American Nietzsche Quotes

“The Enlightenment’s unwarranted esteem for human rationality, they argued, did not simply lead to the “disenchantment of the world” —it sowed the seeds of its own destruction. By exalting the limitless power of instrumental rationality, the Enlightenment cultivated an ideology in which nothing lay beyond the power of human apprehension, domination, and administration. The “administered world” of Nazism, then, represented the realization, not the abandonment, of the Enlightenment: the “Enlightenment is totalitarian.”
― Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas

“As long as the State, or rather the government, regards itself as the guardian of the minor masses, and [on] their behalf considers the question whether religion shall be maintained or abolished, it will most probably always decide in favor of the maintenance of religion…. [For] when the necessary or accidental shortcomings of government … become apparent to the intelligent, and fill them with the sentiment of hostility, the unintelligent will fancy they see the fingers of God, and patiently submit to the commands from above.34”
― Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas

“Virtually all letter writers confessed how their encounter with Nietzsche's philosophy either emboldened or chastened them, liberated them from old falsehoods, or saddled them with new moral responsibilities. Helen Bachmuller of Dayton, Ohio, wrote to let Förster-Nietzsche know that her brother had inspired the belief that human greatness was still possible in the modern world. Though unworthy of his greatness, he nevertheless awakened in her a longing for something deeper in herself. Nietzsche, Bachmuller confessed, had saved her from her 'own inner emptiness.' The 'Ohio country' she called home had become 'tame and commonplace,' filled with lives 'trivial and ... essentially ugly, for they are engrossed with matters of money and motors, not with work or faith or art.' She regarded the Methodist church near her house as 'vulgar, pretentious.' Though disgusted by the offensive mediocrity around her, she was also chagrined by her own limitations: 'It would be, probably, impossible for you to imagine anything more superficial than I am.' But reading presumably the recently released translation of Förster-Nietzsche's The_Nietzsche-Wagner_Correspondence had exposed Bachmuller to 'depths beyond depths, of one great soul striking fire against another great soul, and I became thrilled. I could feel the harmonies and dissonances, the swell and surge of those two glorious beings, and I felt much more that I cannot express.' Reading Nietzsche enlivened her to the possibility 'for a companionship that would stimulate, that would deepen, that would give me Tiefen [depth].' Nietzsche strengthened her resolve that 'all my life I will hold on to my hunger, if I never manage to have a soul, at any rate I will remain, by hook or crook, aware of it and I will desire one all my life, I will not accept substitutes.”
― Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas

“Petre's commitment to Roman Catholicism combined with her openness to mental and moral subjectivism formed a rare alchemy among early twentieth-century Catholics. Her exposure to thinkers like Nietzsche did not strip her of her faith. She argued that despite Nietzsche's professed atheism, his life and thought offered much for Catholics to admire. His was a 'strenuous,' 'suffering,' 'unselfish' 'life militant' marked by 'purity, integrity, [and] utter unworldliness.' Despite being the sweetheart of libertine artists and writers, Nietzsche criticized the decadence and pessimism of modern aesthetics. Likewise, the goal of his celebration of free will and his critique of sin was not an orgiastic 'self-abandonment, but ... strong self-possession; a mastering of one's own life and conduct' and a recognition that true contrition is not legislated from without but cultivated from within a deep reverence for the 'mysterious laws of our being.' Petre insisted that in Nietzsche, Catholics could find a fellow seeker of moral strenuousness: 'There is to be here no dilettantism, but sheer hard work.”
― Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen , American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas

“In Nietzsche, Reitzel discovered a thinker who blended a merciless realism about the unholy authority of institutionalized religion with the romantic prophecy of a future liberated selfhood.”
― Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas

“The fundamental question of philosophy: not 'What is the nature of being? What are the conditions of knowledge? or 'How do I know?' but rather, as Emerson put it, 'How shall I live?”
― Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas

“Petre, a British Roman Catholic nun and prolific author,”
― Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas