Reading Kant's Geography

Stuart Elden is Professor of Political Geography at Durham University. He is the author of Terror and Territory: The Spatial Extent of Sovereignty and Understanding Henri Lefebvre: Theory and the Possible. Eduardo Mendieta is Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University, State University of New York. He is the author of Global Fragments: Globalizations, Latinamericanisms, and Critical Theory, also published by SUNY Press, and The Adventures of Transcendental Philosophy: Karl-Otto Apel's Semiotics and Discourse Ethics.

• Acknowledgments1. Reintroducing Kant’s GeographyStuart EldenI. The Invention of Geography: Kant and His Times 2. Immanuel Kant and the Emergence of Modern GeographyMichael Church 3. Kant’s Geography in Comparative PerspectiveCharles W. J. WithersII. From a Lecture Course of Forty Years to a Book Manuscript: Textual Issues 4. Kant’s Lectures on "Physical Geography": A Brief Outline of Its Origins, Transmission, and Development: 1754–1805Werner Stark5. Historical and Philological References on the Question of a Possible Hierarchy of Human "Races," "Peoples," or "Populations" in Immanuel Kant—A Supplement.Werner Stark6. Translating Kant’s Physical Geography: Travails and Insights into Eighteenth Century Science (and Philosophy)Olaf Reinhardt7. Writing Space: Historical Narrative and Geographical Description in Kant’s Physical GeographyMax MarcuzziIII. Towards a Cosmopolitan Education: Geography and Anthropology 8. "The Play of Nature": Human Beings in Kant’s GeographyRobert Louden 9. The Pragmatic Use of Kant’s Physical Geography LecturesHolly Wilson10. The Place of the Organism in Kantian Philosophy: Geography, Teleology, and the Limits of PhilosophyDavid Morris IV. Kant’s Geography of Reason: Reason and Its Spatiality 11. Kant’s Geography of ReasonJeff Malpas and Karsten Thiel12 Orientation in Thinking: Geographical Problems, Political SolutionsOnora O’Neill13 "The Unity of All Places on the Face of the Earth": Original Community, Acquisition, and Universal Will in Kant’s Doctrine of RightJeffrey EdwardsV. Gender, Race, History, and Geography14. Cosmopolitanism in the Anthropology and GeographyDavid Harvey15. Is there Still Room for Freedom? A Commentary on David Harvey’s "Cosmopolitanism in the Anthropology and Geography"Ed Casey16. Kant’s Third Thoughts on RaceRobert Bernasconi 17. The Darker Side of the Enlightenment: A De-Colonial Reading of Kant’s GeographyWalter Mignolo18 Geography Is to History as Woman Is to Man: Kant on Sex, Race, and GeographyEduardo MendietaContributorsIndex

"…a timely collection of eighteen essays woven into a coherent matrix by the two editors Stuart Elden and Eduardo Mendieta. A splendid job, by its nature an inherently interdisciplinary endeavour, at the same time a window to the past and a gate-opener to the future." —Geografiska Annaler"One of the great strengths of Reading Kant's Geography is that it brings together geographers and philosophers to engage with the nexus between Kant and geography." — Journal of Historical Geography"A moment of Kantian enlightenment! In a splendid, interdisciplinary set of interrogations, the nature and significance of Immanuel Kant's geography is brought into full light for the very first time. This remarkable work of retrieval thus enlightens, at once, Kant's own Enlightenment project, and geography's place in the project of Enlightenment. Whether dealing with racial geography, philosophical topography, or cosmopolitan politics, Reading Kant's Geography constantly illuminates and instructs. If, as is sometimes said, geography is too important to be left to geographers, it's no less true that it's too important to be left to philosophers." — David N. Livingstone, author of Adam's Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins"This volume of impeccable scholarship and sustained critical inquiry performs an invaluable service. It is a major contribution to writings on the history of geography, but it also shows that Kant's geography was far from incidental to the whole outworking of his philosophy, nor to what he claimed about the potentialities and pitfalls in shared human occupation of the planet. As such, this volume needs to be read by anyone concerned with enlightenment, modernity, and issues such as cosmopolitanism and transnationalism." — Chris Philo, editor of Theory and Methods: Critical Essays in Human Geography