American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas

by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

Though we might be tempted to view the vibrancy of Nietzsche’s posthumous American career as a sign of long-standing, salutary transnational intellectual exchanges and mutuality, many of Nietzsche’s American readers saw just the opposite. They turned to Nietzsche, not because they thought he could make something possible for the pedestrian American intellect, but precisely because, in their view, he couldn’t. A letter from Scheffauer explained how he drew from Nietzsche as he contemplated writing a book called The Spirit of America Today.That spirit, he argued, betrayed “the old, noble, when also narrow Puritanism I admire so much, even if it was philistine and hostile to art. But it brought forth beautiful and exalted types. Alas, the types of today! Absolute degeneration and wildness—a wild hedonism, mechanization, herd morality. If only your eternal brother were here to give his verdict over today’s America.”61 Similarly, Gottfried Betz of Columbia University used his letters to Förster-Nietzsche to reflect on the differences between German and American intellectual and cultural life: “Our wealth is inconceivable. We can buy the whole world, but no intellectual treasures. Their value is at the lowest level in America. What can you do with character [Gemüt], beauty, and a finely-educated mind? … Business and the stupidest, mindless recreations fill the life of the American.… Whoever confesses other ideals is an exception.”62 That Nietzsche’s philosophy could shrink the d...