Making sense of ‘place’

How does a sense of place impact how we view and understand the world around us? Philosophy major Hunter Thomas has spent a substantial amount of time thinking about these kinds of questions.

His project 'The Significance of Place: Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty on Place as Ontological Ground' won the prize for best paper at the Undergraduate Philosophy Conference in March, as well as an Excellence in Research Award at the Student Research and Creative Scholarship Showcase in April.

"The status of place's role as a necessary precondition of being and its meaning is deeply consequential to our understanding of the character and experience of what it is to be," Thomas wrote in his paper. "It shapes the way we ought to conceive of our situatedness and its relation to the limits of possibility in existence."

What does this mean exactly? Thomas believes that today, people too often conceive of 'place' as "a neutral container abstracted from ourselves", which can detract from a more personal sense of place.

"Place is very structuring of how we see the world. The way that we experience spatiality is not in that abstracted Cartesian sort of sense of space. It is in the first-person, phenomenological sense of place [...] it's always given to us in the local sort of way, related to our local senses," said Thomas. "Because we experience place in that way, related to our local awareness, it's deeply shaping of everything that makes us us."

Thomas began his studies as a freshman at a university in the Lower 48. However, after his first year, he decided to return to his hometown of Anchorage and study at UAA.

"You could say it was a place that held meaning for me," Thomas explained. "And when I was looking into programs, it became apparent to me that UAA did have quite a good philosophy program."

Thomas' interest in the concept of place arose during the recent fall semester while studying at the University of Hawaiʻi (UH) at Mānoa through the National Student Exchange program. While Hawaii was an attractive destination for other students in the program to visit, Thomas was drawn to UH Mānoa for another reason.

"For most of the people that were on exchange there, it was like a tropical paradise for them," said Thomas. "But I was particularly interested in Buddhist philosophy, and Hawaii is pretty well known for their focus on Eastern philosophy."

Thomas was fascinated by the Buddhist concepts about the interconnected nature of existence and self, but another course offered at UH Mānoa on phenomenology - which studies first-person experiences - set him to thinking about place.

"Being in Hawaii, and away from home, I guess, I was thinking about that question more of issues related to place," said Thomas. His investigations into place that began during his semester in Hawaii culminated in the project he presented at the two UAA conferences in the spring.

Thomas hopes his training in philosophy will help him improve the world around him. "I would like to contribute to the health of my community. I feel increasingly particularly community-oriented, specifically in terms of Alaska. But when I think about it, that can take a broader connotation," said Thomas. "Through learning philosophy, I feel like that's only increased, and I feel like it's sharpened."