"We neither strive for, wish, seek nor desire anything because we think it to be good, but, on the contrary, we adjudge a thing to be good because we strive for, wish, seek, or desire it." Spinoza's aphorism could fittingly preface the life story of Lou Andreas-Salomé. She strove, she wished, she sought, she desired, and the varied targets of her unceasing efforts were good because she willed them to be good. Her pursuits were marked by singular irreverence toward established authority; by insolent iconoclasm; by unrepentant individualism, if not egotism. In this sense she was a rebel. But since she was not just at variance with her contemporary social and philosophical environment, but substituted for obsolete values constructs of her own, she was also a revolutionary of sorts; not by intent or design, to be sure, but incidentally, because in the wake of her self-indulgent intellectual...