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Harris (1971) and Guelke (1971) are known advocates of the idealistic approach to humanistic
geography with particular concern on theory, synthesis, and the nature of historical mind. This
mind is contextual, not law finding, dubious and responding to overarching laws that explain the
general pattern of life. The goal of this mind is understanding, not planning and expresses the mind
system of philosophy that regards reality as residing in or constituted by the mind. It limits human
understanding to experience and perception of external object. It explains the development of the
earth’s cultural landscape by uncovering the thought that lies behind them. The idealist sees
beyond actions to the driving process of rational thought expressed as theoretical constructs in the
mind of decision maker. These rational thought exist as ideas that make man invents, imposed, or
elicit from the raw data of sensation that makes connection between phenomena of the external
world. Examples of such theories include religious beliefs, myths and tradition. They represent the
order which man has created through social organization. The explanation of an action is possible,
when the agent’s goal and theoretical understanding of the situation is discovered (Guelke, 1974).
All knowledge is ultimately based on an individual’s objective experience of the world, and
comprises metal constructs and ideas. There is no “real” world that can be known independently
idealism as a means of challenging the supposed objectivity of logical positivism. The desire is
apparent in the work of Leonard Guelke, who was one of the first Geographers to adopt a language
of idealism, if not its full philosophical implications. For Guelke (1974, 93), idealism offered a
means of illuminating how human geography should be largely concerned with rational actions
and products of human minds. In his wide ranging explanation, Guelke views idealism as a means
of explaining the wide range of human actions in different geographic environments. Actions
cannot be unified within a single theory, but rather the rational decisions of individuals can be
This account by Guelke criticizes the emerging humanist and Marxist theoretical positions within
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Geography and still finding shelter today under the Pragmatic Geography. Of extensive
particularities to this work, the process above can be synthesized in the, Renovation‟ not of
Geography, but of Positivism. Going through the orthogenetic vulgate of the Ratzelian “Organic
State” to the geographical Synchronic Possibilism of La Blache, finally peaking in the Pragmatic
Neopositivism.
Certainly an advance, the rupture with Idealism occurred partially, being completed only by the
minority Critical Geography. The separation between Man and Environment is not only
catastrophic, but necessary to the Capitalist fetishism, that sees in Nature nor History, nor
Dialectics: only passive Object. This results in the transformation of Geography as a mere political-
the Modern World. The bloody and historical, methodological‟ debates of Geography prove
themselves as majorly fruitless, since they express the complete misunderstanding of the