Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Evaluation, Language, Vitalism

Despite the significant role that etymological analysis, e. g. of the term 'good', serves in his 'revaluation of all values', Nietzsche seems to stop short of recognizing that Evaluation is fundamentally a linguistic performance.  So, a different revaluation might begin with drawing distinctions between, for any value V, 'X was V', 'X is V', and 'X would be V', i. e. between an evaluation of a past event, a timeless judgment, and the expression of a preference for some possible future action.  Now, from a Vitalistic perspective, to which he implicitly subscribes in his early study of the value of History "for life", only the third does not abstract from dynamic experience.  So, the paradigmatic case of a Vitalistic Revaluation of All Values that takes into account that Evaluation is a fundamentally linguistic performance, might be Evaluation as influencing potential conduct, a point of departure that precedes any distinction of 'Master' from 'Slave' evaluation.

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