The Contributions of Philosophy and the Social Sciences to Landscape Conflict Research—A Critical Comparison

Abstract

In recent years, the study of ‘landscape’ has gained importance in both the public and in the sciences. In philosophy and the social sciences, different traditions for dealing with ‘landscape’ have developed—not least based on a common reference point of Georg Simmel’s “Philosophy of Landscape” published in 1913. In this paper, these traditions are examined with regard to their suitability for contributing to the analysis and regulation of landscape conflicts and for providing answers to the landscape-related challenges of the present—both in terms of science and society—exemplified by the challenges of the energy transition. The central points of criticism are, besides an insufficient amount of conceptual work and a ‘forgetting of the individual’ of philosophy and the social sciences, the reduction of the concept of landscape to the concept of nature in philosophical landscape research.