Nietzsche s Overman & Emerson s Over-soul Written for 20th-Century Philosophy Columbia College Chicago Professor: David J. Thomas October, 2010 Daniel R. Dehaan
Nietzsche s Overman & Emerson s Over-soul Dehaan 1 There is no question as to whether Nietzsche was a reader of Emerson. The most simple connection between Emerson s Over-soul and Nietzsche s Overman, is that Emerson labeling of the idea as the Over-soul could have just been lost to inaccuracy of translation, and when Nietzsche s work was translated back to english, it had transformed to the Overman. In fact there was such an obvious tie between Nietzsche and Emerson that Walter Kaufmann includes a section specifically on Emerson in his translator notes prefacing The Gay Science. Emerson was one of Nietzsche s great loves ever since he read him as a schoolboy. But while Nietzsche was at home in Latin and Greek, French and Italian, he read Emerson in German Translations. (Kaufmann, pg. 7) Kaufmann goes on the tell about how Nietzsche copied many quotation of Emerson into his own notebooks, and even the first edition of The Gay Science had an epigraph from Emerson. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all things are profitable, all days holy, all men divine. There is no evidence to confirm that Nietzsche read Emerson s 1842 lecture Prospects, but the similarities between Emerson s opening paragraph, and the Nietzsche chosen title for The Gay Sciences, are striking. [ ] I hate the builders of dungeons in the air. Ascending souls sing Paean, said the Magian. As cending souls congratulate each other on the admirable harmonies of the world. We read another commission in the cipher of nature: we were made for another office, professors of the Joyous Science. (Emerson, 1842) In the manuscripts for 1842 lecture Prospects Emerson sites Zoroaster as the source from which he pulled the two sentence about ascending souls. This even further ties the two ideas of Nietzsche s Overman and Emerson s Over-soul through the unifying Zarathustra. Shifting our focus now from the obvious influence of Emerson on Nietzsche to the influence the Emerson was drawing from at the time that he was conceiving and developing his ideas and his 1841 essay The Over-soul. Emerson was what some may refer to as an enlightened man of faith, in his earlier life he had a been a preacher, until shortly after his wife s death in 1832 he was asked to leave his church due to proclamation he had made regarding the purpose, functions, and realities of certain traditions within the church. This marks the beginning of Emerson spirituality driven search of philosophy. Emerson essay The Over-Soul begins with two epigraphs. The first come from the English philosopher and poet Henry More, and his poem, Psychozia, or, the Life of Soul (1647) "But souls that of his own good life partake, He loves as his own self; dear as his eye They are to Him: He'll never them forsake: When they shall die, then God himself shall die: They live, they live in blest eternity." This introduces the common running the theme throughout the essay,of the part, or particle of the all. That there is the soul that each individual contains, and also the soul of the eternal one, that contain each and all. This idea is crucial to much of Emerson s thinking, the many and the all.
Nietzsche s Overman & Emerson s Over-soul Dehaan 2 The second epigraph is from Emerson s own essay Unity. Space is ample, east and west, But two cannot go abreast, Cannot travel in it two: Yonder masterful cuckoo Crowds every egg out of the nest, Quick or dead, except its own; A spell is laid on sod and stone, Night and Day 've been tampered with, Every quality and pith Surcharged and sultry with a power That works its will on age and hour. Here Emerson focuses on two ideas, the first is the dependence of opposing dualities. Night an Day, he shows here what he means by dependence of opposing dualities. In this example, night could not be Night, without there being a Day, to contrast it with, as well as the opposite, no Day without the Night. The second idea is shown in the last two line of the epigraph, [ ] a power/ That works its will on age and hour. This will is what will soon become understood as the Over-soul. For the purpose of the paper we will leave out all of the gradation of Emerson s Oversoul and look simply to his attempts to define the Over-soul in paragraphs 4-10, so as to allow us to return the Nietzsche Idea of the Overman, and the comparison between the two. Emerson understands that at times it is more easily said what the soul is not, All goes to show that the soul in man in not an ogran [ ] is not a function [ ] is not a faculty [ ] is no the intellect of the will [ ] Emerson implies that all of these are tools, and it is the soul the animates or puts into use these tools, but is not in, or is not the these things themselves. Returning to paragraph three, Emerson attempts to put into words what the Over-soul is, or where it is. The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we rest, as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-soul, within which every man's particular being is contained and made one with all other [ ] Here is described the Unity in which all parts, or particles are contained, Emerson compares the soul the animates the tools that we are, to the Earth, and the Over-soul that contains our soul, to the atmosphere. Emerson goes on to say, We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul.
