The problem with the language of "values"

      "Nietzsche explained it:  'what does nihilism mean?  T[hat t]he highest values become devalued' [(Nachgelassene Fragmente 1887, 9[35])].  But don't be fooled:  the highest values become devalued not because they lose their value as if by black magic, but because, suddenly, we notice that they consist only of that—their value" (59), and no longer of any things or realities in themselves.  For values are assigned by the evaluation of an evaluator exercising the sheer will to power, "a pure and simple will of [nothing but] will" (62), and to reduce something to a value is to annihilate the thing (61).  "the thing's reality in itself" is precisely what "the thing loses by becoming a value," such that "Nothing is more nihilist at the roots, or more in conformity with nihilism, than proclaiming values, because the value already and precisely is not, not in itself, not at all" (60).  Nietzsche himself:  "'That there is absolutely no truth; that there is no absolute composition of things, no "thing in itself"—that itself is a nihilism, and to be precise the most extreme sort.  It poses the value [(Werth)] of things precisely in the fact that no reality corresponds to this value, but only a symptom of strength among those who instituted values'" (60n3, italics harmonized with the emphases in Nietzsche Source; Nachgelassene Fragmente 1887, 9[35]).

     Jean-Luc Marion, A brief apology for a Catholic moment, trans. Stephen E. Lewis (Chicago:  The University of Chicago Press, 2021), 59 ff.