Bodmer_Publication

Pioch-Kiäiu, a Piegan
Blackfeet Man.
Watercolor on paper
Pioch-Kiäiu, ein Mann
der Piegan Blackfeet.
Aquarell auf Papier
[NEWBERRY NO. 42]
simultaneous cultivation of all branches of culture, there are mirrored two kinds
of pleasure” (4/5), and therefore in the course of history “precise knowledge and
limitation” take the place of “dull intuitions and incomplete inductions.”
As we have seen, the Ahndungen, as sublime experiences of the overpowering
grandeur of Nature, are dear to Humboldt. Goethe’s concept of metamorphosis
helps him connect beginning and end organically. But on the other hand, it is a law
of nature to him that earlier stages will be overcome by later ones, and he tacitly
accepts the political consequences. Thus, the cultures of the tropics are imprisoned
in “admiration and dumb wonder” (14/15), so that they depend on a mutual
fertilization of colonies and mother countries for their progress toward the “enjoyment
of nature that springs from ideas” (15). Colonialism here appears in idealistic
distortion or as an idealistic utopia: as a free exchange that, in view of the cultural
gradient that Humboldt postulates, will certainly not be egalitarian, but that is
seen as essentially free from exploitation and perhaps even as nonviolent.
In other words, there is an egalitarian perspective in Humboldt, which results
from the fact that the progress of knowledge is grounded in the capabilities of the
human mind as such, and at the same time the progress of knowledge unearths
hierarchies, between one’s own culture and others, and between levels of one’s
own society. For differences are accorded values, judgments are made and prejudices
formed, in a subtle play of in- and exclusion, acceptance and rejection.
Ultimately, an elitist tendency in Humboldt can no longer be overlooked. The
gesture of nobilitation in Bodmer and Wied, however, works against those simple
hierarchies between white and indigenous civilizations that both undoubtedly
also take for granted. That gesture implies a meeting between self and other that
is a meeting of equals.
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