Nietzsche s Overman & Emerson s Over-soul Dehaan 3 We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles [ ] Emerson returns to this idea of the dependency of opposing dualities. The first, the Night, is mans unrelenting dependency on our physical senses, as opposed to our spiritual resources. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which ever part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE. This is the second of the dependent opposing dualities, the Day, the culmination of all succession, of all division, of all parts, and particles, the Eternal ONE. This idea is the hear of what the Over-soul was for Emerson. Just as Emerson sites Zoroaster, Nietzsche uses him, or Zarathustra as the main character in his 1883-85 text Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None. The story begins with Zarathustra leaving everything to go live in solitude on a mountain, here Zarathustra, and the reader discover the dependencies of opposing dualities, and thus Nietzsche s Overman, or Emerson s Over-soul, but realized here as a journey, and a task for realization. The first dependent opposing dualities are the burden of a gift to give, and a wanting, waiting recipient. Zarathustra speaks to the sun as a being who has come to understand the manifold objects that are contained within his own existence, mainly in this case, the Overman, that for Zarathustra there is no value difference between him and the sun they are the same in the Eternal ONE. You great star, what would your happiness be had you not those for whom you shine? For ten years you have climbed to my cave: you would have tired of you light and of the journey had in not been for me and my eagle and my serpent. But we waited for you every morning, took your overflow from you and blessed you for it. Here the Sun is the part, or particle with a gift or burden of a gift to give, and Zarathustra and his animals are the wanting, waiting recipients. It is through the sun that Zarathustra comes to the understanding and feels the weight of the burden of his gift, determining that he must find his wanting, waiting recipients, as the sun has found him. Behold, I am weary of my wisdom, [ ] I need hands outstretched to receive it. Nietzsche goes on to what become the second dependent opposing dualities; under and over, down and up. Like [the sun], I must go under go down, [ ] Bless the cup that wants to overflow [ ] Thus Zarathustra began to go under. Zarathustra descends, goes under, to the people, with the hope that his gift of awakening man to the Unity, the Overman, a new day my rise, go over. What the reader will come to understand, as they progress through the prologue is that for Zarathustra, for Emerson, and for Nietzsche, the Overman, and the Over-soul, are very much the same. How they differ is that the story of Zarathustra, and the quest he sets out upon, is interested in the journey to the Overman, as he explains while speaking to the crowd. Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman a rope over an abyss. A dangerous across, a dangerous dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and stopping. The idea of a Great Unity, and even the concept, of there being a great unifying something, that is not external from the observer, but internal, stretches far back into the history of philosophy and spiritually. Both Emerson and Nietzsche were interested in text regarding Zoroaster, as well as the Bagavad Gita, specifically Chapter XI entitled Viswarupadarsanam, or, The Book of the Manifesting of the One and Manifold.
Nietzsche s Overman & Emerson s Over-soul Dehaan 4 So did Pandu's Son behold All this universe enfold All its huge diversity Into one vast shape, and be Visible, and viewed, and blended In one Body. subtle, splendid, Nameless. th' All-comprehending God of Gods, the Never-Ending Deity Emerson closes with what I believe Zarathustra set out to learn when he ascended to the mountain top and what he set out to teach when he went under to find man. So come I to live in thoughts, and act with energies, which are immortal. Thus revering the soul, and learning, as the ancient said, that "its beauty is immense," man will come to see that the world is the perennial miracle which the soul worketh, and be less astonished at particular wonders; he will learn that there is no profane history; that all history is sacred; that the universe is represented in an atom, in a moment of time. He will weave no longer a spotted life of shreds and patches, but he will live with a divine unity. He will cease from what is base and frivolous in his life, and be content with all places and with any service he can render. He will calmly front the morrow in the negligency of that trust which carries God with it, and so hath already the whole future in the bottom of the heart.