Geografia e geografia politica. Alcune note sul pensiero di Friedrich Ratzel

GEOGRAPHY AND POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY: NOTES ON THE THOUGHT OF FRIEDRICH RATZEL - One hundred years after Friedrich Ratzel’s death, the author proposes some reflections on the thought of the German geographer. The article indicates some passages, contained in the introductory chapters of Ratzel’s main works, that reveal the difficulty in setting the geographer’s thought in a deterministic or organicistic (??) root, especially as far as the relationship between State and geographic space is concerned. Secondly, the articles calls attention to the forty-year reflection carried out by the German geographer on gnoseological and epistemological questions in relation to geographical disciplines. The brief excursus proposed represents also an invitation to read again Ratzel’s work, above all in view of the unremitting attempt to build (to develop) a geographical theory of knowledge or a theory of knowledge on a geographical basis