American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas

by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

Certainly, so idiosyncratic a thinker as Adorno cannot be made representative of all the other émigrés. But the extremity with which his negativist Nietzsche registered their psychic dislocations, their loss, their anguish, and their fury with a world turned upside down poses a crucial backdrop for understanding why Kaufmann’s Nietzsche made the easy headway into midcentury American culture that it did. As we shall see, in almost every respect Kaufmann’s Nietzsche is a counter-Nietzsche to Adorno’s. Adorno’s negativist Nietzsche was forced from a settled life and clear career path in Germany. Kaufmann’s Nietzsche was formulated while a student in America. Adorno’s Nietzsche relentlessly criticized the Enlightenment. Kaufmann’s Nietzsche exemplified its unrealized promises. Adorno’s Nietzsche thought the ra tional self parroted instrumental virtues. Kaufmann’s Nietzsche considered the rational self the seat of all morality.