Nietzsche's Question. Are Virtues Really Valuable?
Nietzsche is asking something simple and devastating, when we call qualities like honesty, integrity, or duty good are we actually saying anything true? Or are we just using flattering words? For him these qualities aren't valuable in themselves. That they're ordinary, even burdensome behaviors. Suppressing yourself, following rules, telling uncomfortable truths get dressed up in noble-sounding language by people who needed others to practice them.
Three possibilities he's probing.
Maybe the value is intrinsic and honesty is good regardless of what it produces. But then prove it. You can't point to it. You can't derive it from facts. You're just asserting it and calling the assertion a moral intuition.
Maybe the value is instrumental and honesty is good because it leads to trust, cooperation, functioning society. This seems more solid. But then the value isn't in honesty, it's in the consequences. Change the consequences, and honesty stops being good.
Maybe even that is a story and this is the sharpest part. Here we have the nietzschean parenthetical "appear to lead, expected to lead." Do we actually verify that honesty produces good outcomes? Or do we just assume it, because the word "honesty" already comes loaded with centuries of approval baked in?
His core suspicion is that we inherited these values, absorbed the language around them, and mistook the warm feeling the words produce for moral truth. We're honoring the fossil of a former social utility and calling it conscience. So called values are mostly our childhood training. It is conditoning by parents, school, chorches and othere istitiution. So Nietzsche lets us question in what level the so called values are mine valuse, which mean in how they halp me survibe and thrive?