人文主义地理学出现于20世纪60年代末，是时欧美正涌动着人文主义思潮，它带动了对逻辑实证主义知识体系进行批判的一系列理论的出现，人文主义地理学就是其一。人文主义地理学的哲学基础是存在主义和现象学，段义孚和雷尔夫(Edward Relph)、布蒂默(Anne Buttimer)、莱(David Ley)、赛明思(Marvyn Samuels)和恩特里金(Nicholas Entrikin)等是人文主义地理学的代表人物。1976年段义孚发表了《人文主义地理学》一文，1978年这些学者一起出版了人文主义地理学的第一部论文集《人文主义地理学》。 　　人文主义地理学的一个主要目标是协调社会科学与人之间的关系，容纳知性(understanding)与智慧(wisdom)，客观(objectivity)与主观(subjectivity)以及唯物主义和唯心主义。其主要任务是发展方法论，并深刻理解人类在世界所处的地位。本文各部分都渗透着这个主题。人文主义地理学的社会批判立足点是伦理和道德。 它强调人们对自然、对世界的感悟能力。本文从三个方面探讨了这种感悟力。第一，地理学关注不同地方的差异，地方之间的差异体现在各个地方特点的差异上。人们可以通过感官感受到地方，各种感受的综合形成了地方感;第二，人类在处理与自然的关系上往往是把强权加在自然之上，从而扭曲了自然的本来形态。感悟人与自然的和谐将提升人类的道德;第三，想象力是一种对世界的感悟能力，文化则是想象力的产物。人类在追求物质和精神生活时也会陷入怪圈。本文最后指出，人文主义地理学者必须能够把握大量的事实，同时洞悉人类对自然感悟的复杂与精妙。

Humanistic geography is a genre of geography born in late 1960s. It is the emerging period of humanism in Anglo-America. A series of theories came out which criticize the knowledge system of logic-positivism. Humanistic geography is one of them. The philosophical fundaments of humanistic geography are existentialism and phenomenology. Yi-fu Tuan, Edward Relph, Anne Buttimer, David Ley, Marvyn Samuels and Nicholas Entrikin are the leaders of humanistic geography. Yi-fu Tuan published the first article about humanistic geography, which was collected in Human Geography(1978). It is the first collection work on this field. 　　One of the main aims of humanistic geography is corresponding the following relations: social sciences and human, understanding and wisdom, objectivity and subjectivity, materialism and mentalism。Its task is to develop methodology of human geography, and farther to understand the position of mankind on the earth. These points run through each part of this article. The standpoint of humanistic geography for social criticism is ethic and moral. One characteristic of humanistic geography is to emphasize human ability of sense to the nature and the world. This article discusses that ability from three aspects. Firstly, geography pays attention to differences of places which emerge to different qualities of them. A place can be felt through senses, and the comprehensive senses form the felt qualities of the place. Secondly, when dealing with the relationship between human and the nature, power is often added onto the nature, which distorts the origin form of natural things. To feel the harmony of nature and human can upgrade human morals. Thirdly, imagination is an ability of getting experiences of the world, from which cultures come out. Human may be trapped when running after a better material and/or mental life. At the end of this article, the author states that a humanistic geographer must have a vast command of the facts meanwhile must be skilled and sensitive to the complexities and subtleties of the nature.