3.9 Some Relevant Distinctions for Understanding the Creation of Values

Abstract

AbstractI respond here to two misinterpretations of my paper 1.9. Against 2.7 [Vanessa Lemm], I argue that a false dichotomy is forced on my work when it is interpreted as claiming that values are “created by and for the isolated individual.” Following a passage from Thus Spoke Zarathustra cited in 2.7, I affirm that the creator of values is an individual or group of individuals, but deny that these individuals are “isolated” and that the creation of values is for their sake. I then attempt to diagnose the confusions and misunderstandings that lie behind 2.8’s [Andreas Hetzel] criticism of my use of Sellars’ idea of the “space of reasons” to understand how the creation of values is possible. If, as 1.1 [Henning Ottmann] argues, Nietzsche took over the idea of value from the neo-Kantians, it makes sense that he would see a connection between values and reasons. But it does not follow from this that these reasons must be explicit, nor therefore that Nietzsche’s “highest value” is the “giving and taking of reasons.” Finally, although my account of the connection between reasons and values does open the possibility that one person can be right and another wrong, it has no implication concerning how one determines who is right. My claim about the connection between values and reasons belongs to the metaphysics and not the epistemology of value.