Phenomenological disclosure of geographical space by Eric Dardel

This study offers as comprehensive and precise an insight as possible into the phenomenology of “geographical space” through the forgotten and longignored work of Erik Dardel, Man and Earth: The Nature of Geographical Reality, which was published in 1952. It was made possible by Edward Relf and his adapted version of the first chapter of the book, translated by him in 1973 and made available in 2022. The phenomenological disclosure of geographical space is considered in the meaning of human spatial behavior and the actualization of his interaction with the surrounding world as a way to penetrate into the essence of this process, where in endless transformation a person and the environment are forced to respond to each other’s challenges. A phenomenological view of geography actualizes aspects of migration and economic flows, flows of goods and information, including images of space into a single field of human life. As a result of the study of the work “Man and the Earth,” it was possible to identify the characteristic essences that Dardel endows space with: the communicative nature of the environment, its dynamism and direction, spatial depth and discreteness of the field.