Thanks, Daniel, for the thoughtful response.

I, of course, agree with you that Nietzsche does have the resources for the reading you suggest — and I agree wholeheartedly with the line you draw to the Transcendentalists. That is a revival I am interested in exploring, the post-deist impulses of an Emerson or a Whitman to create an inclusive, uniquely American spirit. Nietzsche, on the other hand, is just so deformed by his rage.

(Secretly I already think of myself as Emersonian, which I demonstrate by spinning provocations out of works I have not read closely or have misunderstood. It’s a proud American intellectual tradition.)