“A question raised almost at once (and periodically revived) was why Nietzsche was proving so popular here: ‘What is the philosophy of an anti-Christian, antidemocratic madman doing in a culture like ours? Why Nietzsche? Why in America?’ Ratner-Rosenhagen wonders. Nietzsche became the exemplar for those seeking, in Emerson’s words, ‘not instruction, but provocation’; not intellectual doctrine but the visceral sense of liberation in hearing the inadmissible given voice.”
The Nation discusses Emerson’s influence on Nietzsche, as well as Nietzsche’s reception in the United States, using American Nietzsche, by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, as a guide.
