American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas

Nietzsche In America

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen's book, "American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and his Ideas" (2011) examines the reception of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900) in the United States and Americans' ongoing and continued fascination with his writings and character. Ratner-Rosenhagen, the Merle Curti Associate Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin -- Madison, also discusses the influence of American thought on Nietzsche. In particular the book comes full circle by beginning and ending with the thought of Ralph Waldo Emerson. As a student, Nietzsche became enamored with Emerson, read his works assiduously for many years, and made extensive marginal notes on his books, which he read in German translation. Scholars over the years have recognized Emerson's influence on Nietzsche, but Ratner-Rosenhagen explores their similarities in detail. The study also ends with Nietzsche and Emerson, as Ratner-Rosenhagen discusses their related conception of philosophy and its purpose. Both thinkers see philosophy as non-foundational and without absolutes or certainties. Both Emerson and Nietzsche tend to deny that philosophy is a study with a separate subject matter or "fach". Rather it is a search to find meaning in a world of risk, uncertainty, and lack of transcendental mooring. For Ratner-Rosenhagen and for the subjects of her study, philosophy is meant to be a provocation to thought rather than a doctrine.

The scholarship and learning of this book are prodigious as Ratner-Rosenhagen discusses the engagement of many important American thinkers with Nietzsche. I was pleased with her detailed discussion of the American idealist philosopher Josiah Royce and his understanding of Nietzsche's importance. Most of the thinkers she discusses, however, are not in the idealist category. They include, among the early pragmatists, William James, John Dewey. Mid-twentieth century thinkers include Walter Kaufmann whose translations of Nietzsche and particular understanding of this thinker made Nietzsche available to a generation of readers. Ratner-Rosenhagen studies how French deconstructionists and their American followers read Nietzsche in a manner highly different from Kaufmann's synthesis. She also considers later thinkers including Alan Bloom, the influential literary critic Harold Bloom, together with Richard Rorty and Stanley Cavell.

Ratner-Rosenhagen shows that Nietzsche's influence extended far beyond these major American intellectual figures and into what is often described as "middle-brow" or "low-brow" American culture. She offers substantial discussion of how Protestant and Catholic clergy engaged with Nietzsche, both to find what they found valuable in his thought and what they tried to reject. She discusses the iconoclastic H.L. Menken and his extended writings on Nietzsche. There are considerations of early doctoral dissertations in the United States and of considerations of his philosophy by thinkers who have been largely forgotten. And interestingly, a chapter of the book deals with "fan letters" that American readers of Nietzsche sent to the Nietzsche Archives which was under the control of the philosopher's sister, Elizabeth Forster Nietzsche. The book is heavily documented with lengthy substantive endnotes which are important to the text.

As with most great philosophers, Nietzsche's thought is difficult. His beautiful literary style and his aphoristic writing if anything complicate understanding. In addition, Ratner-Rosenhagen explores Nietzsche's American reception in the context of thinkers who are themselves difficult. The reader must both engage with Nietzsche and with American 20th Century intellectual history in reading this book. Ratner-Rosenhagen's exposition of some of the thinkers she discusses, particularly the deconstructionists, is not as helpful as it might be to the uninitiated reader. The book demands slow, thoughtful consideration.

Readers coming to this book will probably have a familiarity and a strong passion for Nietzsche. Ratner-Rosenhagen understandably avoids the temptation to present a full exposition of his thought. Her book explores what American readers have made of him. She discusses key aspects of Nietzsche, including his anti-foundationalism (perspectivism), his famous claim that "God is dead", his emphasis on interpretation, and the role of the "overman" in his thought. There are interpretive questions, addressed by different readers, about whether Nietzsche is a "political" or a "personal" thinker and about what Americans of varied political persuasions have found worthwhile in this markedly undemocratic philosopher. The approach of the book tends to be historicist. Ratner-Rosenhagen tries to show how different American interpretations of Nietzsche surfaced in response to changes in American culture.

The book begins with a brief consideration of Nietzsche himself and of Emerson's influence. The book proceeds largely chronologically with Nietzsche's early American reception and the first translations of his books. Subsequent early chapters discuss religious responses to Nietzsche, the struggle of American thinkers to understand the "ubermensch" and Nietzsche's role as an educator. Following an "interlude" in which Ratner-Rosenhagen examines the reaction to Nietzsche by many ordinary Americans, the book resumes with Walter Kaufmann, existentialism, and then late 20th Century readings of Nietzsche, returning at the end to the American philosopher, Emerson.

The most recurring philosophical idea in this book is anti-foundationalism, a position the author appears to share enthusiastically with Nietzsche and Emerson. There remains strong philosophical thinking in the United States that cannot be characterized as "anti-foundational" including, the thought of Royce and Alan Bloom, among the thinkers she discusses, as well as many others of varying persuasions. Perhaps the author takes anti-foundationalism too much for granted.

This book is an extraordinary study. It reawakened me to think again about Nietzsche in the company of the American pragmatists I have been reading for some years. The book will be of great value to readers with a serious interest in Nietzsche, American culture, American thought, and the play of the mind.

Robin Friedman