Although their political commitments varied, American anarchists, romantic radicals, and literary cosmopolitans celebrated Nietzsche’s philosophical assault on modern slavishness and his emphasis on the unfettered ego as a source of human progress. They exalted Nietzsche as an exemplar of the freethinker who was pious only to his own liberated self. And like Urban, they recognized in Nietzsche a transformative thinker who had ushered in a new era of moral philosophy. Their interest in and uses of Nietzsche also reflect a long-standing Eurocentrism in American radical thought. Though committed
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