The Idealism and Human Geography

Harris (1971) and Guelke (1971) are known advocates of the idealistic approach to humanistic

geography with particular concern on theory, synthesis, and the nature of historical mind. This

mind is contextual, not law finding, dubious and responding to overarching laws that explain the

general pattern of life. The goal of this mind is understanding, not planning and expresses the mind

of a typical geographer. Idealism thrives in Geography on the basis of personal theories. It is a

system of philosophy that regards reality as residing in or constituted by the mind. It limits human

understanding to experience and perception of external object. It explains the development of the

earth’s cultural landscape by uncovering the thought that lies behind them. The idealist sees

beyond actions to the driving process of rational thought expressed as theoretical constructs in the

mind of decision maker. These rational thought exist as ideas that make man invents, imposed, or

elicit from the raw data of sensation that makes connection between phenomena of the external

world. Examples of such theories include religious beliefs, myths and tradition. They represent the

order which man has created through social organization. The explanation of an action is possible,

when the agent’s goal and theoretical understanding of the situation is discovered (Guelke, 1974).

All knowledge is ultimately based on an individual’s objective experience of the world, and

comprises metal constructs and ideas. There is no “real” world that can be known independently

of the mind (Cuelke, 1981).

Adapted From Dikshit, R. D. (2018) Geographical Thought: A Contextual History of Ideas.

PHI Learning Ltd.

Idealism fits within this post positivist mindset, and certainly its early adopters in the 1970’s saw

idealism as a means of challenging the supposed objectivity of logical positivism. The desire is

apparent in the work of Leonard Guelke, who was one of the first Geographers to adopt a language

of idealism, if not its full philosophical implications. For Guelke (1974, 93), idealism offered a

means of illuminating how human geography should be largely concerned with rational actions

and products of human minds. In his wide ranging explanation, Guelke views idealism as a means

of explaining the wide range of human actions in different geographic environments. Actions

cannot be unified within a single theory, but rather the rational decisions of individuals can be

understood within the frameworks of interpretation and meaning in a given context.

This account by Guelke criticizes the emerging humanist and Marxist theoretical positions within

geography, which offers broad theoretical explanations for geographic phenomena.

https://books.google.com.ng/books?id=gfYoDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT4030&dq=idealism+in+geogra

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METAPHYSICAL MATERIALISM: between Possibilism and Determinism

Metaphysics maintains itself as the ontological basis of Geography. The predominance of

Metaphysical Materialism in Geography begins with Ratzel, surviving to the Renovation of

Geography and still finding shelter today under the Pragmatic Geography. Of extensive

particularities to this work, the process above can be synthesized in the, Renovation‟ not of

Geography, but of Positivism. Going through the orthogenetic vulgate of the Ratzelian “Organic

State” to the geographical Synchronic Possibilism of La Blache, finally peaking in the Pragmatic

Neopositivism.

Certainly an advance, the rupture with Idealism occurred partially, being completed only by the

minority Critical Geography. The separation between Man and Environment is not only
catastrophic, but necessary to the Capitalist fetishism, that sees in Nature nor History, nor

Dialectics: only passive Object. This results in the transformation of Geography as a mere political-

economic instrument of a class, a law just brought up-to-date in by “Quantitative Revolution” in

the Modern World. The bloody and historical, methodological‟ debates of Geography prove

themselves as majorly fruitless, since they express the complete misunderstanding of the

ontological root of the problem: