整體而言，從十九世紀到現在，自康德物自體的判斷和黑格爾的辨證法後，道德議題漸漸傾向諸如工具理性、科學、以及社會改革。 然而就解構而言，隨著過份物化地信賴科學與烏托邦式的社會改革，反而造成生命的意義；或是存有(即個體和道德)，不再受制於基督教理與其道德論。 此外，由於對宗教儀式與教義的抨擊，古老的愛智之學再次成為道德的試金石，如何生活並且圓滿實踐自身，這份倫理性的挑戰正是超越自身的契機。
第一章 <簡介>，主要介紹愛默生與尼采哲學的相似性與特徵，嘗試由其中擬定出新的閱讀方法，爾後幫助我們自身的轉化，並藉以連結佛學中對人性的領悟。 第二章裡將釐清何為轉化的基礎。 再者，由本章的質疑衍伸出，在超越心識本身幻象的宰制與操控後，傳統道德為何失去了(或從未擁有)它本有的追尋；這在第三章與第四章中將深入討論。 第五章中，以愛的倫理勾勒出現代人的靈性新藍圖，這可視為轉化自身的一種實踐。
第二章 <個體性：轉化自身的基礎>，本章首先陳述愛默生與尼采如何提供探討心識或自身中未知部份的角度；用以反觀從人類，從省察自身到深信科學力量和社會改造的曖昧衝突；並以此思考生命的不安與苦難源自於人類想要不斷超越的渴望。 相對而言，呼應上述的三段式向度，本章將確認追求力量的意志是自立與自我創造的根蘊；重建愛默生與尼采的個體性及其顛覆面；並輔以佛理中無自性和因果論來對照, 為轉化備妥基礎。
第三章 <道德論述：轉化的顛覆性>，本章的主題是道德。 愛默生的自立，有別於利己主義或自私，強調在現代社會中成為一個道德人和無價人生的等質性，並且拒絕任何阻礙個體轉化的道德上的墮落。由於尼采比愛默生更加的擔憂此點，所以他運用更猛烈的方式推翻基督教的本體論霸權，並型塑了新的道德覺知。 這新倫理表述著三項特質：酒神精神、意志的追求力量與超人。 尼采在<悲劇的誕生>一書中，確切地預示了這三項主要概念，意志貴在不斷地向生命的力量挑戰，並非只是苟且偷生。 愛默生與尼采都重新定義了友情與愛，也同時地呼應了佛理中菩提心的概念。 本處將探究愛默生與尼采如何建立新道德觀。
第四章 <空性：轉化的活門>，本章主要是探討虛無主義。 這個討論必須解除唯心論中以自身為無恃於利，無上命令的這種本體思想的干擾。 在某個角度上，愛默生與尼采都希望成為先知型的詩人。 在談到新的道德意識之後，我們應該進一步說明其在轉化上的實用性。 由於夾雜著苦難，轉化自身陷入一個爭議的弔詭中：究竟是否決人生(虛無)，抑或是迸發創造不息的熱情(空性)。 在此，我們主要是探討如何以空性思考德行和人生、及其挑戰。 新的道德生活是否為個體轉化的策略運用？ 若是，又是如何做到？ 這些問題終將變成如何生活的探尋！ 由於他們運用類似的方法，特別是東方的人本思想與靈性思考，因此愛默生的循環理論與尼采的永恆回歸，都再現西方宗教與東方靈性思考的異同。 透過相知相惜的過程，將可運用空性的體驗來對治宗教的偽善與矯飾。 儘管如此，愛默生追尋的自立是否能超越逆境與苦難？ 又尼采的思考是對生命的肯定或否定？ 也就是說，尼采的虛無主義和無有與空性間有何關聯？ 藉由如此的探討才得以開展空性，這是佛教哲學中緊要的課題。 透過對話，佛教的觀點能釐清對無有和空性的誤解，進而使對話提升為轉化或超越的入門之道。 藉由本章，新世紀的倫理已然成熟。
第五章 <普遍性：本世紀的新倫理>，從十九世紀的哲學至今，在大多數文學、哲學的討論中，科學與社會主義是兩大主流。 它們強大的解構力量造成人類的自大與冷漠幻滅，特別是對宗教與社會體制。 然而，仍有許多問題顯露出科學與社會主義的無助。 欲重建個體與道德仍須回歸到這些面相上。 因此在最後一章，建議以愛的新倫理，引致自我的覺知。 轉化自身是無止息的，無自性與無住的觀念成為將超越現代與後現代心靈的一種召喚。

As a whole, after Kant’s judgment of thing-in-itself and Hegel’s dialectics, the moral issue gradually has run up to the issues on instrumental reason, science, and social reforms from the nineteenth century to nowadays. De-constructively speaking, with the materialistic over-trust of science and the Utopian misuse of social reformation, the meaning of life or the quest for being-in-the-world [individuality and morality] becomes isolated without any former support from religion, or accurately, Christian morality. Moreover, owing to the incessant attacks of sacraments and any religious doctrines, the old pursuit of philosophia becomes again a moral touch stone, viz., how to live and fulfill oneself. However, this ethical challenge is one opportunity of transforming the self.
