Nietzsche and Revaluation

The primary innovation of Nietzsche's 'revaluation of all values' is not the new results that it produces. Rather, his act of evaluation is not a repetition of some previous procedure, but is itself unprecedented. In the given Moral tradition, values are objects of some cognition, e. g. the idea of the Good, because, starting with Zoroaster, Morality is ontologized, so values are discoverable self-subsistent entities. Thenceforth, people and actions can be evaluated on the basis of those ideals, and, even if the process of a specific evaluation is a posteriori, its result is still the discovery of an assessment that is entailed a priori. In contrast, Nietzsche creates a value system--he posits that Life is the highest value, and that Life is Will to Power, so Power is his created criterion of evaluation. But, he is not merely proposing that creating an evaluative criterion is an alternative to discovering one that is ontologically self-subsistent. For, his subversion of the tradition involves the diagnosis that all presumed objective ideals are nothing but the product of an original creative positing to begin with, whether or not their authors recognize or care to acknowledge this paternity. Furthermore, this critique applies similarly to subsequent, usually 'phenomenological' treatments of values, such as Moore's, Heidegger's, and Scheler's--the apparent objectivity of values in consciousness, in such theories, is only a product of a prior objectification, on Nietzsche's analysis.