Barbara Zahnen: Fragwürdigkeit und Eigensinn der Geographie

The questionability and “peculiar sense” (Eigensinn) of geography

This article discusses how a question can be a geographical question. This discussion takes place in the form of a process of contemplation beginning with the recent debate on possible approaches to the integration of human and physical geography. Firstly, common problems in the definition of geography or the determination of its identity and legitimation are raised in order to introduce the issue of geography’s “peculiar sense” (Eigensinn). Then, in order to demonstrate how such Eigensinn can become experiencable and describable, the understanding of the “nature of humanities” (Geisteswissenschaftlichkeit) as it prevails in German geography is outlined, followed by a critical discussion of approaches in the social and cultural sciences, especially within science studies. This discussion produces insights into essential traits of the experience peculiar to the humanities (Geisteswissenschaften), which can be described in the framework of a hermeneutic-phenomenological philosophy, and in the context of which the interdependence of the question of geography’s “peculiar sense” (Eigensinn) and the question of the “geographical question” can be illuminated. This leads to an open conception of an “eigensinnige” geography (eigensinnige Geographie).

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