It is my contention that Nietzsche undertakes Ariadne as a solution to the inadequacies of Dionysus (the loneliness of what assimilates in the enaction of its values, what negates in alignment towards itself) precisely because she is a woman—and hence most capable of inverting the philosophical concept Woman as a synecdoche of all marginalized groups within structures of dominant thought: the disabled, the stateless, the queer, the dispossessed. In order to fully explore the potential capacities of this perspective, I piece together Nietzsche's sense of Ariadne through his every extant reference to her—from his Empedocles outline to \"Ariadne's Lament\" and his January 1889 letters—unfolding her as a critique of Woman and as a parodic rejection of Wagnerian Romantic nationalism (as a counter-Brünhilde) in order to arrive, finally, at the point of constructing an Ariadneac perspective and set of questions, principally a reevaluation of the Übermensch and the Wille zur Macht (Will to Power) away from their conceptual baggage as piled on by generations of Nietzschean commentators, in order to arrive at a position where language itself can be approached non-conceptually, non-metaphysically, and non-representationally, so that we can undertake a new poetry
","abstract_html":"<p>It is my contention that Nietzsche undertakes Ariadne as a solution to the inadequacies of Dionysus (the loneliness of what assimilates in the enaction of its values, what negates in alignment towards itself) precisely because she is a woman—and hence most capable of inverting the philosophical concept Woman as a synecdoche of all marginalized groups within structures of dominant thought: the disabled, the stateless, the queer, the dispossessed. In order to fully explore the potential capacities of this perspective, I piece together Nietzsche's sense of Ariadne through his every extant reference to her—from his Empedocles outline to "Ariadne's Lament" and his January 1889 letters—unfolding her as a critique of Woman and as a parodic rejection of Wagnerian Romantic nationalism (as a counter-Brünhilde) in order to arrive, finally, at the point of constructing an Ariadneac perspective and set of questions, principally a reevaluation of the Übermensch and the Wille zur Macht (Will to Power) away from their conceptual baggage as piled on by generations of Nietzschean commentators, in order to arrive at a position where language itself can be approached non-conceptually, non-metaphysically, and non-representationally, so that we can undertake a new poetry</p>","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Jessen, Jessica"],"institution":null,"degree_name":null,"degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":"Philosophy","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":[],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2023,"date_issued":"2023-11-01T07:00:00Z","date_published":"2023-11-01T07:00:00Z","updated_at":"2026-07-24T02:04:05Z","subjects":["Nietzsche","Ariadne","eternal recurrence","reevaluation","will to power"],"languages":[],"rights":[],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd/373","outbound_label":"Repository record","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Jessen, Jessica"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date.available","label":"Dc Date Available","values":["2033-12-09T08:00:00Z"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Philosophy"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Dissertation"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Nietzsche","Ariadne","eternal recurrence","reevaluation","will to power"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd/373"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["It is my contention that Nietzsche undertakes Ariadne as a solution to the inadequacies of Dionysus (the loneliness of what assimilates in the enaction of its values, what negates in alignment towards itself) precisely because she is a woman—and hence most capable of inverting the philosophical concept Woman as a synecdoche of all marginalized groups within structures of dominant thought: the disabled, the stateless, the queer, the dispossessed. In order to fully explore the potential capacities of this perspective, I piece together Nietzsche's sense of Ariadne through his every extant reference to her—from his Empedocles outline to \"Ariadne's Lament\" and his January 1889 letters—unfolding her as a critique of Woman and as a parodic rejection of Wagnerian Romantic nationalism (as a counter-Brünhilde) in order to arrive, finally, at the point of constructing an Ariadneac perspective and set of questions, principally a reevaluation of the Übermensch and the Wille zur Macht (Will to Power) away from their conceptual baggage as piled on by generations of Nietzschean commentators, in order to arrive at a position where language itself can be approached non-conceptually, non-metaphysically, and non-representationally, so that we can undertake a new poetry
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"],"dc:identifier":["https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd/373"],"dc:subject":["Nietzsche","Ariadne","eternal recurrence","reevaluation","will to power"],"dc:title":["Nietzsche's Ariadne: a new perspective on the eternal recurrence"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["Philosophy"],"thesis:degree_level":["Dissertation"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-24T02:04:05Z"}