The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History

by Edward S. Casey

In this imaginative and comprehensive study, Edward Casey, one of the most incisive interpreters of the Continental philosophical tradition, offers a philosophical history of the evolving conceptualizations of place and space in Western thought. Not merely a presentation of the ideas of other philosophers, The Fate of Place is acutely sensitive to silences, absences, and missed opportunities in the complex history of philosophical approaches to space and place. A central theme is the increasing neglect of place in favor of space from the seventh century A.D. onward, amounting to the virtual exclusion of place by the end of the eighteenth century.

Casey begins with mythological and religious creation stories and the theories of Plato and Aristotle and then explores the heritage of Neoplatonic, medieval, and Renaissance speculations about space. He presents an impressive history of the birth of modern spatial conceptions in the writings of Newton, Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant and delineates the evolution of twentieth-century phenomenological approaches in the work of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard, and Heidegger. In the book's final section, Casey explores the postmodern theories of Foucault, Derrida, Tschumi, Deleuze and Guattari, and Irigaray.

Genres: Philosophy, Architecture, Nonfiction, Geography, History, Academic, Ebooks

495 pages, Paperback

First published January 29, 1997

About the author

Professor Edward Casey was the president of the American Philosophical Association (Eastern Division) from 2009-10, and he was chairman of the Philosophy Department at Stony Brook University for a decade. He works in aesthetics, philosophy of space and time, ethics, perception, and psychoanalytic theory. He obtained his doctorate at Northwestern University in 1967 and has taught at Yale University, the University of California at Santa Barbara, The New School for Social Research, Emory University, and several other institutions. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University.

His recent research includes investigations into place and space; landscape painting and maps as modes of representation; ethics and the other; feeling and emotion; philosophy of perception (with special attention to the role of the glance); the nature of edges.

Reviews

[Andrew]

I was looking so, so forward to this and became so, so disappointed. The idea of an analysis of place through the lens of continental philosophy sounds pretty legitimately fascinating. However, while Casey's reading is thorough, it's also pretty hermetically sealed. The philosophical approach presented completely fails to engage with the world itself, and Casey has this sort of contempt for materiality-- oh, how it fails to live up to myth and structuralism!-- that hinders any legitimate explorations of the history of spatial ideas. Furthermore, he fails to produce any kind of working definition for the spatial ideas he invokes, which not only allows him to make sweeping statements, but also conveniently allows him to misappropriate ideas of space and place. His reading of Deleuze strikes me as a bit naive and simplistic, he kind of shits on Foucault for no reason, and elevates Bachelard and Eliade for no damn reason. Nuts to this. Oh, and on a more practical level, the parts about Medieval theology are really, really, really boring.

[Molood Jaberi]

Brilliant and dense but tough for me as a non-philosopher. A must reread

[Maddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent, though the treatment of the void & the nothing concerns me.

[Magdalena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Someday I will credit one particular essay in here with having launched my dissertation.

[Salpi · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s my first time reading his work and this has been one of the most challenging yet satisfying reads of the year for me.

Fascinating.

I was initially drawn to the book because of my interest in architecture and how we interact with the concept of ‘space’ but the work goes beyond that. It’s thorough philosophical examination.

I will definitely look into more of his work. His style resonated w/me quite well.

[Brownsword · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps the richest trace and interpretation of the philosophy of place (and space).