NIETZSCHE'S WORD: "GOD IS DEAD"

Power, no. 14, from 1887): " Values and their alteration stand in relation to the growth in power of the 011e that sets values. "

With this it becomes clear: values are the conditions, posited by the will to power itself, of the will to power itself. It is not until the will to power comes to light as the fundamental trait of all that is real, i.e., only when it becomes true and is accordingly conceived as the reality of all that is real, that we sec where values originate from and by what means all value-estimation is supported and directed. The principle of dispensing values has now been discerned. The dispensation of values can be accomplished in the future "in principle," i.e., on the basis of being as the ground of beings.

This is why the will to power, as this principle that has been discerned and therefore willed, is at the same time the principle of a new dispensation of value — new because it is now achieved for the first time knowingly, in the knowledge of its principle. The dispensation of value is new because it itself makes its principle secure and at the same time holds fast to this securement as a value established on the basis of its principle. As the principle of the new dispensation of value, however, the will to power is also (in relation to the former values) the principle of the revaluation of all former values. Yet because the hitherto highest values ruled the sensory from the height of the supersensory, and because metaphysic.'i is what structured that rule, to establish the new principle of the revaluation of all values is to bring about the reversal of all metaphysics. Nietzsche takes this reversal as the overcoming of metaphysics.^a However, every reversal of this kind will only be a self-blinding entanglement in what is the same though become unrecognizable.

However, so long as Nietzsche grasps nihilism as the intrinsic law operating in the history of the devaluation of the hitherto highest values, but takes devaluation in the sense of the revaluation of all values, nihilism in his interpretation derives from the rule and breakdown of values and so from the possibility in general to posit values. This possibility is itself based on the will to power. This is why Nietzsche's concept of nihilism and his statement "God is dead" can only be adequately understood on the basis of the essence of the will to power. Let us therefore take the last step in shedding light on that remark by explaining what Nietzsche is thinking with the title he coined, "The Will to Power."

The name "The Will to Power" is taken to be so obvious that it is incomprehensible why someone would still take pains to _explain this word

^a First edition, 1950: i.e., for Nietzsche: of Platonism.

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