Praising well but not wisely. | Nietzsche & Emerson: An Elective Affinity

book: Nietzsche & Emerson: An Elective Affinity | George J. Stack

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	• Nietzsche & Emerson: An Elective Affinity George J. Stack Ohio University Press, 1993 - 392 pages average customer review:based on 3 reviews view larger image
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Nietzsche Meets Emerson

Only recently I came across Stack's Nietzsche and Emerson and was intrigued by the linking of the radical German philosopher and the supposedly "genteel" American poet and essayist. It came as a surprise to see how much R.W. Emerson influenced Nietzsche in regard to many themes - the will to power, fate, the way unvirtuous drives are converted into good traits or consequences, the aesthetic ideal of the "beyond-man," and much more. Apart from some repetitions of themes and terms, Stack has done a solid job -- scholarly, but not tedious -- in making his case. One thing this book does is to give us a very different and much more radical picture of Emerson. At the same time, Stack takes some of the shine off Nietzsche's reputed super-originality. The philosophy in N & E is accessible and the discussions of Emerson's insights are revealing and supported by many references to the Essays of the writer who has been called the "quintessential American" literary hero. For a comparative study, Stack's book manages to break new ground and go beyond the typical academic effort. I'd recommend it highly as illuminating where some of Nietzsche's thinking came from and placing a neglected American literary philosopher in a new, dramatic light. As far as I know, this is the only book length treatment of this rich topic in English.

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Praising well but not wisely.

I'm much more excited about this book than the first time I reviewed it. It was written back in 1992, and I could have considered it one of the most American studies of Nietzsche to be produced in the late 20th century. What made my first review exciting was how well I managed to ghost Walter Kaufmann in writing that review. Kaufmann had chosen to be a professor in the philosophy department of a great American university, at a time when cultured people everywhere might expect a modern philosophy to be enthralled with the idea of philosophy forming a basis for world order striving for the kind of educated greatness enhanced by Emerson. Since reading more of Emerson, I must rate him more highly than in my first review of this book, particularly in his work on Plato. Nietzsche might join Emerson in the view "the bitten world holds the biter fast by his own teeth." That is what Emerson noticed after: "so all this mammoth morsel has become Plato. He has clapped copyright on the world." Walter Kaufmann and I may have differed from each other generationally in our views on how well rock 'n' roll might also claim the world. Philosophy is much more difficult to discuss than the most recent songs, and the people who might read this book for professional reasons wouldn't have much excitement to talk about, so the years passed this book by in stony silence until I came along and compared it to what Walter Kaufmann said about this kind of simple comparison of the views of another with Nietzsche. Hegel set the standard for making philosophical comparisons, and Kaufmann kept trying to show how German this approach is. I really liked the idea of Kaufmann having an American alter ego who was going to make decisions based on the line, "Common, it'll be fun." This worked for me better after I tried it than before.

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In this book, the author traces the sources of ideas and theories that have long been considered the exclusive province of Friedrich Nietzsche to the surprisingly radical writings of the American essayist and poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson.