Abstracts
Nietzsche's Transvaluation of Values
21 November 2008
The Laws of Dionysus: Umwerthung, Great Politics, and the status of Nietzsche’s late Nachlass
Hugo Drochon
The purpose of this paper is to ‘sound the idol’ of the post-Montinari consensus which claims that Nietzsche abandoned his Umwerthung project when he gave up The Will to Power. Instead shall be offered the idea, centring around the genesis of the closing chapter of Ecce Homo ‘Why I am a Destiny’, that we must understand Nietzsche’s final months, indeed including his stepping into insanity, as his political passage à l’acte. This will allow us to underline the necessary link between Nietzsche’s Umwerthung and his ‘Great Politics’ as presented in his Proclamation, and permit us, through reading Nietzsche as he understood Plato, to present Nietzsche fundamentally as a political philosopher.
Das Werk soll zugleich in allen Sprachen erscheinen’: Transvaluation and Translation
Duncan Large
The point of departure for
this paper is Nietzsche’s plan, frequently elaborated in his late
correspondence, to have the works of 1888 translated into languages
other than German. By this stage his motivation clearly includes the
desire to reach out to new readers who might understand him better than
the Germans, the need to escape censorship, and the wish to do justice
to his sense of his own French identity. I argue that there is also a
more fundamental connection between the project of ‘Umwerthung’ and
‘translation’ in the figurative senses which Nietzsche uses to
designate various kinds of transformational process involved in the
conversion of debased values.
The Origin and Early Context of the Revaluation-Theme in Nietzsche’s Thinking
Thomas Brobjer
Most commentators have assumed that the revaluation theme exclusively belongs to the late Nietzsche (from Also sprach Zarathustra, 1883-85, and onwards), often its origin is dated to 1886 or 1884. After examining Nietzsche’s notes in regard to this theme, I argue that its origin should be regarded as occurring in 1880/81. I thereafter discuss its rather complex context at this time, with no single obvious thematic context outweighing all the others. I also consider some of the consequences of this early dating. I furthermore discuss the end of the revaluation project, and show and argue, contrary to previous views, that Nietzsche regarded it as an unfinished four volume project until his mental collapse, or until just the week before then.
Nietzsche's transvaluation of values On the logical framework of the Umwerthung
Manuel Dries
This paper argues that Nietzsche’s transvaluation project refers not to a mere inversion or negation of a set of nihilism-prone, Judeo-Christian values, but instead to a different conception of what a value is and how it functions.
In Part II examine the relationship between nihilism and Umwerthung and show that the value shift that Nietzsche envisages is premised on his belief in the necessity of avoiding nihilism and that any ‘transvalued’ value will have to satisfy at least two conditions, the non-perpetuation condition as well as the affirmation condition.
In Part III examine the functioning of traditional values and valuation in order to argue that traditional values function within a standard logical framework and claim legitimacy and ‘bindingness’ based on i) exogenous authority with an ii) absolute extension, a framework Nietzsche regards not as simply redundant but as unnecessarily reductive in its attempted exclusion of contradiction and real opposition.
In Part III, I propose an adualistic-dialetheic model of value and valuation that requires a value to be both true and false as well as neither true nor false to account for the transvalued value’s validity as well as its contingency, its binding quality as well as its openness to revision. Such a framework would satisfy both the conditions of transvaluation and would take seriously Nietzsche’s early insistence that ‘zum Lebenkönnen der Wertschätzungen die Fähigkeit vernichtet zu werden [gehört]’ (NF 1882,5[1]234).
Philosophy of the Morning
Tracy B. Strong
Though the experience of transfiguration (Verklärung, Verwandlung) figures prominently in Nietzsche's correspondence from the end of his career in sanity, it is a constant concern to him from the Birth of Tragedy on. I argue that the experience of transfiguration is best understood in terms of his analysis of tragedy. I then seek to show what in actually practice such an experience consists of. I look here at the effects of his style, at his conception of philosophy, and at the teaching of eternal return. Five illustrations (i.e. pictures).
The Inversion of the Inversion
Yannis Constantinides
In most accounts, the transvaluation of values is described as an unequalled, unprecedented event. It is true that Nietzsche offers some ground for this misinterpretation by insisting on its crucial historical importance while presenting it as the single possible remedy for nihilism. However, far from being a simple revaluation of dominant moral values, the Umwerthung aller Werthe is – from the start (see JGB 46) – clearly presented as the inversion of the primary inversion of noble values accomplished by the Judeo-Christian priests. Even though there’s no turning back to ancient Greece, past legislations are for Nietzsche not only a source of inspiration but the foreground of the “legislation of the future”. This is why the true philosopher, the philosopher-legislator, is the “perfect heir” Zarathustra hails: such an active heir can create new values while assuming responsibility for the whole past of humanity, including of course the long Christian era.