In Chapter One we introduce the similarities and characters in Emerson’s and Nietzsche’s philosophy in order to take a new road of reading that help us transform ourselves and that connects the perceptions of humanity in Buddhism. The basis of transformation should be clarified in Chapter Two. Secondly, the questioning connects why traditional morality loses (or never gains) its authority to transcend the dominance and manipulation of established mental illusions; we will elaborate them in Chapter Three and Chapter Four. In Chapter Five, we will offer a spiritual newness for both ending and further discussing. This can be viewed as one promise of fulfillment in transforming the self.
Individuality: the basis of transforming the self.—In Chapter Two we depicted first how Emerson and Nietzsche revealed a prospect of exploring the unknown parts of mind or self, then reflected an ambivalent conflicts shifting from the introspection of human self to the force majeure of science and social reformation, and considered life’s anxieties and sufferings coming from human recurrent passions to transcendence. Relatively, corresponding to the three dimensions above, this chapter would affirm man’s will to power as the undercurrent of self-reliance and self-creation, then reconstruct Emersonian or Nietzschean individuality and its subversive side, and provide a contrast with “no-abiding-self” thinking and the law of cause and effect [karma] in Buddhism. We well prepares for the basis of transformation.
Moral Discourses: the subversion of transformation.—In Chapter Three, the main subject is morality. Refusing the moral decadence impeding individual’s transformation, Emerson’s self-interest, never egotism or selfishness, concentrates on a morally competent self as well as a life worth living in the modern world. With more anxiety than Emerson, Nietzsche exerts a more radical policy to overthrow the hegemony of Christian ontology and then build up his awareness toward a novel ethical dimension. In this way he achieves his Three-Oneness—the Dionysian spirit, Will to Power [Wille zur Macht], and Superman or Overman [Űbermensch]. To be sure, Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy has contoured his main concepts: the noble will to incessant overwhelming power of living, not just surviving. They both redefine friendship and love, and correspondently, the two characters echo bodhicitta in Buddhism. How Nietzsche and Emerson compose the basis of new morals should be investigated in this chapter.
Emptiness: the valve of transformation.—In Chapter Four, the main topic goes to nihilism. The discussion will get rid of the imperative vision of self. In some sense, both Emerson and Nietzsche hope to be prophetic poets. For creating a new ethics, can we further premise its praxis as a endless recurrence of transformation? Mixing with sufferings, transforming the self falls into a controversial paradox: the negation to live [nothingness] versus the passion to create [emptiness]. Here we mainly observe emptiness to defy the attacks of a new moral life. Is moral praxis a strategy of transfiguring the self? How will it be? The inquiries finally react to answering how to live. Both of them choose the similar strategies, which responds to the Eastern awareness of humanity or spirituality. Emerson’s circle theory and Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence represent one road differentiating Western religiosity from Eastern spirituality. With mutual understanding, we will enlarge the concept of inter-dependence-origination, so the religious hypocrisy can be cured through cultivating emptiness. In conclusion, one question is how Emerson’s quest for self-reliance can transcend adversities and sufferings. The other one is that Nietzsche’s thinking is an affirmation or a negation of life; namely, how Nietzsche’s thinking of nihilism relates to nothingness and emptiness. Their investigations can pave a road for emptiness, a significant topic in Buddhism philosophy. A Buddhism view can make clear the misunderstanding between nothingness and emptiness as the dialectical process, which can be treated as the threshold of transformation or transcendence. By means of this chapter, ethics for the new millennium—the end of this research—will be exerted.
Universality: the ethics of love.—From the nineteenth-century philosophy until now, science and socialism become two main streams for most literary and philosophical discourses. Both of them contain strong deconstructive power disillusioning human arrogance and ignorance, especially in religion and social hierarchy. However, there are still many psychical and social problems exposing science and socialism to helplessness. Re-construing both individuality and morality must return to facing those problems. Hence in the final chapter, we suggest a spiritual newness comport with the new ethics of love. Transforming the self is without boundary. “No-abiding-self” or “non-dwelling” thinking will become an evocation beyond the modern and postmodern mind.

Selected Bibliography: Emerson and Nietzsche
1. Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ed. Edward Waldo Emerson. 12 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1903-04.
The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ed. Robert E. Spiller, Stephen E. Whicher, and Wallace E. Williams. 3 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959-72.
The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ed. William Gillman, Ralph H. Orth et al. 16 vols. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960-82.
The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ed. Ralph L. Rusk and Eleanor M. Tilton. 9 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1939-94.
The Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. 4 vols. New York: Tudor Publishing Company, 1965.
2. Collected Works of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner. Trans. Walter Arnold Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.
Beyond Good and Evil. Trans. Walter Arnold Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1966.
The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner. Trans. Walter Arnold Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.
Daybreak. Trans. R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Human, All Too Human. Trans. R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Nietzsche: Selections. Ed. Richadr Schacht. New York: Macmillan, 1993.
On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo. Trans. Walter Arnold Kaufman. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.
The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner. Trans. Walter Arnold Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.
The Gay Science. Trans. Walter Arnold Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1974.
