Habit and the History of Philosophy (Rewriting the History of Philosophy) [1 ed.] 1032305843, 9781032305844

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HABIT AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

For Aristotle, habit was a fundamental aspect of human nature; and for William James, it was the “enormous flywheel” of society. In both the history of philosophy and contemporary research, it is acknowledged as a fundamental topic in ethics, moral psychology, philosophy of action, and phenomenology. This major volume, written by a team of international contributors, is an outstanding collection that offers a thorough and diverse philosophical exploration of habit from the classical period to the modern day. Carefully edited to reflect the breadth of the subject, its 18 chapters are divided into four clear parts: • • • •

Habit and Ancient Philosophy Habit and Early Modern Philosophy Habit and Modern Philosophy Contemporary Perspectives on Habit.

Key topics, debates, and figures are covered such as the emotions, perception, free will, William James, John Dewey, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, John McDowell, and Hubert Dreyfus. Habit and the History of Philosophy is essential reading for students and researchers in the history of philosophy, ethics, phenomenology, philosophy of action, and pragmatism. It will also be extremely useful for those in related disciplines such as religion, sociology, and history. Jeremy Dunham is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the University of Durham, UK. He is a co-author of Idealism: The History of a Philosophy (2014), and with Pauline Phemister, coeditor of Monadologies (Routledge, 2018). Komarine Romdenh-Romluc is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, UK. She is the author of the Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenology of Perception (2011), and co-edits the book series Routledge Research in Phenomenology.

REWRITING THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Series editors: Aaron Garrett and Pauliina Remes

The history of philosophy has undergone remarkable growth in the English language philoso­ phical world. In addition to more and better-quality translations of canonical texts, there has been a parallel expansion in the study and research of sources, thinkers, and subjects hitherto largely neglected in the discipline. These range from women philosophers and late-ancient thinkers to new Western and non-Western sources alike. Simultaneously, there has been a methodological shift to far greater intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives in the history of philosophy, cutting across the humanities and social sciences. Rewriting the History of Philosophy is an exciting new series that reflects these important changes in philosophy. Each volume presents a major, high-quality scholarly assessment and interpretation of an important topic in the history of philosophy, from ancient times to the present day, by an outstanding team of international contributors. The Senses and the History of Philosophy Edited by Brian Glenney and José Filipe Silva Molyneux’s Question and the History of Philosophy Edited by Gabriele Ferretti and Brian Glenney Thought: A Philosophical History Edited by Panayiota Vassilopoulou and Daniel Whistler Information and the History of Philosophy Edited by Chris Meyns Habit and the History of Philosophy Edited by Jeremy Dunham and Komarine Romdenh-Romluc For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/RoutledgeHandbooks-in-Applied-Ethics/book-series/RWHP

HABIT AND THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Edited by Jeremy Dunham and Komarine Romdenh-Romluc

Cover image: Dynamisme d’un chien en laisse (1912), by Giacomo Balla. Image credit: Bridgeman Images. First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter Jeremy Dunham and Komarine RomdenhRomluc; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Jeremy Dunham and Komarine Romdenh-Romluc to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Dunham, Jeremy, editor. | Romdenh-Romluc, Komarine, editor. Title: Habit and the history of philosophy / edited by Jeremy Dunham and Komarine Romdenh-Romluc. Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. | Series: Rewriting the history of philosophy | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2022003155 (print) | LCCN 2022003156 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138735644 (hbk) | ISBN 9781032305844 (pbk) | ISBN 9781315186436 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Habit (Philosophy)‐‐History. | Philosophy‐‐History. Classification: LCC B105.H32 H325 2023 (print) | LCC B105.H32 (ebook) | DDC 109‐‐dc23/eng/20220202 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022003155 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022003156 ISBN: 978-1-138-73564-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-30584-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-18643-6 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781315186436 Typeset in Bembo by MPS Limited, Dehradun

CONTENTS

Notes on Contributors

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Introduction Jeremy Dunham and Komarine Romdenh-Romluc

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PART I

Habit and Ancient Philosophy

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1 Socrates on Habituation and Politics: Plato’s Gorgias 509c6-510a4 Leo Catana 2 Guided Practice Makes Perfect: Habituation into Full Virtue in Aristotle’s Ethics Karen Margrethe Nielsen

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3 Aristotle on the Nature of Ethos and Ethismos Margaret Hampson

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4 Making Progress: Epictetus on Habituation John Sellars

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PART II

Habit and Early Modern Philosophy

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5 Forming the Habit of Thinking Well: Descartes’s Reshaping of the Act of Reasoning Elodie Cassan v

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Contents

6 Habit in Hartley’s Reconciling Project: Between Christian Morality and the Usual Course of Nature Catherine Dromelet

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7 Habit and Will in Eighteenth-Century British Philosophy John P. Wright

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8 Kant’s Account of Intellectual Habit and Moral Education Carl Hildebrand

