Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil"*
As translated by Walter Kaufmann. Nietzsche's perspectivism: The fundamental faith of the metaphysicians is the faith in opposite values . It has not even occurred to the most cautious among them that one might have a doubt right here at the threshold where it was surely most necessary--even if they vowed to themselves, " de omnibus dubitandum ." For one may doubt, first, whether there are any opposites at all, and secondly whether these popular valuations and opposite values on which the metaphysicians put their seal, are not perhaps merely foreground estimates, only provisional perspectives, perhaps even from some nook, perhaps from below, frog perspectives, as it were, to borrow an expression painters use. For all the value that the true, the truthful, the selfless may deserve, it would still be possible that a higher and more fundamental value for life might have to be ascribed to deception, selfishness, and lust. It might even be possible that what constitutes the va...