Neither rock nor refuge: American encounters with Nietzsche and the search for foundations

摘要

This dissertation traces the career of Friedrich Nietzsche's image and ideas in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American thought and culture. Beginning with Nietzsche's earliest American readers at the turn of the last century, I examine the ways in which Americans were influenced by his critique of universal truth. Nietzsche's charges against Enlightenment rationality, his arguments for the human origins of all thought and beliefs, and his pronouncement that "God is dead" compelled many Americans to question the nature and integrity of their religious ideals and moral commitments. In addition, this dissertation examines how Nietzsche's exaltation and perceived embodiment of the heroic individual influenced the work and self-image of many American intellectuals and writers. My study canvasses the varied uses Americans made of Nietzsche, including the creative appropriation of Nietzsche's anti-Christian thought by religious moderns, the romantic longing among artists to emulate Nietzsche's poetic genius, Nietzsche's influence on early twentieth-century cultural criticism, and the debates surrounding his "Ubermensch" ideal during World War I. Drawing from a variety of encounters with Nietzsche, I argue that Americans came to view his life and thought as an expression of the promises and perils of living in the modern world without foundations.;Published sources including books and newspaper and magazine articles indicate that Nietzsche captured the imagination of prominent thinkers as well as average Americans. My study focuses accordingly on the connections between the Nietzsche of the elite and the "Nietzschean" of popular culture. Thus my dissertation contributes to the study of culture by demonstrating that it is both desirable and possible to traverse the borders traditionally thought to divide high from popular culture. In addition, my project contributes to the growing desire among American historians to understand the national particularity as well as the transnational scope of ideas and experiences in American life. The history of so-called "European" and "German" thought in America yields a richer understanding of the ways in which Americans have often understood themselves through the lenses of others.