Nietzsche and Emerson

I very stubbornly teach Emerson's "Self-Reliance" to my freshmen, despite their plaintive cries about its length and archaic language, because "Self-Reliance" contains many important ideas and is such an influential work of American literature, though how influential I didn't yet realize.

For I was recently surprised from left field this last time I taught Emerson, when a student asked how similar Emerson's ideas are to Nietzsche's in "Thus Spake Zarathustra." I had to very sheepishly confess that I had not read this very standard work of Western philosophy.

That was quickly rectified.

I'm about a third the way through "Thus Spake Zarathustra," and already I can pick out very telling similarities between Emerson and Nietzsche. For example, both lambast those "for whom virtues are penances;" both seek men ("ubermenche") that can can rise above the every-day, mundane, and trivial; both are individualists; both were quite sexist; both desire not disciples of great men, but for people to become great in and of themselves.

Emerson declares that the next Shakespeare will not arise from the study of Shakespeare, and will not be called the next Shakespeare when s/he does (just as the next Michael Jordan will not be called the next Jordan); Nietzsche also has his Zarathustra at the end of Part 1 instruct his disciples to follow him no longer but to turn on him and discover the overman for themselves.

These affinities between these 2 men are not incidental; a cursory google search informs me that "All students of Nietzsche know of his profound admiration for Emerson’s writing," that "Emerson's trans-Atlantic influence on the German thinker...has long been acknowledged," and that "Nietzsche praised Emerson fulsomely in his journals and letters."

The irony is that this student of mine was using Nietzsche as a way to try and get a handle on the Emerson, while Emerson in turn has helped me gain a much firmer grasp of Nietzsche.