Nietzsche loved Emerson because Emerson lived the "overman" when Nietzsche felt forced to only tell the tale, (and tell it explosively well). (Not sure I've read any more "dynamite" philosophy than our man Freddy.)

Emerson "cut to the quick of it" and revealed all for those with eyes to see it. For all the teenagers championing Thoreau's Walden of 222 days, most never discover he was squatting on Emerson's land. Emerson came full circle where HDT was content just to see the other side from the Gap.

Nietzsche admired Emerson because the heights these two were able to rest in, most of our more celebrated minds haven't arrived to witness for moments.

Freud said if Nietzsche, “that he had a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any other man who ever lived or was likely to live.”

Now before you think what we're all thinking: "Sure, but what would Jung have said (to greater effect)?", just consider what his love, admiration and excitement of and for Emerson says. Dude's so good, he's quarantined from high school and undergrad teaching after only an essay called "Self Reliance". You have to be a grad student, genius, or just another incognito poet to even access the vast majority of what Emerson has given us.

Sure Nietzsche is famous for the smear campaign that has the popular consciousness believing he's some arch villain advocating Nihilism. Consider then the grandeur of Emerson that he's almost wholly covered up. None but these few phenoms and pyramid-scheme higher-Ed-heads get him and perhaps so much sweeter is this forbidden fruit for it.

So few finish Philosophy. Most give up on some branch or best-efforted concoction of system. Fewer still who've finished come back to tell us about it. Plato, Nietzsche (even for all his "faults"), Wittgenstein, Emerson. These are heights which have not only been achieved by the Humanity "us", but heights which have had their trails blazed by these paragons for the travel we too may tred.