Abstract

Starting from the spatial turn in social and political sciences, the essay analyzes the rise of space as a political concept between Eighteenth and Nineteenth century, in relation to processes of territorialization and centralization which imply a constitutive tension between space and territory, between the globe and the State. This tension is analyzed by inquiring the philosophical premises and the political potential of Carl Ritter's "Erdkunde", the first scientific geography formulated in Germany in the first half of the Nineteenth century. Ritter's work is considered in relation to two options of politicization of space represented by the works of Kant and Herder and for the influence it had on Hegel's philosophy of space and history. The analysis questions the priority of a cartographic understanding of space, underlining a more layered set of possibilities of politicization and of temporalization pertaining to the history of its concept.