This is an exceptionally rich book. Zavatta's discussions of Emerson are lucid and compelling, and her readings of Nietzsche offer a number of fresh insights. Zavatta shows that although Nietzsche rejects many of Emerson's metaphysical views, he nonetheless develops certain Emersonian insights about the nature of agency, freedom, individuality, and the great individual's relation to society. Zavatta's discussions of Nietzschean freedom, Nietzsche's endorsement of
virtuous egoism, and the individual's relation to culture are especially illuminating and will advance the debates on these long-disputed topics.
Benedetta Zavatta is Marie Curie Fellow Researcher at the ITEM (CNRS/ENS) Paris. She is currently a member of the HyperNietzsche Association, the International Society for Nietzsche Studies (ISNS), and the Seminario Permanente Nietzscheano. Her principal research interest is German philosophy of the 19th Century, with attention to Nietzsche and his sources. Zavatta has been Research Fellow at the Weimar Classics Foundation, the Deutsches Seminar of
Basel University, the LMU Munich, the University of Oxford, the New University of Lisbon, and Columbia University in New York. She has also participated in various European projects in the field of Digital Humanities (HyperNietzsche, Discovery, Agora, among others).