Human Life-World in Toponyms: APhilosophical Understanding of Life Space

From a philosophical perspective, it is considered how a person ascribes meaning to their living space, transforming it into a life-world. The study aims to identify the philosophical foundations of toponymy by clarifying the significance of the concepts of “life-world” and “life space” for the formation of a geographical approach to describing the world. The research methods are social phenomenology (understanding of the life-world in the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, Alfred Schütz, and Bernhard Waldenfels) in combination with neo-institutionalism (Douglas North’s concept) and the philosophy of performativity (John Austin, John Searle, and Hans Ulrich Humbrecht): people establish toponyms according to the principles of intersubjectivity in establishing meanings, striving to achieve higher performing skills to create an everyday value-normative basis. The concepts of “life-world,” “life forms,” and “life space” constitute a conceptual framework for a geographical approach to toponymy. Topology systematically explains and organizes various systems of toponymy, which are special linguistic means by which topological scientists record how humanity inhabits its environment and explores and changes it. In cases of interpretive conflict when establishing toponyms, the selection criterion is the greater performativity of specific toponymic means. As a result, specialists employ institutionalized terminology that ensures the perception of geographical objects as problem-free in explanations. In the modern, globalized world, toponymy reflects how several life-worlds coexist within a single living space, thereby realizing the anthropological need of people to freely and relentlessly expand their mastery of the world without entering into conflict with it or among themselves.