Key Arguments

• He identifies the creator as the one who posits ends (goal) and sense (meaning) for the earth and humanity.
• By tying value to goal-creation, he denies that pre-given, universal moralities can define good and evil.
• He grammatically centers valuation authority in the singular 'he alone', excluding saints, sages, and professors from legislating values.

Source Quotes

An old and tired affair all talk of virtue seemed to them; and whoever wanted to sleep well would even speak of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ before going to sleep. This somnolence I disturbed when I taught: what good and evil are, — unless it be the creator! — But that is the one who creates humanity’s goal and gives the earth its sense and its future: he alone anything is good or evil. And I bade them overturn their old professorial chairs, and wherever this old conceit had sat; I bade them laugh at their great masters of virtue and saints and poets and world-redeemers.

Key Concepts

• — unless it be the creator!
• — But that is the one who creates humanity’s goal and gives the earth its sense and its future: he alone
• anything is good or evil.

Context

Continuation of the wake-up teaching: Zarathustra specifies the locus of moral authority as the creator, not tradition or herd consensus. The broken lineation reflects the aphoristic emphasis.

Perspectives

Nietzsche

Affirms value-creation as an act of will to power; the legislator sets goals and thereby constitutes 'good' and 'evil' perspectivally.

Zarathustra

Only the goal-giver may name values; I call to creators to bear this burden for earth's future.