Measurement and evaluation, scale and weight

Nietzche and the hypothesis of the emergence of morality from commercial relations

Abstract

In his work The Wanderer and His Shadow, Friedrich Nietzsche hypothesizes that morality has its origin in the ancient commercial relationships of men, and in Miscellany of Opinions and Sentences he had already observed that man has a “balance of moral judgment” (Wage des moralischen Urtheils). In the present investigation we will explore texts from antiquity to contemporary times to show that Nietzsche's hypothesis is not only plausible, but is at the basis of his conception of the eternal return of the same as “the new weight” (Das neue Schwergewicht), that is, a new measure of value to evaluate all values.