Immanuel Kant, Subjectivism, and Human Geography: A Preliminary Investigation

Abstract

While the influence of Immanuel Kant on the development of geography has long been recognized, the discussion of his impact has been largely restricted to the analysis of his views on the nature and place of geography within the structure of the sciences. The content of Kant's physische Geographie has been stressed at the expense of a consideration of the implications of Kantian philosophy for human geographical understanding. Although not explicitly acknowledged, the neo- Kantian resolution of the subject-object dilemma has been paralleled in the work of the predecessors of the subjectivist perspective in human geography. The more recent reassertion of a humanistic geography can also be seen as a perpetuation by its practitioners of the neo-Kantian tradition from which subjectivist philosophies of the turn of the century, upon which they have relied, were born. A re-examination of this form of idealism may provide a more articulate philosophical foundation for