The term “revaluation of all values” comes from Nietzsche. The early Cynics called it the revaluation or devaluation of the valid coin. However, what is meant is exactly what Nietzsche formulates. Modern Cynics therefore adopt Nietzsche’s formulation and speak of the revaluation of the ruling values. A short catchy verb I sometimes use for the revaluation of all prevailing values is to decoin or decoining.
At this point I want to briefly explain what it is all about with the anarchist and main founder of Gestalt therapy Paul Goodman.
Marx recognized that “the ruling values are always the values of the rulers“. Accordingly, the task of the ruling values is for us to live a life that serves the rulers and not our self-realization.
Paul Goodman wrote in his Anarchist Manifesto UPDATE1UPDATE: Finally I found the original text. [I only own a German copy of this text, translated by Stefan Blankertz. So this is a back translation which will of course differ from the English original.]:
“Does our program involve a large number of the very actions and words for which people are in fact thrown into prison? We have to proceed on the basis of the conviction that the coercive society knows very well the actions which are dangerous to it and which are not; actions which give rise to coercion have anarchic force; those which used to be punished but are now tolerated have lost that force. This is not neutral, but has itself coercive consequences”
Thus, the reevaluation of the ruling values serves not to fall into the traps of propaganda, that is, not to be a slave of the rulers, but to find the way of parrhesia free from them.
- 1UPDATE: Finally I found the original text. [I only own a German copy of this text, translated by Stefan Blankertz. So this is a back translation which will of course differ from the English original.]