We turn now to aphorisms 5–11, which focus on the side of the“magnificent tension of the spirit” that we have called thewill to value. These aphorisms provide substantial additional support forour claim that Nietzsche takes this will to be one side of the philosophicalspirit: he takes what he says about metaphysicians in BGE 2– that a valuation lies behind their philosophy – to be trueof all philosophy. BGE 5 tells us that althoughphilosophers claim to be motivated solely by a concern for truth, theyactually arrive at their views by way of their values; such views are“generally a desire of heart sifted and made abstract,” whichis then “defended by reasons sought after the fact.”BGE 6 makes it even more explicit that the will tovalue stands behind all philosophizing, or at least all“great” philosophizing: “Every greatphilosophy,” it tells us, has been rooted in “moral (orimmoral) intentions.” And the most detailed example of the workingsof the will to value in a particular philosophy comes inBGE 9’s discussion of the Stoics, who“pretend rapturously” to discover the “canon” oftheir law in nature but actually “want something opposite,”which is to “impose [their] morality, [their] ideal, on nature– even on nature – and incorporate them in her; [they] demandthat she be nature ‘according to the Stoa,’” and“would like all existence to exist . . . as an immenseeternal glorification and generalization of Stoicism”(BGE 9).

The upshot is that Nietzsche takes philosophy to be an essentially normativediscipline, one that operates, and must operate, on the basis of ethicalassumptions and principles. What this means and our reasons for interpretingNietzsche in this way will become clearer in Chapter 5 and the chapters thatfollow it. The question of this chapter is whether Nietzsche holds theinvolvement of the will to value against philosophy. We have already arguedthat BGE 2, which introduces this will as the motivationfor metaphysical philosophy, does not criticize metaphysicians for allowingit to influence their philosophy. But the aphorisms we have just quoted dogive the impression of bemoaning the way in which philosophers’values have influenced their view of the world.