In defense of homology and history: A response to Allen

Abstract

I would like to thank editors of Philosophy and Geography for the opportunity to respond to Professor Allen’s remarks and to clarify a few points. Ironically, some confusion stems from the concept of Raum, exactly what I hoped to illuminate. The subsequent paragraphs will attempt to briefly highlight the misunderstanding and suggest the importance of discussing what Professor Allen dismisses as a “homology of thought.” My article demonstrates that Heidegger understands Raum in terms of geography, not geometry. Space is lived in by people who have an effect on it and who are affected by it. Accompanying this view is an organic conception of the State based upon the interaction between a people and their land. This position is most closely associated with conservative romantics and what is referred to as volkisch thought in Imperial Germany, but it had adherents across the political spectrum. The most influential exposition of this view was Ratzel’s. For better or worse, Ratzel is acknowledged as the modern founder of German political geography and geopolitical thought. The basic geography books employed in German schools were heavily influenced by Ratzel’s thought, and many acknowledge him explicitly. In a 1901 publication, he offered an explanation of Lebensraum, and although the term is now associated exclusively with Nazi Ostforschung and its attempts to remake Eastern Europe along racial lines, the concept itself is not inherently fascist. The basic Darwinian premise behind the struggle for space also lends itself as a justification of European imperialism and racism even though Ratzel himself explicitly rejected racist arguments. The notion becomes racist or fascistic when peoples and cultures are ranked in a hierarchical fashion. I do not claim that Heidegger embraced the Nazi version of Lebensraum, nor would Ratzel have approved of it. This is why discussing a homology may be more interesting than Allen deems it. A common notion can be combined with other notions for interesting or undesirable results. Grounding the idea of space in geography rather than geometry and linking it to an organic conception of the nation-state is a recognizable concept to anyone familiar with Wilhelmine German thought. What makes it interesting is that it was not just the purview of the Right. Ratzel, who died in 1904, was not a Nazi geographer, and one cannot simply dismiss his work as “fascist” or even proto-fascist and leave it at that, unless one is willing to argue that the entire body of work justifying nineteenth-century