Introduction to Philosophy of Place

This book presents a number of different philosophical views about the meaning of place and integrates them together to better understand the relationship to self and to achieve 'being at home in the world'. This introduction provides a literature review on place research with a specific focus on humanistic and phenomenological versions. A number of sections have been developed into themes which all form important categories for the chapters presented in this book. The conclusion of this book will return to these themes and integrate them with other aspects of place research and the arguments pre sented in the chapters that form this book. The sections of this introduction appear as follows: place, phenomenology, humanistic geography, home, not at home, journey and reach, power and place, place and the body, and place, self and identity. This introduction is important for thinking through the chapters that follow on individual philosophers such as Nietzsche, Sloterdijk, Foucault, as well as more broad areas of research including ecology, ontogenesis, bioethics and metaphysics. The conclusion will discuss how the chapters in this book provide us new insight into the question of place by focusing on the themes presented in the introduction as well as other relevant research on place. Our book achieves this by presenting a fusion of chapters which amplifies each to show how they all have an important contribution to an expanded understanding of self and our place in the world