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PART III

Habit and Modern Philosophy

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9 The Dispositional Account of Habits and Explanation of Moral Action in F.H. Bradley Dina Babushkina

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10 Phenomenology as Vocation – A Project Instituted and Habituated by the Will Sara Heinämaa

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11 Personal Acts, Habit, and Embodied Agency in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception Justin F. White

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12 Deleuze on Habit and Time; or, How to Get, and How Not to Get, from Hume to Bergson Mark Sinclair

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PART IV

Contemporary Perspectives on Habit

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13 Habit and the Spiritual Life: Perspectives from Christian Mysticism and the Philosophy of Religion Simone Kotva

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14 Are Habits Inherited? A Possible Epigenetic Route from Charles Darwin to the Contemporary Debate Mariagrazia Portera and Mauro Mandrioli

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15 The Discourse Ecology Model: Changing the World One Habit at a Time Susan Notess

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16 Habit and Practice Clare Carlisle

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17 Habit-Formation: What’s in a Perspective? Will Hornett

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18 Habits in Perception: A Diachronic Defence of Hyperinferentialism Cathy Legg

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Index

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CONTRIBUTORS

Dina Babushkina is currently an Assistant Professor in Philosophy (technology and society) at the University of Twente, where she is applying her knowledge of ethics and moral psychology to the human-technology interaction and Artificial Intelligence. She is a specialist in Bradley’s moral philosophy with broader interest in Neo-Hegelianism and has written extensively on various aspects of Bradley’s ethics and his role in the history of philosophy. Clare Carlisle is Professor of Philosophy at King’s College London. She is the author of six books, including On Habit (2014), Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Soren Kierkegaard (2019), and Spinoza’s Religion: A New Reading of the Ethics (2021). Elodie Cassan is Associate Researcher at L’École Normale Supérieure de Lyon. Her research interests include history of early modern logic, theory of mind and theory of language in the early modern period, Bacon, and Descartes. She has recently edited “Logic and Methodology in the Early-Modern Period” (Perspectives on Science, May-June 2021, vol. 29, Issue 3). She is currently preparing a translation of Bacon’s Novum Organum into French (Paris, Garnier). Her book Le langage de la raison de Descartes à Chomsky (Paris, Vrin) is forthcoming. Leo Catana is Associate Professor in the Section of Philosophy, Department of Communication at the University of Copenhagen. He works on two main areas. First, ancient ethical theory, especially Socratic ethics, where his focus is on the formation and significance of character traits in individuals and groups of individuals. Second, the historiography of philosophy, which may take a variety of forms, but where his interest lies in the emergence of history of philosophy as a philosophical discipline in the eighteenth century. Catherine Dromelet studied philosophy in Lausanne, Boston, and Rome, where she received her PhD degree. She was an affiliated research scholar at MTA in Budapest and is currently a FWO Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Antwerp. Her work focuses on the concepts of custom and habit in schools of thought ranging from early modern associationism to nineteenth century French philosophy and classical sociology. She published a critical edition of Léon Dumont’s texts on habit and sensibility with Classiques Garnier, and her recent publications

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include an article for the Journal of Scottish Philosophy and co-authored entries for the Springer Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences. Jeremy Dunham is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the University of Durham. He is interested in issues in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind in early modern and nineteenth-century philosophy. He co-authored the book Idealism: The History of a Philosophy (2014), and is currently working on a book examining the work of William James and the relationship between his metaphysics and his pragmatism. Margaret Hampson is a Lecturer in Ancient Philosophy at the University of St Andrews. Her research lies within the field of ancient ethics and moral psychology, with a particular focus on the topics of habituation and moral development. She has published several articles on Aristotle’s theory of moral habituation in journals such as Phronesis and Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie. Sara Heinämaa is Academy Professor (2017–2021 Academy of Finland) and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She specializes in phenomenology, existentialism, philosophy of mind, and history of philosophy, and has published extensively in these fields, especially on normativity, emotions, embodiment, personhood, intersubjectivity, and gender. Heinämaa is co-author of Birth, Death, and Femininity (2010) and author of Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference (2003), and has co-edited several volumes, including Why Method Matters: Phenomenology as Critique (2022), Phenomenology and the Transcendental (2014), and Consciousness (2007). Carl Hildebrand is a Research Assistant Professor at The University of Hong Kong. He specializes in Modern philosophy, ethics, and moral psychology. His research engages questions at the intersection of ethics, moral psychology, and the history of philosophy. His current work deals with the concept of moral character found in Immanuel Kant. Will Hornett works on issues in the philosophy of action and perception, and he has recently finished his PhD on habit and action-explanation at the University of Sheffield’s Department of Philosophy. Simone Kotva is Research Fellow at the University of Oslo, Faculty of Theology, and Affiliated Lecturer at the University of Cambridge, Faculty of Divinity. Her research is situated at the intersection of philosophy, theology, and ecology, and she specializes in the theory and history of spiritual exercises. She is the author of Effort and Grace: On the Spiritual Exercise of Philosophy (2020), which addresses philosophies of practice from Maine de Biran to Simone Weil, focussing on the tradition of French reflexive or “spiritualist” thought. She is currently completing a second study on philosophy and spiritual exercise—Ecologies of Ecstasy: Practicing Philosophy through Mystical and Vegetal Being. Cathy Legg holds a BA (hons) from University of Melbourne, an MA in Philosophy from Monash University and a PhD from Australian National University, where her thesis (“Modes of Being”) concerned Charles Peirce’s philosophical categories. After a spell of hands-on ontological engineering in the early years of this century she returned to academia and now teaches at Deakin University in Melbourne. Her current research bridges philosophy of

