Darwin, Nietzsche, Kafka, and the Problem of Mimesis

Abstract

Darwin's evolutionary theory crossed disciplinary boundaries from the moment of its publication, to exert a revolutionary impact on political theory, economics, and particularly the social histories of Marx and of the Social Darwinists. Less well known is the genealogy of Darwin's influence in the realms of philosophy and art, where we may trace him as the author of a theory of that reverses the Aristotelian aesthetic by showing life itself to be mimetic under certain conditions. Furthermore, the theory of derived by Nietzsche, and subsequently Kafka, from Darwin preserves its political teleology, and therefore functions as a secular and vitalistic complement, if not alternative, to Rene Girard's religious and psychological neo-Hegelian theory of imitation.' If Aristotle writes in the Poetics, imitation is natural to mankind from childhood on: Man is differentiated from other animals because he is the most imitative of them,2 Darwin discovered that in the world of nature both plants and animals practice mimicry or in the interest of protective adaptation to ensure the survival of their species: Insects often resemble for the sake of protection various objects, such as green or decayed leaves, dead twigs, bits of lichen, flowers, spines, excrement of birds, and living insects; but to this latter point I shall hereafter recur. The resemblance is often wonderfully close, and is not confined to colour, but extends to form, and even to the manner in which the insects hold themselves. The caterpillars which project motionless like dead twigs from the bushes on which they feed, offer an excellent instance of a resemblance of this kind.3