Well, there’s a new book out about Nietzsche and the history in Nietzsche in America (intellectually, of course, not physically; he never visited America). The book is called American Nietzsche.

I didn’t know this, though I’m glad to read it, but Nietzsche was, apparently, much influenced and inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson. I bought his collected essays when I lived in Atlanta. Reading it, I was much surprised by the influence of Kant on Emerson. I lost that particular copy during one of my many moves, but luckily now have a nice, leatherbound edition that I picked up at a used bookstore (though it looks nearly new).

Nietzsche is one of those authors who is everything to everyone. I, of course, am a liberal (with a lot of caveats) and I love Nietzsche. But his influence on right wing politicians, fascism, and nazism is well known.

It would be easy to blame the affection of Hitler for Nietzsche on misunderstanding (and he was deeply misunderstood by Hitler, which was partly Nietzsche’s sister’s fault; I’m not going to explain this, if you want to know more, just google it), but it would also be simplistic. Nietzsche, let us say, is not bereft of intellectual and spiritual violence within his oeuvre.

If you’ve took any philosophy courses in college or hung out with anyone who took a philosophy course in college, you probably had a love affair with Nietzsche.

He was one of those writers whose books were hidden in our backpacks at high school, nestled next to Marx and Ginsberg. Like Marx and Ginsberg, he was also deeply misunderstood by us, but what the heck, we were sixteen. We mostly just quoted from the aphorisms you find in the middle of Beyond Good and Evil (“That which does not kill me, makes me stronger,” anyone?).

In college, we started to understand him. But then later, you get a little embarrassed by him. He’s not a rigorous, systematic thinker. And you know that he’s the favored philosopher of pretentious college students who don’t read any other philosophers. So you put him down for fear of being mistaken for them.

Then you pick him up again. And you read him again, and you get a new appreciation for him and the depth of his own learning and understanding. You don’t forget his limitations, but you see stuff you didn’t before. You take the time to read him more systematically and see he’s a little more of traditional philosopher (rather than just a reciter of pithy ideas) than you had thought. So maybe you don’t fall in love again (or maybe you do), but at least you fall in “like.”