Individuality and Beyond: Nietzsche Reads Emerson

Though few might think to connect the two figures, Ralph Waldo Emerson was an important influence on Friedrich Nietzsche. Specifically, Emerson played a fundamental role in shaping Nietzsche's philosophical ideas on individualism, perfectionism, and the pursuit of virtue, as well as his critiques of social conditioning, religious dogmatism, and anti-natural morality. With Individuality and Beyond, Benedetta Zavatta offers the first philosophical interpretation of Emerson's influence on Nietzsche based on a sound philological analysis of previously unpublished materials from Nietzsche's private library. Nietzsche's collection reveals numerous copies of Emerson's essays covered with annotations and marginalia as Nietzsche revisited these works throughout his life.

Through close-reading, Zavatta casts a new light on the ways in which Emerson's work informed Nietzsche's defining ideas of self-creation, the relation between fate and free will, overcoming morality of customs and achieving moral autonomy, and the "transvaluation" of such values as compassion and altruism. Zavatta organizes these concepts into two main lines of thought: the first concerns the development of the individual personality, or the achievement of intellectual and moral autonomy and original self-expression. The second, on the contrary, concerns the overcoming of individuality and the need to transcend a limited view of the world by continually questioning one's own values and engaging with opposing perspectives.

Ultimately, Zavatta clarifies the surprising contributions that Emerson made to 20th century European philosophy. She provides a fresh portrait of Emerson as an American thinker long stereotyped as a naïve idealist disinterested in the social issues of his day. Seen through the eyes of Nietzsche, his acute interpreter, Emerson becomes an incisive cultural critic, whose contributions underpin contemporary philosophy.