American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas

by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

Rereading Nietzsche, “the familiar pages gain a new significance in addition to their old charm” for the clarity with which they helped her see the interdependence of Christianity and socialism. But the value of that mutuality Nietzsche got wrong. He failed to realize that the two together were a balm, not a poison, to the modern soul longing for a more meaningful spirituality. In isolation neither could inspire. But in loving tandem they showed what Nietzsche could not see: that “true liberty is positive, not negative, dealing less with the removal of restriction than with the imparting of power.” Had Nietzsche understood, to borrow Wordsworth’s phrase, that one is “free because imbound,” he would have realized that it is in “the socialist state we hope that the way will be open for all of us to become supermen, and we may advance on the road thither with solemn gayety [sic] equal to that of Zarathustra.”