NIETZSCHE'S WORD: "GOD IS DEAD"

perspective has been opened for characterizing the normative structure of value.

To preserve the levels of power which the will has attained at particular times requires that the will surround itself with that which it can reliably and at any time fall hack on and from which its security is to be guaranteed. These surroundings enclose the enduring existence [Bestand], at the immediate disposal of the will, of that which presences (οὐσία in the ordinary meaning of this word among the Greeks). This enduringness [Beständige] is however turned into a permanence [Ständige], i.e., into that which is [steht] constantly [stets] at one's disposal, only by its being brought to stand [Stand] by having set it in place. This placing [Stellen] has the nature of a production [Herstellens] that re-presents [vor-stellenden]. That which continues to endure [Beständige] in such a mode is that which remains. True to the essence of being (being = lasting presence) that has prevailed in the history of metaphysics, Nietzsche gives to these enduring things [Beständige] the name "beings." Often he gives them the name "being," again true to the manner of speaking used by metaphysical thinking. Since the beginning of Western thinking, beings have been considered as the true and as truth, while in the meantime the sense of "beings" and "true" have transformed themselves in many ways. When Nietzsche gives just the simple name "being" or "beings" or "truth" to what is fixed in the will to power for the preservation of that will, he remains in the unbroken line of the traditions of metaphysics, despite all its reversals and revaluations. Accordingly, truth is a condition set in the essence of the will to power, namely, the condition of the preservation of power. Truth, as this condition, is a value. However, because the will can will only on the basis of having something enduring at its disposal, truth is the value necessary for the will to power and originating from the essence of the will to power. The name of "truth" signifies now neither the unconcealment of beings nor the agreement of knowledge and object of knowledge, nor certainty as the delivering and securing [Zu- und Sicherstellen] of what has been represented [Vorgestellten]. Truth — to be precise, truth that has its essential-historical origin in the modes of its essence indicated above — is now that securing which makes durables endure [die beständigende Bestandsicherug] and which secures the surroundings out of which the will to power itself wills.

For securing the level of power attained at a given time, truth is the necessary value. But it is not enough to attain a level of power; for what is enduring, taken in itself, is powerless to give what the will needs before all else in order to go above and beyond itself, i.e., what it must have in order

179