Abstract
The essay first reconstructs Nietzsche’s notion of value as a condition of the will to power. This reconstruction is subsequently placed in the context of his diagnosis of nihilism, which implies, on the one hand, the inevitably unfolding devaluation of the hitherto valid values, and, on the other, the necessity of a transvaluation of values. While the economy of transvaluated values that Nietzsche forebodes takes the form of what he calls “the grand style”, “economic optimism” is his name for a position which fails to recognize the scope and implications of nihilism, and therefore mistakenly assumes that a quantitative growth of the economy entails a growth of man himself, when, in truth, man “becomes less” as he adapts to an increasingly machinal, enormously powerful but, for him, more and more value-impaired world.