Creating values › Creation is more than a private preference

Zarathustra's account of value does not stop at the permission to choose whatever one likes. “The Thousand and One Goals” treats valuation as a power through which human life takes a particular form. New valuation would therefore involve more than assigning a favorable name to an unchanged appetite.

At the same time, the speech does not offer a neutral procedure for evaluating every possible creation. The reader can reasonably ask what makes one transformed way of living better than another. Answering that question requires examining the book's commitments about life and overcoming. Sincerity alone would not establish the worth of a proposed value.

Suppose a hypothetical writer rejects an established standard because it excludes experiences the writer believes deserve expression. Producing a work gives that rejection a more definite form. Readers can then examine what the work makes possible. Calling the result creative does not settle every question about its achievement or its effects on others.

The illustration also leaves criticism possible. A person who claims to have created a value has made a proposal that can be questioned. The fact that it is theirs does not supply every reason needed to defend it. This is a test for the account, rather than a complete moral rule extracted from Nietzsche.