“If beings are grasped as will to power, the “should” which is supposed to hang suspended over them, against which they might be measured, becomes superfluous. If life itself is will to power, it is itself the ground, principium, of valuation. Then a “should” does not determine being. Being determines a “should.” “When we talk of values we are speaking under the inspiration or optics of life: life itself compels us to set up values; life itself values through us whenever we posit values.””
VIII, 89
p. 32
Nietzsche (1961)
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Martin Heidegger 69
German philosopher 1889–1976Related quotes

Source: Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910), Ch. 7

Section 9 : Ethical Outlook
Life and Destiny (1913)

Michel Henry, Barbarism, Continuum, 2012, p. 97
Books on Culture and Barbarism, Barbarism (1987)

Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics
Context: Reverence for life, veneratio vitæ, is the most direct and at the same time the profoundest achievement of my will-to-live.
In reverence for life my knowledge passes into experience. The simple world- and life-affirmation which is within me just because I am will-to-live has, therefore, no need to enter into controversy with itself, if my will-to-live learns to think and yet does not understand the meaning of the world. In spite of the negative results of knowledge, I have to hold fast to world- and life-affirmation and deepen it. My life carries its own meaning in itself. This meaning lies in my living out the highest idea which shows itself in my will-to-live, the idea of reverence for life. With that for a starting-point I give value to my own life and to all the will-to-live which surrounds me, I persevere in activity, and I produce values.

Source: 1950s-1960s, Social Choice and Individual Values (1951), p. 7

Book I, Chapter VI
Nicomachus of Gerasa: Introduction to Arithmetic (1926)