The Romance of Individualism in Emerson and Nietzsche

by David Mikics

Overview

The great American thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson and the influential German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, though writing in different eras and ultimately developing significantly different philosophies, both praised the individual's wish to be transformed, to be fully created for the first time. Emerson and Nietzsche challenge us to undertake the task of identity on our own, in order to see (in Nietzsche's phrase) "how one becomes what one is."

David Mikics's The Romance of Individualism in Emerson and Nietzsche examines the argument, as well as the affinity, between these two philosophers. Nietzsche was an enthusiastic reader of Emerson and inherited from him an interest in provocation as a means of instruction, an understanding of the permanent importance of moods and transitory moments in our lives, and a sense of the revolutionary character of impulse. Both were deliberately outrageous thinkers, striving to shake us out of our complacency.

Rather than choosing between Emerson and Nietzsche, Professor Mikics attends to Nietzsche's struggle with Emerson's example and influence. Elegant in its delivery, The Romance of Individualism in Emerson and Nietzsche offers a significant commentary on the visions of several contemporary theorists whose interests intersect with those of Emerson and Nietzsche, especially Stanley Cavell, Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Zizek, and Harold Bloom.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780821414965
Publisher:	Ohio University Press
Publication date:	06/30/2003
Series:	Series In Continental Thought , #31
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	278
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

An associate professor of English at the University of Houston, David Mikics is the author of The Limits of Moralizing: Pathos and Subjectivity in Spenser and Milton, as well as articles on contemporary literature and literary theory.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Key to Abbreviated References	xi
	Introduction	1
Chapter 1	Emerson's Individualism	32
Chapter 2	The Birth of Tragedy	58
Chapter 3	The Untimely Meditations	91
Chapter 4	Daybreak and The Gay Science	145
Chapter 5	Emerson's "Fate," the Genealogy of Morals, Ecce Homo	186
	Conclusion	226
	Notes	231
	Works Cited	251
	Index	259

Editorial Reviews

Mikics has a voice of his own, a rare accomplishment. He has written a lucid, lively, and accessible book that will appeal to a wide audience in both Continental theory and American studies. The Romance of Individualism in Emerson and Nietzsche is an original study that combines philosophical clarity with a literary critic's attention to detail.”—Gerald L. Bruns, William P. and Hazel B. White, Professors of English, Notre Dame University

From the Publisher