13 This characterization of affect as having a phenomenology might be thought to fall foul of Nietzsche’s countenancing of unconscious mental states, including affective ones (e.g. GS 354, 357). However, we are here concerned only with affects in so far as they as constitutive conditions of value. There are powerful independent arguments for the contention that the concept of value is essentially a phenomenological concept—it picks out, in its logically most basic use, instantiations of phenomenal properties (see Section 3). As regards the exegetical question of how best to interpret Nietzsche’s remarks on unconscious mental states, it seems clear that Nietzsche is not denying that such states at some level have phenomenal properties (a certain what-it-is-likeness). Indeed, he is often attracted by the view that everything actual necessarily has such properties: ‘What is “appearance” for me now? Certainly not the opposite of some essence: what could I say about any essence except to name the attributes of its appearance! Certainly not a dead mask that one could place on an unknown x or remove from it!’ (GS 54; cf. WP 556–69). The textually most compelling reading of Nietzsche on unconscious mental states is that many episodic mental states are inferentially unavailable to the mind’s main-system, displaying no phenomenal properties to it, while yet possessing such properties (see also KGW VII.3.37.[4]). For a more detailed defence of this interpretation, see Poellner (1995: ch. 5.2). For the distinction between mental main-systems and sub-systems, see esp. Pears (1985).