Habit and the Limits of the Autonomous Subject, Body and Society, 2013 (original) (raw)
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Discussions of Hegel's Philosophy of Right usually focus on two central aspects of his theory of objective spirit: the model of freedom it articulates and the related issue of just what is innovative in his account of ethical life (Sittlichkeit). It is not my intention here to enter directly into the contested terrain of what exactly he means by these terms. My concern in this paper is rather to understand why the opening discussion of the third, final and arguably most important part of the Philosophy of Right, 'Ethical Life', makes appeal to the notion of habit. Habit, it will be argued, has an important transitional role in the development of Sittlichkeit and freedom, but habit is not just a moment on the way to the development of these core notions. It also has an ongoing role to play in Sittlichkeit.
Hegel's discussion of habit takes place at two critical junctures in his work. In the Philosophy of Right it occurs in a well-known paragraph at the outset of the discussion of ethical life. Habit in this context is used to show the limitations of Kantian autonomy and morality as a model for the kind of freedom possible in a modern society. The second juncture, which has received much less attention and which is the focus of this paper, is the discussion of habit in the subjective spirit. In the Encyclopaedia Hegel makes a strong claim for the importance of habit in the development of spirit, describing it as "what is most essential to the existence of all spirituality within the individual subject". 1 There he argues habit is critical to the emergence of consciousness and is the key bridge between nature and spirit. 2 What I want to argue in this paper is that habit is more than just a transition point, dissolving itself and nature with it in the move from nature to spirit. The way Hegel conceives habit, particularly his characterization of it as second nature, challenges the dualism of nature and spirit.
The Conception of Habit as a Stage of Hegel's Naturalistic Theory of Mind
Open Information Science 2018., 2018
This contribution aims to address the nature of the normative in Hegel's theory of habits and to highlight that social practices are the outcome of natural and biological characteristics related to the homeostasis of the organism and to the common biological features of the individuals of the same species. This should point out that habits and human practices have a concrete biological background and are the outcome of humans' eagerness to inhabit the world through socially codified activities. The contribution deals also with the relation habits have with the self-conscious life and human world history. Hegel's conception of mind in the Encyclopedia represents an exceptional contribution for understanding the mind-body relation and, particularly, the organic character of the cognitive functions. What Hegel proposes is to conceive of the human mind as a faculty that is developed within the biological evolution of the organism and as a function integrated in the organic living whole of the subject. He deals, therefore, with a soft version of naturalism as he claims that cognitive capacities are strictly connected with natural requisites and maintain a permanent relation with the natural dimension of the organic. Mind is the outcome of a crossed stratification of nature and cognitive dispositions because there is no stage of cognitive activities that can be considered as separated or totally emergent from their natural premises. The rational criterion of Hegel's naturalism is the idea that nature is a system of grades (System von Stufen) (Hegel, 1830, § 249) in which the idea and freedom represent the last step. However, this step can only be achieved by a natural organism having developed an organization of its own life based on self-consciousness and on the " Notion " [der Begriff]. Mind is, hence, an embodied faculty, determined by this embodiment and permanently related to this condition. In the Encyclopedia Hegel undertakes an analysis of the different levels of the cognitive disposition by starting with those that are mostly connected to the organic dimension of life in order to highlight that the highest level of life is freedom, which is attained by a dialectics between the organic requisites and the very pursuit of the mind. In this narrative, habit occupies a very important position for it is placed after the sentient faculty of the body and introduces the actual soul, i.e. the condition in which the soul conceives of its body as its own other and distinguishes itself from the outside environment, becoming an individual subject (Hegel, 1830, § 411). The notion of soul in the Hegelian conception of the mindful disposition is intended to correspond to the classical notions of anima and ψυχή in the ancient philosophy. Therefore, it is not a fully rational and self-conscious disposition because it is not based on a conceptual activity; it is rather much closer to sensibility and to what animates individual agency and behaviour. The
Hegel: Habit, Custom, and Government
The aim of this paper is to understand the relationship that exists, in Hegel’s philosophy, between his conception of “habit” and that of “the world of right”, insofar as both are defined by Hegel as “second nature”. First of all, we will focus on the Hegelian conception of habit, as it is formulated in his anthropology (first section of the philosophy of subjective spirit). Secondly, we will show the connection between the concept of habit and that of custom, as it is formulated in the philosophy of right. Finally, on this basis we will provide an insight into some of the fundamental structures of the Hegelian conception of the State as the “actuality of the ethical idea”.
Hegel's real habits (European Journal of Philosophy)
Hegel frequently identifies ethical life with a "second nature." This strategy has puzzled those who assume that second nature represents a deficient appearance of ethical life, one that needs to be overcome, supplemented, or constantly challenged. I argue that Hegel identifies ethical life with a second nature because he thinks that a social order only becomes a candidate for ethical life if it provides a context conducive to the development of what I call "real habits." First, I show that a criterion for a real habit can be found in Hegel's Anthropology, namely, that of liberation. Next, I explain how the state, as Hegel analyzes it in the Philosophy of Right, provides such an environment by enabling trust toward and within it. I then consider two literary examples of contexts that fail to be similarly supportive-Coates' Between the World and Me and Atwood's Handmaid's Tale-concluding with reasons for thinking that real habits are an integral part of ethical life.
