Synopses & Reviews
If you were looking for a philosopher likely to appeal to Americans, Friedrich Nietzsche would be far from your first choice. After all, in his blazing career, Nietzsche took aim at nearly all the foundations of modern American life: Christian morality, the Enlightenment faith in reason, and the idea of human equality. Despite that, for more than a century Nietzsche has been a hugely popularand#8212;and surprisingly influentialand#8212;figure in American thought and culture.
In American Nietzsche, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen delves deeply into Nietzsche's philosophy, and Americaand#8217;s reception of it, to tell the story of his curious appeal. Beginning her account with Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom the seventeen-year-old Nietzsche read fervently, she shows how Nietzscheand#8217;s ideas first burst on American shores at the turn of the twentieth century, and how they continuedand#160; alternately to invigorate and to shock Americans for the century to come. She also delineates the broader intellectual and cultural contexts within which a wide array of commentatorsand#8212;academic and armchair philosophers, theologians and atheists, romantic poets and hard-nosed empiricists, and political ideologues and apostates from the Left and the Rightand#8212;drew insight and inspiration from Nietzscheand#8217;s claims for the death of God, his challenge to universal truth, and his insistence on the interpretive nature of all human thought and beliefs. At the same time, she explores how his image as an iconoclastic immoralist was put to work in American popular culture, making Nietzsche an unlikely posthumous celebrity capable of inspiring both teenagers and scholars alike.
A and#160;penetrating examination of a powerful but little-explored undercurrent of twentieth-century American thought and culture, American Nietzsche dramatically recasts our understanding of American intellectual lifeand#8212;and puts Nietzsche squarely at its heart.
Review
"A truly outstanding piece of intellectual history."
Review of Metaphysics
Review
andquot;A truly outstanding piece of intellectual history.andquot;
About the Author
Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagenand#160;is theand#160;Merle Curti Associate Professor ofand#160;History at theand#160;University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
PROLOGUE
Transatlantic Crossings: The Aboriginal Intellect Abroad
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE
The Making of the American NietzscheNietzsche and the European Axis of American Cosmopolitanism
The Nietzsche Vogue
The Persona of Nietzsche
Launching and#8220;Nietzscheanand#8221; and and#8220;Nietzscheismand#8221; into American English
CHAPTER TWO
The Soul of Man under ModernityNietzsche and the Problems of Modern Thought
Unapologetic Catholic Apologetics
The Social Gospel and the Practicability of Christianity
Nietzscheand#8217;s Service to Christianity
Jesus of Nazareth, Nietzsche of Naumburg
CHAPTER THREE
The American Naturalization of the and#220;bermenschThe and#220;bermensch in the Popular Imagination
Self-Overcoming and Social Uplift
Modern Whirl and Romantic Self-Abandonment
The and#220;bermensch and the German National Mind
The and#220;bermensch at War and the and#8220;Made in Germanyand#8221; Generation
To Each His Own and#220;bermensch
CHAPTER FOUR
Nietzsche as EducatorExperiencing Intellect; or, World-Making Words
Imitatio Nietzsche
The and#8220;Gay Scienceand#8221; of Cultural Criticism
The Modern Intellect and Prophetic Longing
INTERLUDE
Devotions: The LettersNietzsche Possession, Possessing Nietzsche
Nietzschean Self-Fashioning
Nietzsche Pilgrimage
Pathos of Distance from Democratic Culture
CHAPTER FIVE
Dionysian EnlightenmentWalter Kaufmann, German and#201;migrand#233;s, and Nietzsche as Hitlerand#8217;s Exile
Nietzsche as Problem Thinker
Nietzsche and the Nazis
Nietzschean Experimentalism and Jamesian Pragmatism
Kaufmannand#8217;s Nietzsche for All and None
CHAPTER SIX
Antifoundationalism on Native GroundsHarold Bloom and the Quest for Emersonian Priority
Richard Rorty: Fusing the Horizons between Nietzsche and the Pragmatists
Stanley Cavell: Nietzsche, Emerson, and American Philosophy Finding Its Way Home
Thinking about American Thinking
EPILOGUE
Nietzsche Is Us
Acknowledgments
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index