CHAPTER 2

EXISTENTIALISM, PHENOMENOLOGY, AND HUMANISTIC GEOGRAPHY

Humanistic geography emerged in the late 1960s as the most sophisticated of a series of critical reactions
against the logical positivist forms of knowledge dominant in the established, academic discipline. Humanistic
geographys critique of society took an ethical and moral turn, with a politics more implicitly understood than
stated, than the radical geography developing at the same time. Yet humanistic geographys critique of positivist
theory was, if anything, more deeply radical, more strongly stated and extensively developed than for the
(politically) radical geographers. For humanistic geography immediately drew on the powerful critiques of
positivist science long theorized by existential and phenomenological philosophy. These had quite direct
applicability to a criticism of the quantitative, theoretical geography of the 1950s and 1960s. There was a
tendency also to find continuities between humanistic geographys ideas and certain pre-positivistic themes in
geography, especially notions of place and landscape. Thus, in Humanistic Geography, the first major collection
of essays in this area, David Ley and Marvyn Samuels (1978a: 8-10) traced the lineage of the movement to
Vidal de la Blache and French human geography, the Berkeley school of cultural geography, the writings of
John K. Wright (1965; 1966) on the history of geographical lore and those of David Lowenthal (1961) on the
personal experience of landscape, among other predecessors.
Ley and Samuels (1978b: 9) found little enthusiasm for epistemology and theory in traditional humanism
which took the position of the humanities rather than the social sciences. In contrast, they thought, modern
humanists place geography in the social science: a principal aim of modern humanism in geography is the
reconciliation of social science and man, to accommodate understanding and wisdom, objectivity and
subjectivity, and materialism and idealism. For Ley and Samuels, the main tasks of humanistic geography were
clarifying the philosophical base of humanism in geography, developing methodologies, and making substantive
contributions to an understanding of the humans place in the world. In other words, it differs from positivism in
the type of theory it employs, rather than the degree of interest in theory. As Nicholas Entrikin (1985), a
prominent humanistic geographer teaching at the University of California at Los Angeles, later argued,
humanistic geographers contrast their theoretical approach with positivisms naturalism-that is, its
methodological unity between natural and human science, and its advocacy of causal explanation. Humanistic
geography, Entrikin said, is anti-naturalistic and seeks understanding rather than causal explanation.
In an early review of emerging field, Entrikin (1976: 616) argued that contemporary humanism gives
existential meaning to concepts of traditional significance in geography. Place is redefined as center of
meaning or a focus of human emotional attachment rather than mere physical point in space. The humanistic
approach, he said, is a reaction against an overly objective, mechanistic view of human beings. Instead, the idea
is to study the distinctively human aspects of humankind-meanings, values, goals, and purposes. Humanistic
geographys in works by Edward Relph (1970) and Yi-Fu Tuan (1971), and subsequently adobted by others
(Mercer and Powell 1972; Buttimer 1976). The early to middle 1970s witnessed an absorbed interest by
humanistic geographers in phenomenology and existentialism which, up to that time, were only briefly
mentioned, and then rarely, in the geographical literature (e.g. Sauer 1963: 315-16). We therefore outline the
main positions in existential and phenomenological philosophy before turning to an exposition of what soon
became an existential-phenomenological humanistic geography. The chapter then returns to humanistic
geography before concluding with some criticisms of this school of thought.

Existentialism
Existential thought has been plagued by a bad case of mistaken identity. This results as much from its own
elusiveness as from vulgarization by others. As opposed to idealism, existentialism is a philosophy of the human
subject in the whole range of its existence. Existence for existentialists is characterized by concrete particularity
and sheet givenness, as compared with the abstract and universal concepts of humanity and life common to
positivist thought. This notion of existence is used in a special sense. For Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55), the
first modern existentialist, existence means the unique, concrete being of individual human, the particular
which refuses to fit into any system constructed by rational thought (Kierkegaard 1941). Martin Heidegger
(1889-1976) restricts the German word Dasein, meaning the condition of existence, to the human in respect of
his or her being, with the essence of existence (Existenz) constituted by possible ways of being (Heidegger