The aim of this chapter is to discuss the central role of the notion of " habit " (Gewohnheit) in Hegel's theory of " embodiment " (Verleiblichung) and to show that the philosophical outcome of the Anthropology is that habit, understood as a sensorimotor life form, is not only an enabling condition for there to be mindedness, but is more strongly an ontological constitutive condition of all its levels of manifestation. Moreover, I will argue that Hegel's approach somehow makes a model of embodied cognition available which offers a unified account of the three main senses of embodiment understood as both a physiological, a functional, and a phenomenological process. In this sense Hegel's approach to habit can make a useful contribution to the contemporary debate on embodiment in philosophy of mind, the cognitive sciences, and action theory. For a long time habit in 20th century philosophy and science has been mostly read in a negative way, identified with mechanical and repetitive routine. The reconstruction of Hegel’s approach is particularly relevant here and can fruitfully contribute to this discussion, since it offers us not only a model that assigns to habit a positive constitutive role in the formation of embodied human mindedness but which also overcomes the dualism between habitual motor routine and intentional activities that is prevalent nowadays in the cognitive sciences and in action theory, and allows for some sense of natural agency as belonging to animal life. Furthermore, Hegel’s approach cuts across the great divide between associationist and holistic approaches to habit that has for a long time dominated the philosophical debate on habit and still shapes the current opposition between classical cognitive science and embodied cognitive science.
Why is Habit the Hardest Problem for Hegel? Contradictions of Habit in Hegel’s Anthropology
2021
Despite Hegel himself drawing our attention to the habitual neglect of habit in the formation of the spirit, the concept of habit has remained generally unstudied in the Hegel scholarship. In this paper, I will present how the concept of habit holds several contradictory determinations in itself, and in so doing I will give an answer to the question of what motivates Hegel to cite habit as the hardest topic (am schwersten) to comprehend. By closely analyzing Hegel's account of habit in the Anthropology section of his Encyclopedia, I will reconstruct his account in thirteen contradictory pairs, which are the essential contradictions which make up Hegel's whole system. Specifically, Hegel defines habit as second nature which makes possible the transition from nature to Geist. The debate among Hegel commentators on the meaning of 'second nature' reveals that to situate habit and second nature in Hegel's system means to determine the very character of Hegelian philosophy.
The Place of Habit in Hegel's Psychology
"Hegel's Philosophical Psychology" ed. by L. Ziglioli and S. Herrmann-Sinai, Routledge 2016
In this paper, I will explore the role of habit in Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, arguing that its relevance should not be restricted to the Anthropology. Hegel distinguishes between habituality as the second nature of the embodied self and a more sophisticated form of habituality presented in the Psychology as memory. Memory is the function of intelligence that is committed to the production of language, thereby giving rise to thinking and the possibility of theoretic freedom. Since Hegel himself warns against the automatic and impersonal character of habituality, I wish to explore to what extent habit and memory influence the development of theoretical spirit. Is there any room for a notion of freedom that is independent from habituality? I will first assess the difference between habit and memory. Then, I will tackle the possibility of freedom from a Hegelian standpoint.
Phenomenological considerations of habit: Reason, self-presence and knowing in habitual action
keywords habit, knowing, phenomenology, embodiment, hermeneutics JameS mcgUirK university of nordland James.mcguirk@uin.no Paul ricoeur claims in freedom and nature that delimiting the domain of habit is deeply challenging, owing to the fact that we tend not to know exactly what it is that we are asking about. habit, he says, is not like acting, sensing or perceiving but is more akin to a way of sensing, perceiving and so on. it has to do with settled or dispositional ways of engaging the world that provides a form to our world relations. But what is the status of these ways of acting etc.? in ordinary discourse, habits are often thought of as good or bad and even as important to shaping our personal and social identities. But they tend also to be thought of as actions in which the free exercise of reason is deeply attenuated, as automatic responses conditioned over time which are triggered by the environment such that we act 'before we know what we are doing '. In what follows, I want to offer some reflections about the nature of the relationship between habitual action, reason and knowledge. i will draw mostly on the phenomenological tradition in asking the question whether habits denote performances in which thinking is absent or whether they involve a spontaneity in which the embodied and embedded subject comes to expression as subject. in doing so, i will (1) sketch an outline of the largely negative view of habit that tends to dominate specialized and ordinary understandings of the matter before, (2) looking to phenomenological insights that offer a more positive view by integrating the notion of habit with discussions of embodiment and hermeneutic consciousness. here, i will refer to the work of merleau-Ponty and ricoeur, for whom habit is an irreplaceable way of knowing the world. my claim is that these phenomenological resources are not only important in establishing the centrality of habit for identity formation, as husserl and merleau-Ponty do, but that they entail a unique form of knowing or exercise of reason which is dynamic, attentive and imaginative.