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language, logic, pragmatism (particularly Charles Peirce), and AI, with a side interest in “cat metaphysics”. Mauro Mandrioli is an Associate Professor in Genetics at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy, where he is involved in research projects aimed at the study of the molecular mechanisms at the basis of animal evolution. He also participates in multidisciplinary projects related to the history of science and the digital humanities with particular emphasis on the history of Darwinism. Karen Margrethe Nielsen is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy and Tutorial Fellow at Somerville College, the University of Oxford. She has published widely on ancient Greek ethics and political theory, with special emphasis on Aristotle’s theory of decision (prohairesis). She also has interests in Aristotle’s metaphysics and biology. With Devin Henry, she edited Bridging the Gap Between Aristotle’s Science and Ethics (2015). Her articles have appeared in Phronesis, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Classical Quarterly, Philosophical Review and Philosophical Perspectives, as well as in a number of edited volumes. Susan Notess is a Research Associate of the Institute for Medical Humanities at Durham University, and is a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Society for Applied Philosophy. She works on the moral and political normativity of conversation, including in the context of medical clinical encounters and of depolarising democratic discourse. She also writes about narratives of choiceworthy risks in live organ donation and childbirth. Mariagrazia Portera is a Research Fellow in Aesthetics at the Università di Firenze, after being a post-doctoral fellow in Edinburgh, Berlin, Zagreb, Rijeka. Her areas of expertise are the history of Aesthetics between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, the history of Darwinism, experimental aesthetics, and environmental and evolutionary aesthetics. She has published for Routledge, Springer, and The British Journal of Aesthetics and she is associate editor of the international journal of aesthetics Aisthesis. Komarine Romdenh-Romluc is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. Her research largely falls within the phenomenological tradition. She is the author of the Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Merleau-Ponty and the Phenomenology of Perception (2011), and co-edits the book series Routledge Research in Phenomenology. John Sellars is a Reader in Philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London, and a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London, where he is Associate Editor for the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle project. His research focuses on Stoicism and its later influence. His most recent book, Marcus Aurelius, was published by Routledge in 2020. Mark Sinclair is Reader in Philosophy at the University of Roehampton, London, and is the author of Being Inclined: Félix Ravaisson’s Philosophy of Habit (2019) and Bergson (2020). He has recently edited The Bergsonian Mind (2022) with Yaron Wolf and is currently co-editing the Oxford Handbook of Modern French Philosophy. Justin F. White is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Brigham Young University. His research focuses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century European philosophy (especially Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty), philosophy of agency, and moral x

Contributors

psychology. He has published work in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, The Southern Journal of Philosophy, The European Journal of Philosophy, The Kierkegaardian Mind, and The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Agency. John P. Wright is Professor Emeritus at Central Michigan University. He is author of The Sceptical Realism of David Hume (1983), Hume’s “A Treatise of Human Nature”: An Introduction (2009), co-editor of Hume and Hume’s Connexions (1994), Psyche and Soma: Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment (2002), John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding In Focus (2000), as well as a number of articles on early modern philosophy.

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INTRODUCTION Jeremy Dunham and Komarine Romdenh-Romluc

