Bodmer_Publication

To the rational knowledge of the organic coherence of everything that exists is
thus ascribed an aesthetic / hedonistic value, which is unfolded in, and justified
by, the “Introductory Reflections” as a whole.
It is rather implictly than explicitly that Humboldt gives the reader a rationale
for positing this value, but a brief remark at the beginning of his reflections provides
a secure grounding for it: “Nature, however, is the realm of freedom.” (4)
Surely, in contemplation of the “realm of freedom” the mind experiences itself,
idealistically and pleasurably at once, as free, and through the hedonistic perspective
of the text an answer to the question of the good life becomes visible. 16
When the order of things becomes apparent, this is pleasurable, “schön.” And as
knowledge and pleasure are fused, it becomes comprehensible that precision has
aesthetic qualities. This becomes evident from a simple comparison between the
photograph of an excavation and the corresponding archeological drawing, or of
photographed landscapes from the Upper Missouri with Bodmer’s plates. The
product of the human hand is in each case characterized by an excess of precision
that is also an excess of beauty. 17
That knowledge is pleasure does therefore not at all mean that it is permitted to
become mushy – on the contrary. (Accordingly, Humboldt’s Kosmos argues for a
strong empiricism as the basic method of science. 18 ) A precise stock-taking of what
is the case is the basis of knowledge and of aesthetic appeal. Bodmer’s two tableaux
with “utensils” (Tableaux 21 and 48) demonstrate this: quite apart from the
well-designed arrangement (see below), the individual object already has aesthetic
qualities that are not only intrinsic to it – after all, these things are beautiful – but
also a product of their representation. The two tableaux with the series of landscapes
(Tableaux 34 and 35) are similar in this respect, though other forces are at
work here, too: these are not for nothing picturesque shapes, each with a character
of its own (an aspect that will be discussed later), and geological formations in
which the earth’s history and the forces that shaped it become visible.
Causality, which becomes visible in these prints, plays an important role in
Kosmos, as the work deals with the theoretical / methodological implications of
the search for organic unity. Unity becomes visible as the multiplicity of phenomena
can be explained through recourse to origins and causalities. Unity is thus,
apparently, conceived of as substance – the single thing that is the origin of multiplicity
– and at the same time as form – one general law of causality unfolds into
causalities from which results the multiplicity of phenomena. This does not only
constitute an idealistic perspective (“in understanding nature, we can succeed, as
it were, in mastering the raw material of empirical observation through ideas,”
[6]) 19 but also a historical interest. Humboldt practices natural history, the laws of
causality play themselves out in time.
This cannot tel quel be applied to Bodmer’s oeuvre. In the image the same place
in the process of (re)cognition is held by relations not in time, but in planes and
spaces. The result, however, is again the contemplation of the unity of the object,
in which knowledge and pleasure come together. Where there is a patent composition
of several objects, as in Tableaux 21 and 48 (already referred to above), their
relatedness is a product not of their nature (shape, purpose, ethnic group, etc.),
but of the artist’s hand; on the whole, it is external to the things. In the classical
V edute, which we find above all in the vignettes, it results from the careful selection
of a point of view and a type of framing, wherever possible: a tree on the left,
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