History of Habit

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).

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.

Introduction: Reflections on the UnreflectedPart One: Classical Accounts of Moral HabituationChapter 1: Habit, Habituation, and Character in Aristotle's Nicomachean EthicsChapter 2: The Roman Stoics on HabitChapter 3: Aquinas on HabitusChapter 4: Negotiating with a New Sovereign: Montaigne's Transformation of Habit into CustomPart Two: Habits of Thought, Action, and Memory in ModernityChapter 5: From Habits to TracesChapter 6: Habit, Custom, History and Hume's Critical PhilosophyChapter 7: Between Freedom and Necessity: Ravaisson on Habit and the Moral LifeChapter 8: A Moralist in an Age of Scientific Analysis and Skepticism: Habit in the Life and Work of William JamesChapter 9: Habitual Body and Memory in Merleau-PontyPart Three: The Application of Habit in Contemporary TheoryChapter 10: The Fly Wheel of Society: Habit and Social Meliorism in the Pragmatist TraditionChapter 11: Oppression in the Gut: The Biological Dimensions of Deweyan HabitChapter 12: Conceiving Things: Deleuze, Concepts, and the Habits of ThinkingChapter 13: Pierre Bourdieu's Habitus