Environmental geography’s approach as Aufhebung: Rejecting dualism, embracing dialectics: Environmental geography’s approach as Aufhebung: Rejecting dualism, embracing dialectics

• Autor(a) principal: Lopes de Souza, Marcelo
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Ambientes (Francisco Beltrão)
• Texto Completo: https://e-revista.unioeste.br/index.php/ambientes/article/view/27691
• topic: Geografia Ambiental; epistemologia; Aufhebung; dialética

The ‘epistemological contract’ that was in force for more than a century in geography was based on the conviction that this discipline is neither a pure natural science nor a pure social science, but an epistemologically hybrid knowledge, leaving geographers to find ways of cooperation and fruitful coexistence, despite any thematic specialisations. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, the aforementioned ‘contract’ was broken: both ‘human’ and ‘physical’ geographers explicitly advocated or implicitly supported a separation, as they saw advantages in it. After almost five decades, what seemed promising then appears today, at least in part, as an illusion: ironically, it was precisely from the 1970s – when ‘human’ and ‘physical’ geographers tremendously accelerated the movement of disdaining the idea of a discipline that would be a ‘bridge’ between the knowledge of nature and that of society – that the world started, with increasing speed, to pay attention to problems and challenges that unequivocally demand an articulation of both types of knowledge.   Fortunately, antidotes have been sought, the most relevant of which is the approach known as environmental geography. However, much epistemological, theoretical and methodological work is still needed to consolidate it. In order to contribute to this effort, this article interprets the approach of environmental geography as corresponding to an Aufhebung, that is, to a dialectical sublation. The concept of Aufhebung, however, in its original Hegelian tradition, carries some intrinsic limitations. It is therefore necessary to try to reconfigure it, making it more complex and robust – what is undertaken here with the help of the logical and ontological contributions of Graeco-French philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis. Keywords: environmental geography; epistemology; Aufhebung; dialectic.