1962). Jean Paul Sartre (1950-80) asserts that existence precedes essence, defining existence to mean concrete
individual being, her and now (Sartre 19580); in elaborating this notion of being, Sartre distinguishes between
to being-in-itself of the object and an emergent being-for-itself of the conscious subject, free to choose its
essence, yet paradoxically finding in freedom a lack of being. Finally, with Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) Dasein
simply refers to human finding themselves in the world, in the sense of an unreflecting experience of life,
whereas Existenz implies potential, transcendence, and individuality (Jaspers 1967; Macquarrie 1972).
Kierkegaard wished to free people from the domination of objectivity. For Kierkegaard, objectivity makes
people into observers, while abstract thinking is thought without a thinker. Kierkegaard wanted to destroy the
scientific myth that everything is causally determined and, therefore, can be objectively explained in terms of
general laws. Subjective knowledge, by comparison, always has the nature of paradox, is concrete rather than
abstract, and is known by means of faith rather than rationality. What is believed is less important than how it is
believed. Freedom means being free to choose whether to move from one stage of enlightenment to another,
being free to inwardly grasp truth, being free to think for oneself without resource to rules of laws (Kierkegard
1936). Likewise, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) found objectivity, in the sense that there are hard facts in the
world to which correspond definite truth statements, to be main enemy of understanding. Instead, concepts used
to describe the world and predict its behavior are choosen to suit our purposes. There are no sharp lines between
describing and evaluating. Our very sense perceptions are permeated by inescapable valuations (Nietzsche
1968).
In existentialism, there is no world apart from human beings. This does not mean (as with idealism) that
the material universe depends from for its existence on the minds that perceive it, but rather than humans
organize phenomena into some kind of unity or world. Existentialists differ on whether people bring order to a
meaningless chaos, or whether meaning can be projected on earthly things only because the possibility of
mental order is given by the order things. Conversely, there is no human existent apart from the world in which
she or he exists to exist is to be in the world. To exist is to confront that which is other than oneself. The
existent constitutes her or himself by an act of separation from the rest (Sartre 1957). The many human interests
and perspective give rise to multiple worlds, with the everyday world being fundamental for existentialists.
Thus, for Heidegger (1962), living or dwelling means being related to the worlds in multiple ways, and practical
concern constantly purs new natural and human-made objects to use, with the world deriving unity and
meaning from the humans organizing concern. Yet people can become slaves to the things they have (Marcel
1949).
Gabriel Marcel, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty give particular attention to the body as a
mode of human participation in the everyday world. They occupy space as a bodies. They are located at
particular points in a space which, from the beginning, is organized in terms of bodily participation hence, left
and right, above and below, front and behind are fundamental (bodily) ways of organizing space. Human
organize space systems of places related to concerns (places for something) with geometrical space
subsequently being measured by considering existential space in an objective and detached (scientific) way. The
self is seen as an active bodily agent rather than (as which western philosophy since Descartes) the self as a
thinking subject as pure consciousness. Existentialism recurrently deals with the emotional life, the feelings,
moods, and affects through which people are involved in experience, knowledge by participation rather than
observation, and its celebration of subjectivity over objectivity. Like idealism, existentialism is a philosophy of
the subject, but whereas the idealist begins with ideas, the existentialist begins with mere existence
confronting things themselves. Existentialism is critical in that it rebels against establishment, accepted
authority, and traditional canons. Radical questioning and readiness to doubt are its trademarks (Macquarrie
1972).

Phenomenology
Literally the study or description of phenomena ( a phenomenon being anything that appears or presents
itself to someone), phenomenology involves the description of things as one experiences them. Experiences
include seeing, hearing, and other sensory relations, but also believing, remembering, imagining, being excited,
getting angry, judging or evaluating, and having physical reactions, like lifting or pushing things. In
conventional philosophy, phenomena are usually conceptualized dualistically as: (1) appearances; (2) essences
(something beyond or behind appearance), essence being misrepresented by appearance. A distinction is often
made between an inner world of private experience and an outer world of public objects, as with Descartes
dualism of mind and body or consciousness and matter. These conventional dualisms are rejected by

phenomenologists. In phenomenology, experience always of something, always refers to something beyond

itself, and therefore cannot be characterized independently while, similarity (and distinct from scientific
realism), objects cannot be characterized as a separate external world. Phenomenology calls this feature of an
immersed conscious experience intentionality while the phenomena experienced are termed intentional objects.

Husserls Critique
Phenomenology originated in criticism by Franz Brentano (1839-1914) and Edmund Husserl (1859-1938)
of the realist, empiricist, and scientific positivism developed in the nineteenth century (Husserl 1970: 5-6).
Normative, evaluative questions, Husserl said, demand answer. The empirical science cannot provide them;
given the identification of rational human knowledge with the empirical science resource is made to irrational
solutions. There is cultural crisis.
For Husserl, the crucial episode in forming this crisis was the emergence of a modern, Galilean science
aimed at discovering laws of nature expressed as mathematically specified functional relationships between
measurable variables. The main mistake, according to Husserl, was Galileos claim that the only real properties
of objects were those which could be mathematized shapes, size, etc. (or we might add, distance in the study
of space); all other properties (color, smell, qualities of places) were subjective effects of these real properties.
Husserl rejected this identification of science with the objectively real, with its relegation of the lifeworld (the
world as experienced in everyday, pre scientific life) to the status of subjective appearance. Furthermore, he
said, this realist position was soon extended to a general dichotomy between inner experience (including all
perceptual experience) and the outer world of material objects (as depicted by the physical sciences), a duality
of subjective experience and objective nature. Such a split was clearly expressed in Descartes philosophy where
it served to separate humans as conscious beings from the rest of the world, and to give a dualistic picture of
each human being as consisting of a mind and a body (Husserl 1970; Hammond, Howarth, and Keat 1991).

