The Place of Habit in Hegel's Psychology (original) (raw)

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.