0.1 The Philosophy of Habit Should philosophers be interested in the study of habit? One plausible reason for thinking that the answer to the question is “no” could go as follows. Even though it’s true that there is a long history of the philosophy of habit dating back, as this volume shows, at least to Plato, psychology used to be a part of philosophy in a way that it is not now. Now that there is a division between the two, the study of the mind’s subpersonal automatic mechanisms belongs to the former rather than the latter. However, whether or not habit is a straightforwardly subpersonal mechanism is already a philosophical question. As we shall see in this volume, it is not obvious that habit can be understood mechanistically at all. Once we start to investigate the limits of mechanistic explanations, we very quickly end up engaged in some detailed discussions concerning causation, dispositions, and tendencies that are clearly in the philosopher’s workhouse. However, reflection on the history of philosophy of habit shows that we don’t even have to question habit’s status as a subpersonal automatic mechanism to see it as intrinsically tied to numerous philosophical problems. In the nineteenth-century, philosopher and psychologist William James’s era-defining psychology textbook The Principles of Psychology (1890) begins by outlining the physiological mechanisms that underlie habit formation and determine its automaticity, but ends by discussing its ethical implications. We are born with malleable brains but, he believed, the brain’s plasticity declines radically when we stop growing. Therefore, he believed, the psychology of habit leaves us with a powerful ethical imperative to “make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy”, which means making “automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can”, and guarding “against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague” (1890: 126). William James’s psychology of habit is closely connected to a philosophy of habit that regards character formation as the sculpting of a physical being through action. Since this sculpture uses a clay that is quick drying, so to speak, we are against the clock. Regardless of the story of its physiological underpinnings, philosophers have long seen a close connection between the study of ethics and the study of habit. If we think that ethics is about developing the right kind of character, then it’s plausible to think that this means developing the right kind of habits. Yet, at this point we start to face the definitional question concerning habit face on. If we think that habits are merely subpersonal automatic responses DOI: 10.4324/9781315186436-1

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Jeremy Dunham and Komarine Romdenh-Romluc

formed through repetition, then we will see them as bypassing our rational faculties. It might be that, conceived as such, there is still a role for them in ethics insofar as we can harness them to enable us to avoid unjust actions. Nevertheless, one might think that true virtue has to do with skill rather than habit. Whether or not we can make such a sharp distinction between habit and skill is a question that comes up again and again in the history of philosophical reflection on habit. Habit is often associated with bad automatic behaviours, or at least behaviours that it seems we would be unlikely to want to do, such as biting one’s nails or clearing one’s throat when in a quiet space. They are often acquired unreflectively. Skills, like playing tennis or drums, require intense focused practice. A lot of rational reflection goes into obtaining the bodily automaticity needed to perform these skills well. But it’s hard to tell whether there is a difference in kind or merely a difference in degree between the two. When we drive home from work, we may do so almost completely on autopilot with our minds on something else for the whole journey. Even if we say that habit took over, a lot of skilled activity is going on at the same time; we would have been making a huge number of quick decisions about the right distance to drive next to other cars on narrow roads, whether or not we should stop at the amber light, and, we hope, constantly checking our mirrors. For this reason, many philosophers use the word “habit” in a much broader sense than we may understand it in ordinary use. John Dewey addressed this directly. The word “habit”, he wrote, may seem twisted somewhat from its customary use when employed as we have been using it. But we need a word to express that kind of human activity which is [i] influenced by prior activity and in that sense acquired; which [ii] contains within itself a certain ordering or systematization of minor elements of action; which is [iii] projective, dynamic in quality, ready for overt manifestation; and which is operative in some subdued subordinate form even when not obviously dominating activity. Habit even in its ordinary usage comes nearer to denoting these facts than any other word. (Dewey, 1922: 31) This passage gets to the heart of the characteristics common to all habits. First, habits are unlike instincts insofar as they are the result of our lived activities whether intentional or not. However, through these activities, habits become like instincts. They are not our first nature, but they are our second. We are not born with the instinct to bite our nails, but after doing it several times it becomes a habit. Second, habits are formed through an ordering of actions already acquired. So, if it’s true to say that we can drive home on “autopilot” because the drive home has become a habit, this is because all of the actions that make up the drive home – indicating, stopping at a red light, turning left at Abbeydale road, etc. – have become ordered and systematized so that they follow from each other in a way that requires very little attention. Third, and this is one of the things that is most fascinating about the phenomenon of habit, habits are, in Dewey’s words, “projective”. When we acquire a habit, we acquire the tendency to repeat the habitual behaviour. If we set off to visit a friend, but forget to take the left turn to their house and end up at work, it’s because we’ve driven to work so many times that actions necessary to get there have become a tendency. For the musically inclined, if there’s an instrument on our lap, there is a tendency to start playing it. Without forming the intention to play a particular song, we’ll start to play something almost at random. We might even feel uneasy if we don’t play it. In the same way that if we try to stop biting our nails, we’ll feel uneasy about it. It will feel as if we are fighting against the tendency. The importance of tendency or inclination in habit is one of the reasons why it’s hard to reduce habit to merely mechanical mechanisms. Even if we think that habits are merely acquired 2

