Place and world: on Jeff Malpas’ second edition of Place and Experience

Jeff Malpas’ book Place and Experience has become a significant landmark in philosophy. I take the publication of the revised and extended second edition of the book in 2018 as an opportunity to reflect on some key issues in Malpas’ thought. After briefly outlining Malpas’ commitment to topophilia and topoanalysis, I address, in the first part of my essay, the relation of place to subjectivity and normativity, pointing out certain shortcomings or ambiguities in Malpas’ account. I also critically discuss the omission of an account of migration, or, rather, immigration, which seems called for, especially if we realize that the inhabited place always comes with its limit or border, which implies that there is also a view from outside, and that we have moral obligations to the stranger and/or immigrant coming into our place from outside. In the second part of my essay, I engage Malpas’ argument according to which Heidegger ‘derived’ space from time. By an analysis of relevant texts in Heidegger, I show that this argument does not hold.