b) Creative Subjectivism as a Second Disguised Form of Nihilism

On the surface, Nietzsche's project appears to centre on a struggle against nihilism.
He rejects Christianity, Buddhism, and the teachings of his mentor Schopenhauer, viewing them as veiled expressions of nihilism.
Consequently, he envisions the superhuman—the ideal evolutionary stage towards which humanity must strive—as the figure who ultimately triumphs over nihilism: This man of the future, who in this wise will redeem us from the old ideal, as he will from that ideal's necessary corollary of great nausea, will to nothingness, and Nihilism; this tocsin of noon and of the great verdict, which renders the will again free, who gives back to the world its goal and to man his hope, this Antichrist and Antinihilist, this conqueror of God and of Nothingness — he must one day come ¹.

How might Nietzschean thought function as an antidote to nihilism? Or, more precisely, how might creative subjectivism counter it?
The approach may be summarised as follows: creative subjectivism seeks to transcend nihilism by first acknowledging it—accepting nihilism's claim that things lack intrinsic value—and then 'resolving the problem' by introducing a source of value. Far from being devoid of meaning, the world is filled with values, since it contains the very source from which values arise: the human being, the subject, as creator of values.
The world is thus not devoid of value, as nihilism asserts, but lacks only values that 'subsist in themselves' or 'in things'. It is, rather, replete with the values we attribute to things.
Nietzsche's meaning in this context has already been explored.

We must now consider whether creative subjectivism offers a compelling response to the profound challenge of nihilism.

We must first examine the nature of the value that human beings create. Is it real or merely illusory? Or, put differently, is it objective or subjective? It must be objective, for if it were subjective, we would remain within the framework of classical subjectivism, which maintains that human desire generates only fictitious values mistakenly projected onto the world.

This raises a question that Nietzsche himself appears not to address: how is this even possible? How can human beings create real value?
Nietzsche seems to assume that human beings have the capacity to create values and attribute them to things. This assumption may seem self-evident when referring to 'subjective' value—the value humans assign to their ideas about things, since these ideas are of their own making. When speaking of 'real' value, however, we are claiming that things in the external world themselves receive value from human beings. How could such a thing occur?

Are we to suppose, in an absurd hypothetical, that by merely standing before an object and concentrating, a value will somehow emerge from our mind, travel through the air, and become embodied within the object? This notion of 'donating' values belongs to the realm of magical thinking—the tendency, commonly observed in children or in superstitious ages, to believe that merely thinking intently about something can bring it into being. In other words, it mistakes dreams for reality.

We must therefore ask whether it is even possible to 'gift' value—a question that Nietzsche himself appears not to confront.

Even granting that this 'gift' of value is possible—and thus that creative subjectivism can function as a coherent axiological doctrine—it still cannot stand in opposition to nihilism. The reason is straightforward: it does not contradict nihilism.

Creative subjectivism, in fact, incorporates nihilism by conceding that things lack intrinsic value. If human beings are responsible for assigning value, then the world itself is devoid of intrinsic worth—precisely as nihilism asserts. If the things we love possessed intrinsic value, there would be no need to project value onto them. The very concept of projecting values thus presupposes that 'nothing has value in itself'.
The only way to challenge nihilism is to refute its core claim by demonstrating that the world possesses intrinsic value. In incorporating nihilism, subjectivism imagines itself to be transcending it—yet it in fact reinforces it, granting nihilism a privileged place as the premise, or even the foundation, of its entire framework. Nihilism, embedded like a worm within creative subjectivism, thereby becomes unassailable from within it; by building on nihilism as its foundation, subjectivism would ultimately bring about its own collapse.

1. On the Genealogy of morals, 2nd treatise, 24