A History of Habit

From Aristotle to Bourdieu

Edited by Tom Sparrow and Adam Hutchinson - Contributions by Jeffrey Bell; Nick Crossley; William O. Stephens; Shannon Sullivan; David Leary; Margaret Watkins; Robert Miner; Thornton Lockwood; Terrance MacMullan; Peter Fosl; Dennis Des Chene; Clare Carlisle and Edward Casey

From bookshelves overflowing with self-help books to scholarly treatises on neurobiology to late-night infomercials that promise to make you happier, healthier, and smarter with the acquisition of just a few simple practices, the discourse of habit is a staple of contemporary culture high and low. Discussion of habit, however, tends to neglect the most fundamental questions: What is habit? Habits, we say, are hard to break. But what does it mean to break a habit? Where and how do habits take root in us? Do only humans acquire habits? What accounts for the strength or weakness of a habit? Are habits something possessed or something that possesses? We spend a lot of time thinking about our habits, but rarely do we think deeply about the nature of habit itself.

Aristotle and the ancient Greeks recognized the importance of habit for the constitution of character, while readers of David Hume or American pragmatists like C.S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey know that habit is a central component in the conceptual framework of many key figures in the history of philosophy. Less familiar are the disparate discussions of habit found in the Roman Stoics, Thomas Aquinas, Michel de Montaigne, René Descartes, Gilles Deleuze, French phenomenology, and contemporary Anglo-American philosophies of embodiment, race, and gender, among many others.

The essays gathered in this book demonstrate that the philosophy of habit is not confined to the work of just a handful of thinkers, but traverses the entire history of Western philosophy and continues to thrive in contemporary theory. A History of Habit: From Aristotle to Bourdieu is the first of its kind to document the richness and diversity of this history. It demonstrates the breadth, flexibility, and explanatory power of the concept of habit as well as its enduring significance. It makes the case for habit’s perennial attraction for philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists.

Lexington Books

Pages: 356 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-0-7391-8198-0 • Hardback • June 2013 • $120.00 • (£92.00)

978-1-4985-1129-2 • Paperback • February 2015 • $62.99 • (£48.00)

978-0-7391-8199-7 • eBook • June 2013 • $59.50 • (£46.00)

Subjects: Philosophy / History & Surveys / General, Philosophy / Mind & Body

A History of Habit

From Aristotle to Bourdieu

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

From bookshelves overflowing with self-help books to scholarly treatises on neurobiology to late-night infomercials that promise to make you happier, healthier, and smarter with the acquisition of just a few simple practices, the discourse of habit is a staple of contemporary culture high and low. Discussion of habit, however, tends to neglect the most fundamental questions: What is habit? Habits, we say, are hard to break. But what does it mean to break a habit? Where and how do habits take root in us? Do only humans acquire habits? What accounts for the strength or weakness of a habit? Are habits something possessed or something that possesses? We spend a lot of time thinking about our habits, but rarely do we think deeply about the nature of habit itself.

Aristotle and the ancient Greeks recognized the importance of habit for the constitution of character, while readers of David Hume or American pragmatists like C.S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey know that habit is a central component in the conceptual framework of many key figures in the history of philosophy. Less familiar are the disparate discussions of habit found in the Roman Stoics, Thomas Aquinas, Michel de Montaigne, René Descartes, Gilles Deleuze, French phenomenology, and contemporary Anglo-American philosophies of embodiment, race, and gender, among many others.

The essays gathered in this book demonstrate that the philosophy of habit is not confined to the work of just a handful of thinkers, but traverses the entire history of Western philosophy and continues to thrive in contemporary theory. A History of Habit: From Aristotle to Bourdieu is the first of its kind to document the richness and diversity of this history. It demonstrates the breadth, flexibility, and explanatory power of the concept of habit as well as its enduring significance. It makes the case for habit’s perennial attraction for philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 356 • Trim: 6¼ x 9¼

978-0-7391-8198-0 • Hardback • June 2013 • $120.00 • (£92.00)

978-1-4985-1129-2 • Paperback • February 2015 • $62.99 • (£48.00)

978-0-7391-8199-7 • eBook • June 2013 • $59.50 • (£46.00)

Subjects: Philosophy / History & Surveys / General, Philosophy / Mind & Body

Author

Tom Sparrow teaches in the Department of Philosophy at Slippery Rock University, Pennsylvania, where he works primarily in continental and modern philosophy. He is the author of Levinas Unhinged and The End of Phenomenology: Metaphysics and the New Realism.

Adam Hutchinson is a PhD candidate in philosophy at Duquesne University. His main areas of interest are American pragmatism, the history of materialism, and critical theory (especially questions of race).

Table of Contents

Introduction: Reflections on the Unreflected
Part One: Classical Accounts of Moral Habituation
Chapter 1: Habit, Habituation, and Character in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
Chapter 2: The Roman Stoics on Habit
Chapter 3: Aquinas on Habitus
Chapter 4: Negotiating with a New Sovereign: Montaigne’s Transformation of Habit into Custom
Part Two: Habits of Thought, Action, and Memory in Modernity
Chapter 5: From Habits to Traces
Chapter 6: Habit, Custom, History and Hume’s Critical Philosophy
Chapter 7: Between Freedom and Necessity: Ravaisson on Habit and the Moral Life
Chapter 8: A Moralist in an Age of Scientific Analysis and Skepticism: Habit in the Life and Work of William James
Chapter 9: Habitual Body and Memory in Merleau-Ponty
Part Three: The Application of Habit in Contemporary Theory
Chapter 10: The Fly Wheel of Society: Habit and Social Meliorism in the Pragmatist Tradition
Chapter 11: Oppression in the Gut: The Biological Dimensions of Deweyan Habit
Chapter 12: Conceiving Things: Deleuze, Concepts, and the Habits of Thinking
Chapter 13: Pierre Bourdieu’s Habitus

Reviews

The duality of habit—that which frees us and binds us—has fascinated philosophers for a long time. With historical breadth, interdisciplinary scope, and philosophical depth—tackling habit from the Greeks to the present, bringing psychology and sociology together with philosophy, and probing issues from the metaphysical to the practical—this is an excellent contribution to a perennially important topic.

— John Protevi, Louisiana State University

Habit really does have a history, as this book shows, but of course in disconcertingly chaotic lives such as ours, habits are principles of continuity or consistency. Here, the contributions of a remarkable range of scholars from across traditions and disciplines elucidate the matter of habit in a manner itself both varied and continuous.

— Crispin Sartwell, Dickinson College

This volume is a welcomed addition to the recently revived interest in the significance of habit for understanding human action—an interest lost in much contemporary social science and philosophy. As this collection of papers amply attests, the concept of habit has a rich intellectual history full of explanatory power and contradictory evaluations from the classics to our modern period, from Aristotle to Bourdieu. This book challenges us to overcome the intellectual habit of neglecting the central place of habit in shaping human thought and action.

— David Swartz, Asbury University