Para-Scientific Interpretations of the Heideggerian Space Category by a Humanistic Geographer Yi-Fu Tuan and a Semiotician Vladomir Toporov

Abstract

The author presents the interpretation of the Heideggerian category of space as put forward by Yi-Fu Tuan and Vladimir Toporov. The first part of the article is dedicated to the presentation of the author’s own understanding of Heidegger’s philosophy, and the subsequent one critically assesses Tuan’s and Toporov’s approaches, which is shown to be based on a misunderstanding of this category. It is shown that both Tuan and Toporov misrepresented the sense of this category and made it a part of a monistic viewpoint, which harks back to their culturally inherited “humanist coefficient” and is related to the efforts aimed at defending a para-scientific notion of space. Author voices her care and disagreement to what essentially is an appropriation of this existential by humanist geographers and other human disciplines, who, following Tuan and Toporov, try to imbue the Heideggerian notion of space with ill-informed interpretations.