Introduction

through repetition, we have to explain why there is a tendency to do those actions again that we have repeatedly done before. Another problem for mechanical accounts of habit is that habits are rarely acquired without reference to ends. This is why, in education, sheer rote learning often fails. No matter how many times you do something, it is much easier to learn a skill or acquire a habit, if you are interested in acquiring it. Even bad habits, like nail biting, wouldn’t be acquired without reference to some purpose. In stressful situations, we have bitten our nails and felt some sense of relief, and because of that, we do it again and again until it becomes habitual. For this reason, then, it’s unsurprising that a proper understanding of habit has been regarded by several philosophers as crucial for the philosophy of education. The rise of empiricism in early modern philosophy was concurrent with the rise of associationist psychology. The associationists believed that if a subject repeatedly experiences e1, e2, and e3 in immediate succession, then, according to the principles of association, they will form a mental disposition d. Following this process, if the subject finds herself experiencing e1 again, d will be activated and e2 and e3 will follow, even in their absence. This is why when we hear the first few notes of our favourite songs, the rest of the notes will follow in our minds, even if the song stops playing, and that the sight of a dog may cause one person joy, while it causes another to feel absolutely terrified. For the associationist philosopher of education, therefore, we have to be on guard to ensure that children are not indoctrinated by irrational associations, such as the association of darkness and “evil spirits”. The implications of such “habits of mind” developed by association go well beyond the philosophy of education. Famously, they are the crucial basis for Hume’s epistemology (Hume 2000; 2007). For Hume, we do not observe causal powers or necessary connections in nature, but we come to expect that one thing will follow another because we have repeatedly seen the two things temporally or spatially paired together. We do not know that the sun will rise tomorrow, but we believe that it will, and this belief comes from an association formed by habit. Many empiricist philosophers believed that our ability to perceive the world as something distinct from us and extended in space depends on such habits of association. To locate objects in the world spatially, they believed, we must come to associate ideas that come from sight with the ideas that come from touch. It is only by the habitual combinations developed from both sensations that we can start to recognize the information we receive from sight as referring to objects at distinct distances from our body. Other philosophers have used “habits of perception” as a way to explain our experience of the world given the “poverty of the stimulus”. Despite limited sensory information, we are able to experience spheres as spherical, because of our previous engagement with spheres where we have picked up sphere-patterns. These patterns are habits in the mind that are triggered whenever we experience anything that looks like it fits the pattern. We hope that this brief discussion has shown that philosophers have a lot of reasons to be interested in the study of habit. The philosophy of habit is a very broad topic, which connects to the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of education, the philosophy of action, ethics, and many other areas of the discipline.

0.2 Background This volume has been long in the making. The idea for it came to us back in 2015 when we were both working at the University of Sheffield. After discussing various different approaches to habit in the history of philosophy and the relative poverty of discussion on habit in contemporary philosophy between ourselves, we spent many hours discussing habit and the history 3

Jeremy Dunham and Komarine Romdenh-Romluc

of philosophy with non-philosophers. It turned out that psychologists, health practitioners, doctors, occupational therapists, and speech therapists were all interested in what philosophers have to say about habit. As a result, it seemed that further research in this area could be important and relevant to a really diverse range of people. We do not expect that this book will necessarily speak to all these groups, rather we see this as a first step; a reflection on just how diverse philosophical approaches to habit have been and what they have to contribute to contemporary philosophy and beyond. The first concrete step towards developing this book was the organization of a conference on the history of the philosophy of habit in Durham in 2018. The conference was one of the British Society for the History of Philosophy’s Annual Conferences and we are grateful to the society (for which Jeremy was the treasurer and member of the management committee) for allowing us to take over the conference for a year and dedicate it to a theme of our choosing. We expected this to be a small event. We presumed that since habit is a rather minor topic in philosophy that we’d receive maybe 20 or 30 submissions for the conference. However, we received over 160. We selected 50 papers for the final conference and the majority of these chapters were originally presented at that event. We are sure that all benefited from the excellent scholarly community that turned up to the conference and we would like to thank all of those who attended and contributed. Even if we had wanted to, it would not have been possible to compile a fully comprehensive volume on the history of philosophy of habit. For a start, the contingencies of organizing an edited volume largely during a pandemic made it impossible to stick to any particularly concrete framework for the book, and, secondly, the aim of this book is more to show the continued relevance of the philosophy of habit and to encourage further work on the topic. We hope that the gaps in this volume will be ones that inspire others to fill them in future projects. This is also not the first volume dedicated to the history of habit. Tom Sparrow and Adam Hutchinson’s excellent A History of Habit was published back in 2013. We do not intend that this volume replaces their early work, but complements it, adding several new characters to the story, but also shedding further light on several of the philosophers already discussed in their work. Unlike their volume, ours includes a section on the continued role of the history of philosophy of habit in contemporary philosophical discussions. Again, this is not an exhaustive account of the “future of habit”, but we hope it will inspire more research on this important and allencompassing feature of human life. We would like to say a big thank you to all of the contributors to this volume who have worked hard to write these chapters under very difficult conditions. We would also like to say a big thank you to Jae Ryeong Sul for his invaluable help in formatting the chapters as we prepared the final manuscript for submission.

