Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
I: Criticism of Morality
§256 Under “Morality“ I understand a system of valuations which is in relation with the conditions of a creature’s life.
This is such a short and reasonable-sounding note that it’s easy to overlook that Nietzsche is making here an epochal break with the whole of prior Western thought. Morality, he is saying, is not something pre-existing and ‘out there,’ as the Abrahamic faiths have taught for more than 3000-years (e.g., “The Invisible Wizard says so.”), but something located in the facts of life right here. This was the subject of one of his most famous, widely-read books, The Genealogy of Morality.
