NP -The Foul Reign of Emerson’s ‘Self-Reliance’

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Although Emerson's philosophical essays never reached me the way 
Thoreau's diaries do, I always hear a genuine American voice in them, 
which - the provided article is an indicator - still seems to be singing 
today. And no less a person than Friedrich Nietzsche was a steady and 
benevolent reader of Emerson. At the end of the essay "Schopenhauer als 
Erzieher" [1874] Nietzsche consentingly quotes Emerson with a long 
passage on the nature of the great (non-academic) thinker; with a motto 
from Emerson ("Dem Dichter und Weisen sind alle Dinge befreundet und 
geweiht, alle Erlebnisse nützlich, alle Tage heilig, alle Menschen 
göttlich") starts the first edition of "Die fröhliche Wissenschaft ('la 
gaya scienza')" from 1882; eventually, in "Götzen-Dämmerung" [1889], 
Nietzsche gives a characterization of Emerson as a philosophical writer. 
And though he mocks him a little there's much sympathy shining through:

"/Emerson/. --- Much more enlightened, adventurous, multifarious, 
refined than Carlyle; above all, happier.... Such a man instinctively 
feeds on pure ambrosia and leaves alone the indigestible in things. 
Compared with Carlyle a man of taste. --- Carlyle, who had great 
affection for him, nevertheless said of him: 'He does not give /us/ 
enough to bite on': which maybe truly said but not to the detriment of 
Emerson. --- Emerson possesses that good-natured and quick-witted 
cheerfulness that discourages all earnestness; he has absolutely no idea 
how old he is or how young he will be --- he could say of himself, in 
the words of Lope de Vega: '/yo me sucedo a mi mismo/'. [*]. His spirit 
is always finding reasons for being contented and even grateful; and now 
and then he verges on the cheerful transcendence of that worthy 
gentleman who, returning from an amorous rendezvous /tamquam re bene 
gesta/, said gratefully: '/Ut desint vires, tamen est laudanda 
voluptas/'. [**]"

([*]: I am my own successor; [**] ... that worthy gentleman who, 
returning from an amorous rendezvous as if things had gone well, said 
gratefully: 'Though the power be lacking, the lust is praiseworthy'. 
'/Voluptas/' replaces the usual 'voluntas' = will.)

TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
(chapter: Expeditions of an Untimely Man, # 13, translation: R.J. 
Hollingdale)

In contrary to thinkers like Hegel or Heidegger, hardly anything gets 
lost in translation in the case of Crazy Fritz. Having Nietzsche's 
original aphorism here by my side, I can say that the translator did a 
pretty good job.



On 05.12.2011 15:36, David Morris wrote:

> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/magazine/riff-ralph-waldo-emerson.html?_r=1
>
> The excessive love of individual liberty that debases our national
> politics? It found its original poet in Ralph Waldo. The plague of
> devices that keep us staring into the shallow puddle of our dopamine
> reactions, caressing our touch screens for another fix of our own
> importance? That’s right: it all started with Emerson’s
> “Self-Reliance.” Our fetish for the authentically homespun and the
> American affliction of ignoring volumes of evidence in favor of the
> flashes that meet the eye, the hunches that seize the gut? It’s
> Emerson again, skulking through Harvard Yard in his cravat and greasy
> undertaker’s waistcoat, while in his mind he’s trailing silken robes
> fit for Zoroaster and levitating on the grass.
>
>


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