0.3 Habits in Ancient Philosophy This collection begins with a series of chapters that discuss thinking on habit in Ancient Philosophy. The first chapter is Leo Catana’s, “Socrates on Habituation and Politics”, which focuses on the question of whether Socrates was an ethical cognitivist. Those who believe that he is point to passages where he seems to claim that the one who knows what is just will act justly. Catana, makes the case for a mitigated non-cognitivist interpretation based on a reading of Plato’s Gorgia 509c6-d6. There, Socrates seems to suggest that, in certain cases, knowledge is not enough and habituation is also required. This is not universally the case, but role-dependent. Socrates makes a distinction between two kinds of moral agents. Those who seek protection from unjust actions, and those who want to prevent themselves from committing unjust actions. Both must obtain a power. However, in the former case, the 4

Introduction

power is a habit, in the latter, a craft. The former requires imitation and habituation, and the latter, learning and training. The next two chapters discuss aspects of Aristotle’s philosophy. In “Guided Practice Makes Perfect Habituation into Full Virtue in Aristotle’s Ethics”, Karen Margrethe Nielsen considers the nature of habituation for Aristotle. One reading sees him as offering a mere repetition model of habit that bypasses our rational faculties. However, she argues that this is a needlessly narrow interpretation and, as a result, a needlessly narrow conception of virtue too. If habituation is that which gives rise to virtue, but both non-rational and sufficient to give rise to virtue, then virtue is non-rational too. All a teacher would need to do to make you virtuous would be to get you to do virtuous acts over and over again until you do so mechanically. In contrast, Nielsen argues that teaching virtue requires guided practice. Good habituation requires the teacher to enable the student to properly reflect and understand why their actions are good. It works on both the rational and non-rational aspects of the soul. This means that obtaining virtue requires knowledge of why our actions are virtuous. Far from virtue being non-virtuous, virtue is intrinsically rational. Like Nielsen, Margaret Hampson also provides a broad reading of Aristotle on habit. However, in “Aristotle on the Nature of Ethos and Ethismos”, rather than focusing on rationality, she argues instead that the right way to understand habituation is as a “process that involves action and activity”. It is not repetition per se, that is crucial to the acquisition of habits, but prior activity—the active engagement in an activity. Aristotle doesn’t specify the kinds of activity that the agent must engage with, but this opens up room for a broader conception of habituation that allows us to think about the role of a broad range of psychological capacities and how they interact. Hampson ends with some intriguing thoughts about the role of emotion in habit formation. The final chapter in this section is “Making Progress: Epictetus on Habituation” by John Sellars. He considers the role of habit in Epictetus’s account of progressing from being a student of philosophy to a sage: one who has properly assimilated philosophical principles to lead a life of wisdom. For Epictetus, theoretical learning is insufficient. Philosophy is the skill of living well; it is something one does. Since this is so, it involves our habits. The student of philosophy progresses partly by acquiring new habits. Epictetus argues that to break a bad habit, one should cultivate an opposing one, and avoid situations that might lead one astray. Every action has consequences—both in itself, and also due to its (potential) contribution to the acquisition and maintenance of a habit. Sellars then considers whether Epictetus’s focus on habituation is at odds with his being a Stoic, but argues that it is not. Despite the standard view of the Stoics as committed to a cognitivist theory of action, according to which, all actions issue from judgements, they leave space for habits to play a role in shaping our impulses.

0.4 Habit and Early Modern Philosophy New physiological mechanist accounts of the body and mind and the rise of associationist psychology during the early modern period led to a burst of interest in the importance of habit. A whole set of new puzzles arose for philosophers to consider. The section begins with Elodie Cassan’s chapter, “Forming the Habit of Thinking Well: Descartes’s Reshaping of the Act of Reasoning”, where we get the first shift in this volume from the practical to the theoretical. The focus of Cassan’s discussion is how habit is crucial for thinking well and using reason properly. For Descartes, reason is a cognitive capacity to judge, which we are born with, but judging well involves training, exercise, and practice. Descartes provides such exercises for the development of habits of right thinking in the Rules for the Development of the Mind. However, the philosophical importance of this for his project in 5