Husserls Transcendental Phenomenology

Thus, for Husserl, positivisms scientific rigor required the scholar to exclude all valuative positions, and
to define objective truth exclusively in terms of establishing facts. But, as Husserl (1970: 6-7), can the world,
and human experience in it, truthfully have a meaning in the science recognize as true only what is objectively
established in this fashion? Such positions led earlier critics, like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, to repudiate
system-building in philosophy. Husserl wished instead to make a new, yet still rigorous, science. For Husserl,
the crisis of science refers to the unclarified status of scientific knowledge, a lack of awareness of its
ontological and epistemic foundations. Science is impaired by its unfounded and unclarified assumptions,
particularly its empty-minded (container) theory of consciousness, and its conception of the human subject as
passive receptor of discrete, simple, atomistic impressions from a distinct outside world. Instead, Husserl
wants phenomenology to unearth the experiential roots of all thoughts in their original noetic (intentional)
contact with real phenomena. Husserl wishes nothing less than to discover the radical, primary foundations of
all knowledge.
In Cartesian Meditations (1977), Husserl opposes phenomenology to philosophical realism. For Husserl,
realism involves a philosophically naive misinterpretation of the natural attitude the assumption of the
independent existence of what is perceived and thought about. Instead, one must suspend, or put into abeyance,
this assumption and investigate experiences without it this suspension is termed the phenomenological epoche
or bracketing (putting in parenthesis), closely related to Descartes doubt. The eventual objective of the
exercise is a propositionless philosophy beginning with the experiences of conscious human beings, living and
acting in worlds which make sense to them, and dealing with this world through a spontaneous intentionality.
For the original moment of intuition to be recovered (and for science to be reconstituted) Husserl suggests the
method of phenomenological reduction (epoche), suspending all empirical, rational, and scientific judgment to
bring to light the essential intentional contact between consciousness and the world. The epoche yields apodictic
evidence of: the I (the cogito, consciousness of self); the world phenomenon intended by transcendental
consciousness (the cogitation); and the fundamental conjunction between the two. The cogito is not, as with
Descartes, the indubitable knowledge of thinking being. Rather, with Husserl, understanding the cogito is the
grasping of self outside of the natural world as transcendental subjectivity, that is to say as origin of all
meanings, as the sense of the world; making the world appear as a phenomenon involves understanding its

meaning, as something intended by the cogito (Husserl 1977; Thevanaz 1962; Hammond, Howarth, and Keat
1991).

The Lifeworld
Husserls phenomenology thus beings together Cartesian themes of evidence, intuition, and seeing, with
Kantian themes of the constituting or creative activity of consciousness. The world reveals itself to the view of
consciousness which confers on lifeworld (Lebenswelt) and proposes to disciplined exploration of its essential
structures and manifestations. Some areas of investigation include the oriented space of the lifeworld, lived time
and human historicity, human body as it is lived, and a human freedom deeper and broader than that
traditionally called freedom of will. In philosophy, this led to a new approach to understanding humans (a kind
of philosophical anthropology) expressed in the existential phenomenologies of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and
Sartre among others (Wild 1962: 79; Edie 1962: 1336). In geography, it leads to a disciplined but subjective
investigation of the places constituting the lifeworld.

Existential Phenomenology
Existential phenomenologists adhere to Husserls method of description (i.e. his phenomenology) but not to
his transcendental idealism. For existential phenomenologists, the existence of the world is definitely not
something to be bracketed out in producing pure descriptions. Nor is it the task of philosophy to find foundation
for knowledge. Instead, the world is intelligible in the world by virtue of human action on it. Rejecting the
notion of a transcendental ego, the philosophizing subject standing outside the world, the existential aim is to
characterize the ordinary experience of human beings living in the world. Thus, as opposed to Husserl,
existential phenomenology takes activities, or what Sartre calls conducts, as a starting point. The world of
objects acted upon, and the conscious active subjects, are interdependent any conduct presupposes the
existence of both. The task of philosophy is to find the characters of existent objects and active subject given
their interaction. While the idealist subject is outside, the existential subject lives inescapably in the world. And
while the realist subject is an integral part of the world, a natural object among others, the existential subject is
distinctively different all that is determinate and intelligible in the world is so solely by virtue of human
action.

Heideggers Method
Martin Heideggers lifetime preoccupation was with the ultimate existential question: What is the meaning
of being? His hermeneutic method consists of phenomenologically uncovering, or making explicit, the
forgotten fundamental structures of being. Opposing the ontic (the existent, what is) to the ontological (the
meaning of what is),Heidegger searches for a radical foundation, not only for knowledge (as with Husserl), but
also for the quality of being. Heideggers existential