Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
II: Criticism of Morality§260 “To will“ is to will an object. But “object”, as an idea, involves a valuation. Whence do valuations originate? Is a permanent norm, “pleasant or painful”, their basis?
But in an incalculable number of cases we first of all make a thing painful, by investing it with a valuation.
The compass of moral valuations: they play a part in almost every mental impression. To us the world is coloured by them.
We have imagined the purpose and value of all things: owing to this we possess an enormous fund of latent power but the study of comparative values teaches us that values which were actually opposed to each other have been held in high esteem and that there have been many tables of laws (they could not, therefore, have been worth anything per se).
The analysis of individual tables of laws revealed the fact that they were framed (often very badly) as the conditions of existence for limited groups of people, to ensure their maintenance.
Upon examining modern men, we found that there are a large number of very different values to hand and that they no longer contain any creative power; the fundamental principle: “the condition of existence” is now quite divorced from the moral values. It is much more superfluous and not nearly so painful. It becomes an arbitrary matter. Chaos.
Who creates the goal which stands above mankind and above the individual? Formerly morality was a preservative measure: but nobody wants to preserve any longer, there is nothing to preserve. Thus we are reduced to an experimental morality each must postulate a goal for himself.