Planetary Spaces and Maps of Reason. Remarks on Kant’s Cartographic Imagination

Abstract

Focusing on the cartographic imagination of the European Enlightenment (1650-1800), this essay seeks to discuss the role of the cartographic representation of the Earth in the construction of a planetary space, as well as its function as a model for measuring human knowledge and as a metaphor for its systematization. More specifically, by analyzing Kant’s geographical metaphors, I will reconstruct how the modern project of conquering the world as picture took shape in the design of the Kantian «cosmogram». I plan to show that the cartographic representation of the terrestrial sphere is not only the scopic model of Enlightenment planetary consciousness, but also the monogram of Kant’s architectonic system, and as such the operative and imaginative matrix of his cartographic reason.