The Enlightenment and Geographies of Cosmopolitanism

Abstract

There is considerable interest across several disciplines in the geographical dimensions of the Enlightenment and of cosmopolitanism. In reviewing this work and in extending from it, the paper proposes a yet deeper understanding of the geographical bases to these key and related terms. The paper also cautions about too readily tracing intellectual connections between, on the one hand, geographies in and of the Enlightenment and the Enlightenment's varied cosmopolitan geographies with, on the other, the geographical bases to cosmopolitanism in modern context.

Keywords:

• enlightenment
• cosmopolitanism
• geography's intellectual history
• historiography