The Newberry Library (Venue Partner)
60 W Walton St
312.943.9090
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Books: Discussion
Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen: American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas
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- When
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Thursday Feb 9 (6–7pm)
- Where
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Directions: The Newberry Library is located at 60 West Walton Street, Chicago, IL, directly across from Chicago’s famed Washington Square Park and just a few blocks west of Michigan Avenue.
- Price
- Links
In American Nietzsche, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen delves deeply into Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy, and America's reception of it, to tell the story of his curious appeal. Beginning her account with Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom the seventeen-year-old Nietzsche read fervently, she shows how Nietzsche's ideas first burst on American shores at the turn of the 20th century, and how they continued alternately to invigorate and to shock Americans for the century to come. She also delineates the broader intellectual and cultural contexts within which a wide array of commentators drew insight and inspiration from Nietzsche's claims. At the same time, she explores how his image as an iconoclastic immoralist was put to work in American popular culture, making Nietzsche an unlikely posthumous celebrity capable of inspiring both teenagers and scholars alike.
