Abstract

My aim in this article is to explore ways in which American thought influenced and transformed European understandings of nature. The framework of such an attempt is a transatlantic history of ideas. I focus on two examples, in which I turn to texts by Friedrich Nietzsche and Rudolf Otto. My argument consists of four parts.From as early as the end of the nineteenth century, Nietzsche has been read as a critic of naturalism and his philosophy of art as a defense of radical subjectivity.1 While the diagnosis of a philosophy of radical subjectivity is appropriate, the purported opposition to naturalism is a fallacy. Because Nietzsche only expresses himself in aphoristic or essayistic forms, however, it is not an easy ..