaranteed moral destination.
The crisis after one interpretation collapses
Nietzsche explains nihilism as the shock produced when a single dominant interpretation of suffering and existence loses authority.
Evaluation as interpretation
Moral tables are treated as interpretations rooted in life, drives, and physiological conditions rather than as neutral moral facts.
Evaluation from a definite perspective
Every evaluation is situated in a perspective of preservation, culture, community, faith, or type, rather than arising from nowhere.
Morality as herd will to power
The note asks whose will to power speaks through morality and answers by tracing moral domination to herd, suffering, and mediocre instincts.
Fundamental innovations
Nietzsche sketches a replacement vocabulary: naturalistic values, forms of domination, a perspective theory of affects, and recurrence as a selective test.
Art as countermovement
After naming religion, morality, and philosophy as forms of decadence, Nietzsche sets art against them as a counterforce.
Order of rank as order of power
The revaluation of values is connected to rank, danger, discipline, and the question of what can sustain higher forms of life.
The new path to a Yes
Nietzsche describes experimental philosophy as passing through nihilism toward Dionysian affirmation of the world without subtraction or exception.
Recurrence and the revaluation of values
The thought of recurrence is framed as the hardest idea, one that requires new values capable of affirming uncertainty, becoming, and power.
Developmental Arc
How the problem changes.
Historical Suspicion
Early and middle Nietzsche learns to treat moral and intellectual ideals as historically made rather than eternally given.
Double prehistory of good and evilHuman, All Too Human §45
Origins of knowledgeThe Gay Science §110
Genealogical Critique
The Genealogy and Beyond Good and Evil give revaluation a method: trace values to their creators, drives, and uses.
Truth as an old seductionBeyond Good and Evil Preface
Philosophers as commanders and legislatorsBeyond Good and Evil §211
How far the will to truth still seduces usThe Gay Science §344
The value of our values must be questionedOn the Genealogy of Morals Preface, §6
Hammer and Counter-Valuation
Late Nietzsche openly dismantles idols and proposes stronger, more life-affirming criteria of value.
The collapse of the true worldTwilight of the Idols How the 'True World' Finally Became a Fable
Priestly revaluationThe Antichrist §24
What is good? what is bad?The Antichrist §2
Concept Net
Nearby names and related themes.
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