The Shifting Topology of Place in Philosophy and Malpas

Huang Shuting, Qin Mingli^*

College of Humanities, Dalian University of Technology

Abstract：

This paper reconceptualizes the philosophical history of place as a shifting topological surface rather than a smooth, linear progression. From Aristotle’s notion of an embodied topos to the abstract spaces of Descartes and Newton, and from Heidegger’s ontological Lichtung to Malpas’s embodied topology, the idea of place develops through uneven reconfigurations that situate being within networks of relations. Each shift serves not as a negation but as a creative shift, turning what was once excluded or hidden into the foundation of meaning. Place, therefore, emerges as a topological condition of possibility—an embodied space that mediates between ontology and phenomenology, openness and structure. Its core lies in a recursive logic: continuity that persists through the folding and unfurling of its fabric, where the instability of place becomes the very source of its philosophical vitality.

Key Words：

place; Topos; space; Malpas; generativity; structuralism