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‘philosophy’ is an open question, and none of
them would be comfortable with the legislative
function that the other humanities and social
sciences so often accorded to philosophy.
In fact, appeals to philosophy as judge and
arbiter were subjected to two main criticisms.
The first accepted the importance of philo-
sophical reflection, but warned against its
ideological deployment:
At its best, the ‘philosophy of geography’ is
that system of general ideas concerned with
the direction and content of geographical
work which practitioners elaborate during
praxis ... At its worst, the ‘philosophy of
geography’ is where those who have read
philosophy in general and disciples of
‘more advanced ideas in other disciplines’
exercise ideological power over those who
remain with practical concerns. (Peet,
1998, pp. 8–9)
Closely connected to this complaint is Marx’s
injunction, repeatedly invoked by those com-
mitted tocritical human geographyand
radical geography: ‘Philosophers have only
interpreted the world, in various ways; the
point, however, is to change it.’ That said,
the development of various forms ofmarxist
geographywas accompanied by an increas-
ingly rigorous reading of philosophy: Louis
Althusser’s ‘symptomatic’ reading of Marx’s
texts had a limited audience in human geog-
raphy, but Harvey’s reworking of classical
Marxism and Smith’s (1984) dissection of
the ligatures betweencapitalismanduneven
developmentprompted a close engagement
with a series of materialist philosophies to clar-
ify not only questions of method but also ques-
tions of substance – see, for example,
dialectics, process and production of
space– and even a ‘symptomatic’ reading of
Harvey himself (Castree, 2006a; Castree and
Gregory, 2006b; Harvey, 1996).
The second objection was, in some ways,
even more radical. American philosopher
Richard Rorty called for the wholesale demo-
lition of ‘Philosophy-with-a-capital-P’ and its
replacement by a post-philosophical culture.
He was suspicious of those who thought phil-
osophy could provide a single, canonical lan-
guage into which all questions could be
translated and through whose terms all dis-
putes could be resolved. Rorty’spragmatism
acknowledged the creative capacities ofdis-
course, and treated post-philosophical culture
as a sort of ‘cultural criticism’ that claimed ‘no
extra-historical, Archimedean point’ from
which to offer its readings (cf. situatedknowledge: see Barnes, 2008a). Rorty’s pro-
spectus did not provide a detailed model for
post-foundational geographies, and nor was it
intended to, but the discipline’s more recent
reactivation of philosophical reflection can be
read as inviting a more open and dialogical
relationship between philosophy and geog-
raphy. There is clearly a considerable distance
between the essays on philosophyingeog-
raphy collected from geographers by Gale
and Olsson (1979) and the essays from both
fields published inPhilosophy and Geography
(2001–4).
Still more significantly, however, and closely
paralleling Rorty’s concerns, the renewed
interest in philosophy extends far beyond phil-
osophies of science to address political and
moral philosophies. Indeed, a crucial focus of
enquiry has been the entanglement of political
and moral philosophieswiththe conduct of
science: hence human geographers have
effectively reactivated some of Glacken’s
(1976) most vital concerns through debates
about the contemporary constitution of
‘Nature’ and life itself in ways that, at the
limit, invite a re-mapping of the horizons
of the social and the biological (Thrift,
2008: see alsobare life;biopolitics;non-
representational theory). Less epically,
there have been investigations ofcosmopolit-
anismandethics, dwelling andplace, involv-
ing critical reworkings of Heidegger, Derrida
and Emmanuel Levinas (e.g. Barnett, 2005;
Harrison, 2007b); investigations of excep-
tion, law and violence, involving critical
reworkings of Agamben and Foucault (e.g.
Gregory, 2006; Minca, 2007a); and investiga-
tions of subjectivities and spatialities, involv-
ing critical re-readings of Butler and Foucault
(Pratt, 2004). This list is indicative, not
exhaustive, but it points to some of the ways
in which philosophy is increasingly being trea-
ted as resource rather than writ, used to
inform rather than police geographical
enquiry. This does not dispense with the need
for close, careful and contextual reading, and
collections such as Crampton and Elden’s
(2007) multi-faceted readings of Foucault
and geography show that the freedom to
experiment with philosophical texts is not a
license to ransack them. dgphysical geography The characterization
and explanation of geological, hydrological,
biological and atmospheric phenomena and
their interactions at, or near the Earth’s
surface. This is often, but not exclusively, in
relation to human occupation and activity.Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_P Final Proof page 531 1.4.2009 3:20pmPHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY