The Fractal Dynamics of a Nietzschean World

Abstract

This essay proceeds from the premise that mathematical concepts and relations can be appropriated for the purpose of creating new modes of interpretation of existing texts and phenomena.1 More specifically, it brings together certain aspects of fractal geometry and chaos theory to provide an interpretive frame for the philosophical work of Friedrich Nietzsche. What follows from this concatenation is purely speculative, neither mathematical in its form and intent nor exegetical in its reading of Nietzsche. There is no concerted attempt made here to justify this method of interpretation in the context of Nietzsche’ s own epistemological speculations. In fact such a task might well be quite difficult given his criticisms of the mathematical project — its efforts to equalize and make the same, its simplification of the tremendous complexity of the world, and its democratic design to preserve life for its average and reactive aspects. Rather if any justification is sought at all, it is from the results of this interpretation and whether or not it carries with it the spirit of Nietzsche’s thought. What follows then is the explication of a method of interpretation, and this is offered under the auspices of Nietzsche’s argument that if knowledge is always a means to something, a means to the creation of certain effects, then “the most valuable insights are methods.”