Hans D. Sluga Quotes

The loss of a hierarchy of values is dangerous for two reasons, as Nietzsche sees it. Without such a hierarchy values prove anchorless, unstable, and shifting. It is not that all values have disappeared under nihilistic conditions; we may, on the contrary, witness a proliferation of competing values, but the relation of these values to each other is unsecured. And from this follows a second danger that without a hierarchy of values there can be no human greatness. We will not be capable of achievements that require deep, long-term, unwavering commitment. We can see what Nietzsche has in mind from our own contemporary culture which displays precisely such a loss of a hierarchy of values and is thus already nihilistic in Nietzsche's sense. In this culture of ours the most trite and trivial counts in consequence as much as the greatest and most profound. Triviality itself has, indeed, become a value for us and all values have become trivial. What is acclaimed today is discarded tomorrow. Our values have been reduced to fashions and as such to something of no consequence.