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general is often ignored. Cassan argues that once this is highlighted, we can start to see the tight connection between reason, logic, and language in Descartes’s works. For Descartes, logic is the discipline that trains you to develop good habits of thinking, and this thought must be expressed through language and discourse. The upshot of this is that the picture of Descartes as the philosopher of the solitary mind is seriously challenged. The aim of Descartes’s work is to train the reader to think autonomously so as to better interact with the world. During the eighteenth century, physiological accounts of human behaviour grew in popularity thanks to the rise of experimental science. However, this raised the problem of how to reconcile a physicalist determinist account of the mind with Christian morality. In Catherine Dromelet’s chapter “Habit in Hartley’s Reconciling Project: Between Christian Morality and the Usual Course of Nature”, she examines David Hartley’s attempts to combine the two in his 1749 book Observations of Man and shows how his understanding of habit is at the core of this project. For Hartley, like Hume, all knowledge is acquired by means of habit. Dromelet shows that, for Hartley, the aim of moral education is to shift an individual’s mental habits so that they desire spiritual pleasures over bodily ones, and she outlines how this is possible by means of the physiological effects that theological language has on the body. In doing so, she shows how Hartley brings together elements of vitalism, dualist interactionism, materialism, and mechanism in his understanding of the relation between the mind and body. In “Habit and Will in Eighteenth Century British Philosophy”, John P. Wright takes us on a tour of different perspectives on voluntary and involuntary habits. He starts with Locke’s distinction between those habits, like “testiness”, which seem to be like a coiled spring ready to jump out given the slightest provocation, and others, which depend on our own active power. Locke also emphasizes the distinction between bad and good habits referring both to the harm that can be caused through custom if children are exposed to too many irrational beliefs, and the importance of education and habits of self-restraint. After that we explore the views of Joseph Butler, his distinction between active and passive habits, David Hume’s views of custom, William Porterfield’s argument that all habits are voluntary habits, Thomas Reid’s argument that all habits are involuntary, before examining Dugald Stewart who appears to take a more mitigated position which ends up somewhere in the middle of the two. In the final chapter of this section, “Kant’s Account of Intellectual Habit and Moral Education”, Carl Hildebrand argues for an interpretation of Kant, according to which something like Aristotelian virtues and moral habits play an important role in the development of full moral agency. Focusing here on Kant’s Anthropology and the Pedagogy, Hildebrand begins by outlining Kant’s theory of education, according to which children must be encouraged and guided to develop certain skills and attributes that will lay the groundwork for rationally accepting and acting upon the moral law. For example, Kant argues that children should be given physical education that includes playing games which require the child to set aside her immediate needs and desires to reach the game’s goal, thus training her aptitude for self control. With this account of moral education in place, Hildebrand then discusses Kant’s conceptions of habit and moral aptitude. He identifies several different senses of habit in Kant’s work. These include what Hildebrand translates as “unthinking habits” such as a capacity for discipline; “external moral habits” that encourage aptitudes that are necessary for moral agency such as selfcontrol; “mere aptitude”, which is a faculty for acting on maxims that the agent gives to herself, although these are not yet “moral” and finally, “moral aptitude”, which is the ability to think and act in accordance with rational and moral maxims. All of these should be classed as habits as they are acquired through practice, which leads to proficiency. Hildebrand ends with some reflections on Kant’s ideas about autonomy, and how these can be made consistent with the account of moral education developed in this chapter. 6

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0.5 Habit and Modern Philosophy The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw a proliferation of important philosophical works on habit, with the notion taking centre stage in various traditions such as Pragmatism, Phenomenology, Idealism, and the French spiritualist movement. Amongst the British idealists, F. H. Bradley gave the phenomenon a central role in his philosophy. Dina Babushkina’s chapter, “The Dispositional Account of Habits and Explanation of Moral Action in F. H. Bradley” presents his ethical philosophy so as to make this clear. An important question for many of those philosophers who have considered habit is “to what extent morality is about developing the right kind of habits”? Babushkina investigates whether Bradley’s moral goal can be summed up as the development of good habits. In doing so, she shows that there are a number of ways that habits are hugely important for his thought. We have both a “good” and a “bad” self defined by those habits we have acquired that lead us to do either what is morally good or morally bad. Furthermore, our very capacities necessary to be a moral agent, like free will, for Bradley, depend on a complex process involving habituation. However, Babushkina argues that we should not overemphasize the importance of habits. One reason for this is that, for Bradley, habits are a species of disposition, and importantly Bradley denies the reality of dispositions. They are, “instrumentally justified fictions”. While habits might be useful for predicting an agent’s actions, to get a proper understanding of Bradley’s ethics, we have to dig a bit deeper into his understanding of the moral self. Writers in the phenomenological tradition typically emphasize the importance of skill and habit, and place these at the centre of what it is to be human. Sara Heinämaa’s chapter, “Phenomenology as Vocation—A Project Instituted and Habituated by the Will”, offers some interesting insights into Husserl’s account of phenomenology (and philosophy more generally), and the role played by habituation in it, alongside the other central concepts he deploys in his theory. Husserl classifies phenomenology as a vocation—a long-standing project a person takes on, defined by an open-ended goal (or set of goals) whose satisfaction calls for an ongoing series of actions, rather than any particular act. Other examples of vocations include parenting, medicine, shoemaking, and science. One does not complete the task of parenting simply by feeding one’s child on Monday. Instead, one satisfies the goal(s) that define being a parent through continuing to feed and care for one’s child indefinitely. Indeed, the tasks of parenting are never completed until one stops being a parent. Similarly, for other vocations. Since vocations are defined by goals, to have a vocation is to do things; it involves the will. Husserl accounts for their relative permanence in the lives of people through habituation: vocations are habituated acts of willing. This gives them a particular kind of complex temporal structure. Acts of willing sketch an outline of the agent’s future—what she wills as to be done. In general, habits are grounded in what has gone before, as having repeatedly done something in the past is what leads to the acquisition of the habit. Thus, for Husserl, vocations as habituated acts of willing are grounded in what has previously been willed (or at least, in those acts of willing that pertain to the vocation). Heinämaa uses this account to shed light on some puzzling claims Husserl makes about the nature of phenomenology as a vocation. Merleau-Ponty is widely known for his conception of agency, which places habits (and related phenomena such as motor skills) at its centre. Justin White’s chapter, “Personal Acts, Habit and Embodied Agency in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception”, presents his account, showing how his ideas can be used to illuminate the phenomenon of aspiration discussed by Agnes Callard. Habitual behaviour cannot be properly understood as bodily movement controlled by thought, but neither are habits reducible to the merely physiological. White identifies three important elements to Merleau-Ponty’s account of habit. First, they 7

