Nietzsche's Transvaluation of Values and the Will to Power

The Eternal Return and the Affirmation of Life

Regarding the transvaluation of values, Nietzsche's thought is centered on the eternal return. His philosophy returns continually to the same subjects, which are ultimately reduced to one: the affirmation of life. Therefore, the revaluation of values is simply another perspective of this same principle.

Until now, mankind has valued everything that is opposed to life, drawing moral force from a sick and decadent spirit. There must be a reinvestment in value to affirm life once more. Only in this sense does Nietzsche call himself an immoralist, stating that we must recover our original innocence and exist beyond good and evil. We are invited to respond not only against reason but against traditional morality. Everything that has been called "moral" until now must be destroyed.

The Will to Power and the Origin of Value

According to Nietzsche, things in themselves are worthless; their value is an assessment—an act of man expressing his desires, his instincts, and fundamentally, his will to power. It is man who puts values on things; it is he who created the sense of things—a human sense. For this reason, he is called "man," i.e., the one who values. To rate is to set.

Therefore, if man is the creator of values, it is his will to power that serves as the criterion to judge and criticize. From this perspective, we see that all commonly accepted values belong to a degenerate humanity.

Master Morality vs. Slave Morality

The work against which Nietzsche directs his critique is the morality that posits the subjection and submission of the vital: the morality of slaves. The source of this morality is resentment toward life, specifically against the force and energy of the powerful. Unable to reach the fullness of life, men of a servile spirit revolted and established values that were merely expressions of weakness. To curb the strength of the powerful, they elevated pusillanimous living forms to the status of moral values.

The Morality of Lords and Transmutation

Facing the expression of slave morality, Nietzsche proposes the morality of lords—the aristocratic morality of the strong and powerful. Their values encompass everything that expresses arrogance, pride, and the noble, energetic spirit. This requires a complete transmutation of values.

The Denial of God and Creative Freedom

The denial of God is a necessary condition for asserting a creative life. The affirmation of God is the negation of the fullness of life, its work, and its support. Believing in truth as an absolute, existing outside of the self, means surrendering the capacity to create.