Sauerian phenomenology: German Theory and Carl Sauer's <i>The Morphology of Landscape</i>

Abstract

Carl Sauer's The Morphology of Landscape is a foundational text for cultural geography. Instead of focusing on culture, however, this article pays special attention to Sauer's use of phenomenology. Through the lens of German Theory, I detail the debate around areal realism in German geography amongst Carl Ritter, Julius Fröbel, Alexander von Humboldt, and Alfred Hettner leading up to The Morphology of Landscape. By reconstructing the onto-epistemological problem that Sauer's invocation of phenomenology responds to, I extrapolate a Sauerian phenomenology for both physical and human geography.