Nietzsche on Transcending Money

Nietzsche’s trenchant critique of modernity culminates in the famous call for the “revaluation of all values.” Early on in his work Nietzsche urges us to “set goals beyond gold and gain.” Exploring the subject of money within Nietzsche’s oeuvre reveals that his revaluational project and his passionate plea to “formulate goals” that would “transcend money and money-making” are by no means discrete undertakings. Quite the opposite, Nietzsche’s revaluation grows out of his stated objective to transcend the value horizons demarcated by money, which represents the archetypal value of secular modernity. In his assessment, money’s rise to prominence in the wake of God’s death exposes society’s declining health and conceals money’s ouroboric rondure. Nietzsche’s prescient examination of money’s psychology relies on the same method of genealogical scrutiny he applies to the critique of slave morality. It contains several messages which ring with pertinence in today’s world.