American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas

by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

home in America for Nietzsche’s philosophy? After almost three decades with Emerson’s writings, the prospect seemed likely indeed. After all, it was America that had created the thinker with whom he thought as he came to terms with himself and his world. It was the American Emerson who showed Nietzsche the possibilities of thought beyond the good and evil of Christian piety. It was the American Emerson who critiqued sterile ideas and made philosophy a friend to life. It was the American Emerson who understood that philosophical inquiry in a world without absolutes works by ex ample and provocation only. And it was the American Emerson who Nietzsche believed never could have been produced within the suffocating philistinism of his native German culture. Nietzsche did not know much about America, but he did know—or at least he believed—that with one exception (himself), Germany could never have given birth to such a dynamic thinker. He summed up his feelings for Emerson this way: “Emerson. Never have I felt so much at home in a book, and in my home as—I shouldn’t praise it, it is too close to me.”