Brinker-Gabler argues that Andreas-Salomé - committed as she was to the"double direction" of rigorous thought and individual nuancing - refocused dominant visions of gender, sexuality, culture, religion, and creativity through a female lens.
In a "disenchanted world" (Weber), Andreas-Salomé offered an image epistemology or"aesthetics of b(u)ilding," as Brinker-Gabler calls it, that seeks to retrieve the multilayered past embedded in individuals and cultural forms, thus providing positive accounts of sexual and cultural difference,experience, narcissism, and creativity in modern life.
