The aim of this essay is to illuminate some of the difficulties inherent in what might be called "axiological foundationalism." For this purpose I will analyze the account of values and the process of value formation which is found in the mature, published writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. Few philosophers have attached as much importance or devoted so much sustained attention to the problem of value as did Nietzsche. From his early quasi-Schopenhauerian concern with the "value of suffering and existence" to his interrupted final confrontation with the "self-devaluation of the highest value," i.e., with modern nihilism, the central focus of Nietzsche's work remained the problem of the function, foundation, genealogy, and justification of values - the problem, if you will, of the value of value.