Transvaluation

Abstract

If I was right in the last chapter, there is a tight symmetry in Nietzsche’s thinking about God and value. If there is no God, we create our values; if we create our values, there is no God. It is a corollary of these Nietzschean propositions that, if there is a God, we do not create our values. For Nietzsche, if there were a God, then we would not be the creators of our values, for God and only God would be the source of value. Nietzsche, however, is clear that there is no God and that our values are just our human creation. Without that human creation we would have no values: we would have no moral values and our lives would have no value or meaning. For Nietzsche, as I have suggested, it is indeed in our power to create values, and this in itself, for Nietzsche, shows that there is no God. Nietzsche, let us observe, is not saying that we human beings ought to create our values. If this were the Nietzschean point it would allow that we might have failed to do what we ought to do — and this would allow that our existing values might not be our own creation. Rather, for him, our creation is the only source of values.¹