The Will to Power. Trans. Walter Arnold Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale. New
York: Vintage Press, 1968.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Trans. R. J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin Books, 1969.
Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ. Trans. R. J. Hollingdale. London:
Penguin Books, 1968.
Selected Bibliography: Other Authors
Adam, Hazard. Critical Theory Since Plato. Orlando: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992.
Alderman, Harold. Nietzsche’s Gift. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1977.
Allen, Gay Wilson. Waldo Emerson: A Biography. New York: Viking Press, 1981.
Ansell-Pearson, Keith. An Introduction to Nietzsche as Political Thinker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
___, ed. Nietzsche and Modern German Thought. London: Routledge, 1991.
Baker, Carlos. Emerson among the Eccentrics. New York: Viking Press, 1981.
Bauer, Ralph. “Against the European Grain: The Emerson-Nietzsche Connection in Europe, 1920-1990.” ESQ 43 (1997): 69-93.
Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Puritan Origins of the American Self. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975.
Berkowitz, Peter. Nietzsche: The Ethics of an Immoralist. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.
Bloom, Harold. Agon: Towards A theory of Revisionism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.
___, ed. Ralph Waldo Emerson. New York: Chelsea House, 1985.
Cady, Edwin H. and Louis Budd, eds. On Emerson: The best from American Literature. Durham: Duke University Press, 1988.
Carpenter, Frederic Ives. Emerson Handbook. New York: Hendricks House, 1953.
Cavell, Stanley. Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
___. The Sense of Walden. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1981.
Christy, Arthur. The Orient in American Transcendentalism: A Study of Emerson, Thoreau, and Alcott. New York: Columbia University Press, 1932.
Clark, Maudemarie. Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Conway, Daniel W. Nietzsche and the Political. London: Routledge, 1997.
de Botton, Alain. The Consolations of Philosophy. New York: Vintage Books, 2000.
de Man, Paul. Blindness and Insight. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983.
Derrida, Jacques. Margins of Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
___. Writing and Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
Detwiler, Bruce. Nietzsche and the Politics of Aristocratic Radicalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Eagleton, Terry. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990.
Ellington, James W., ed. “On a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns.” In Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. Indianapolis: Hacket Publishing, 1993.
Friedl, Herwig. “Fate, Power, and History in Emerson and Nietzsche.” ESQ 43 (1997): 267-93.
Gagnier, Regenia. “The Law of Progress and the Ironies of Individualism in the Nineteenth Century.” New Literary History 31(2000): 315-36.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Heremeneutics, Religion, and Ethics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.
Gardiner, Patrick. Schopenhauer. Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1997.
Geldard, Richard G. God in Concord: Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Awakening to the Infinite. New York: Larson Publications, 1999.
___. The Esoteric Emerson: The Spiritual Teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Hudson: Lindisfarne Press, 1993.
Gelpi, Albert. The Tenth Muse: The Psyche of the American Poet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Gelpi, Donald. Endless Seeker: The Religious Quest of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Lanham: University of American Press, 1991.
Goodman, Russell B. American Philosophy and the Romantic Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
___. “Moral Perfectionism and Democracy: Emerson, Nietzsche, Cavell.” ESQ 43 (1997): 159-80.
Harding, Brian. American Literature in Context, 1830-65. Vol. 2. New York: Methuen, 1982.
Hayman, Ronald. Nietzsche. London: Phoenix, 1997.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. New York: Harper & Row, 1962.
___. Nietzsche. 2 Vols. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991.
___. The End of Philosophy. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.
Heller, Erich, ed. The Importance of Nietzsche: Ten Essays. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988.
Hollingdale, R. J. Nietzsche. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973.
Hopkins, Vivian. Spires of Form: A Study of Emerson Aesthetic Theory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951.
Howe, Irving. The American Newness: Culture and Politics in the Age of Emerson. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986.
Hunt, Lester H. Nietzsche and the Origin of Virtue. London: Routledge, 1991.
Jaspers, Karl. Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgment. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952.
Kateb, George. Emerson and Self-Reliance. London: Sage Publications, 1995.
Kaufmann, Walter Arnold. Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, and Antichrist. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950.
King, Richard. Indian Philosophy: An Introduction to Hindu and Buddhist Thought. Edinburgh: Maya Publishers, 1999.
Klein, Wayne. Nietzsche and the Promise of Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997.
Koelb, Calyton. Nietzsche as Postmodernist: Essays Pro and Contra. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990.
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Leary, L. Ralph Waldo Emerson: An Interpretative Essay. Boston: Twayne, 1980.
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Lopez, Michael. Emerson and Power: Creative Antagonism in the Nineteenth Century. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1996.
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___, and Kathleen M. Higgins, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
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___, ed. Nietzsche and Asian Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago University, 1991.
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Porte, Joel, ed. Emerson: Prospect and Retrospect. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982.
___, ed. In Respect of Egotism: Studies in American Romantic Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
___ and Saundra Morris, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
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___. Henry David Thoreau: A Life of the Mind. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
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___. Nietzsche, Genealogy, Morality: Essays on Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
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___. The Joy of Philosophy: Thinking Thin versus the Passionate Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
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___. Emerson’s Ethics. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999.
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