The Dictionary of Human Geography

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proceeds from the nature of the mind by

an unchanging law, as a schema for co-

ordinating with each other absolutely all

things externally sensed. (Kant, cited in

Richards, 1974; emphasis added)

This stress upon ‘the epistemic structuring

of the world by the human actor was the

essence of the Kantian heritage’, so it was

claimed, and ‘constitutes the common theme

which has, in practice, been distilled from

the variety of humanistic philosophies to

which geographers of a subjectivist orientation

have turned in their endeavour to transcend

the dichotomy inherent in subject–object

relations’ (Livingstone and Harrison, 1981a:

see behavioural geography; humanistic

geography).

Many of these endeavours might more

properly be described as neo-Kantian.Neo-

Kantianismemerged in Germany in the closing

decades of the nineteenth century. Whereas

Kant had held thea priorito be ‘externally

fixed and eternally immutable’ – the ‘unchan-

ging law’ in Richard’s quotation above – the

neo-Kantians rejected the vision of a unitary

scientific method that this allowed. They sub-

stituted a key distinction between:

 the cultural and historical sciences (the

Geisteswissenschaften), which dealt with an

intelligible world of ‘non-sensuous objects

of experience’, which required inter-

pretation and understanding (verstehen),

and which were thus concerned with the

idiographic– this was the focus of the

‘Baden School’, which included Win-

delband and Rickert – and

 the natural sciences(theNaturwissenscahf-

ten), which dealt with the ‘sensible world

of science’, which required explanation

(erkla ̈ren), and which were thus concerned

with thenomothetic– this was the focus

of the ‘Marburg school’, which included

Cassirer.

Withinhuman geography, neo-Kantianism

has been seen at work in thepossibilismof

the early-twentieth-century French school

of geography (Berdoulay, 1976), in the pro-

gramme of thechicago schoolof urban soci-

ology (Park completed a doctoral dissertation

under Windelband: Entrikin, 1980), and

in humanistic geography more generally

(Jackson and Smith, 1984). In a still more

fundamental sense, Entrikin (1984) proposed

that Hartshorne’s view of the nature of geog-

raphy (above) incorporated a number of

patently neo-Kantian arguments, and that

Cassirer’s writings might provide a means of

reinvigorating geography’s various perspec-

tives upon space (see also Entrikin, 1977).

Until recently, most geographers limited

their interest in Kant to his lectures on phys-

ical geography and his first critique, largely –

one suspects – because of their interest in (or

objections to) the scientificity of geographies

underwritten by positivism. But several

writers have since reflected on Kant’s second

and third critiques,Critique of practical reason

(1788) andCritique of judgement(1790–9). In

the closing decades of the twentieth century

there was a widespread (if often tacit) accept-

ance of an essentially Kantian distinction

between three forms of knowledge or ‘reason’.

Following Habermas, for example, several

writers associated theenlightenmentproject

in particular andmodernityin general with

the formation of three autonomous spheres

(see table).

Thetaskof Habermas’ version ofcritical

theorywas, in part, to re-balance these three

spheres: to guard against the inflation of

‘science’ (and the detachment of its expert

culture from public scrutiny) which he

believed was characteristic ofcapitalismin

the early and middle twentieth century;

and against the inflation of the aesthetic

that he saw within late-twentieth-century

postmodernism(Ingram, 1987). Certainly,

Kantian aesthetics played an important part

in discussions of postmodern sensibilities in

human geography, and particular attention

was paid to the aestheticization of politics to

be found in versions of bothmodernismand

postmodernism (Harvey, 1989b).

More recently still, there been a renewed

interest in Kant’s view ofcosmopolitanism

set out in ‘Perpetual Peace: a philosophical

sketch’ (1795). To some critics, it is frankly

bizarre to juxtapose Kant’s essay with the

ethnocentrism(at best) and at worst the

‘racisms and ethnic prejudices’ of his lectures

on physical geography (Harvey, 2000a,

p. 544). But Harvey also recognized that the

‘contrast between the universality of Kant’s

science truth and knowledge

cognitive–instrumental rationality

morality norms and justice

moral–practical rationality

art authenticity and beauty

aesthetic–expressive rationality

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KANTIANISM