American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas

by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

The individual may seek release from that which has formed him, but Emerson expressed doubt whether this was fully possible. As he argued, “The menagerie, or forms and powers of the spine, is a book of fate: the bill of the bird, the skull of the snake, determines tyrannically its limits…. How shall a man escape from his ancestors, or draw off from his veins the black drop which he drew from his father’s or his mother’s life?”42 In direct dialogue with Emerson on this question, Nietzsche asked, “What is it that pulls the soul of so many men of power down to the commonplace, thereby hindering a higher flight of ideas? A fatalistic structure of skull and spine; the condition and nature of their parents;…their environment; even… their homeland.” For Nietzsche, it was disturbing to consider the sheer range of external forces, “stifling the capacity of the soul through force of habit.” What troubled him was not simply that “we have been influenced,” but that we are so blind to influences that we cannot tell the difference between our self and the world, our independence and our inheritance.43

Nature vs nurture in Nietzsche and Emerson