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involve incorporation: habitually used instruments are incorporated into the body’s structure. Second, they alter the body’s existential spatiality: the bodily self is situated in the world in relation to its tasks, and perceives the world in terms of solicitations, i.e. perceived opportunities to act. Third, habits are a type of bodily knowledge: understanding of the world that is not constituted by conceptual representations. Nevertheless, whilst many commentators have interpreted Merleau-Ponty as though he thinks that habitual behaviour is mindless, this is not the case. He allows for a role of thought in action. White then turns to Agnes Callard’s work on aspiration as an illustration of how habit and thought can be intertwined. One aspires not just to act in particular ways, but also to become a certain type of person. This involves both conscious reflection on one’s aims and values, as well as acquiring new habits and breaking old ones. The final chapter in this section further explores the notion of habit found in the work of various French philosophers, focusing particularly on the work of Gilles Deleuze. In “Deleuze on Habit and Time; or How to Get, and How Not to Get, from Hume to Bergson”, Mark Sinclair asks what the relationship is between habit and time. In the second chapter of Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, he outlines three “syntheses of time”, and tries to show that reflection on habit causes problems for an understanding of time as composed of a series of instants. Habit involves the contraction of instances of time together—a retention of the past. Sinclair argues that Deleuze’s approach to habit is flawed and that this threatens to undermine the ground of his whole philosophical project. To show why, Sinclair reveals that Deleuze’s approach to habit draws on a history of habit from Hume to Bergson that ends up being all too Humean and perhaps even anti-Bergsonian. Habit ends up working on discrete instants of time. However, there is another, better, way to think about habit that travels from Hume to Bergson by means of the French philosophers of the nineteenth century, such as Félix Ravaisson, Albert Lemoine, and Émile Boutroux. They have shown the impossibility of explaining the principle of habit by means of such a psychological atomism and provided a promising alternative by means of understanding habit in terms of tendency. If Deleuze had grounded his project on this alternative route, the problems facing his project could have been avoided.

0.6 Contemporary Perspectives on Habit The final section of this collection comprises chapters that investigate different aspects of habit and the various roles it plays in our lives. All of the authors draw on the work of earlier thinkers to develop the ideas they present. In each case, we have a productive dialogue between the history of philosophy and contemporary thought. The first chapter in this section—“Habit and the Spiritual Life: Perspectives from Christian Mysticism and the Philosophy of Religion”—considers what religious perspectives on habit might have to offer philosophers. Many philosophers have emphasized the role habits play in the constitution of our distinct characters. William James, e.g. refers to humans as “bundles of habits”. However, in this chapter, Simone Kotva looks at religious perspectives on habit, which emphasize the role of habit in leading to a feeling of a loss of subjectivity. Such loss of subjectivity is essential for a receptivity to grace. These perspectives provide a rich resource for thinking about the relationship between activity and passivity in habit. For Augustine, when prayer becomes a habit, the effort and attention fades and it becomes easy and passive. When prayer becomes passive, it conforms to the active will of God. For the French spiritualist Maine de Biran, the weakening of the active will in prayer can open the mind up to receive mystical knowledge. For Simone Weil, there is a parallel between attention and prayer such that attention must become a “negative effort” that opens us up so that we can receive all forms of knowledge more easily. 8

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In the next chapter, “Are Habits Inherited? A Possible Epigenetic Route from Charles Darwin to the Contemporary Debate”, Mariagrazia Portera and Mauro Mandrioli examine the role played by habit in Darwin’s early theory of evolution, and argue that whilst Darwin himself later rejected these ideas, they resonate with recent work in epigenetics (the study of how genetic expression can be modified by the environment and transmitted to future generations without altering DNA). Darwin initially argued that habits and instincts were central to the development of new species. On his picture, organisms acquire habits through repeated interaction with the environment, which brings about changes to the organism’s brain structure—modifications that can be passed on to their offspring. Where a habit is adopted by an entire population—not just an individual or small group—and where that habit is beneficial to the population, it eventually becomes instinct. Darwin later came to reject this account since there are some instinctive animal behaviours it is implausible to think began in this way. However, more recent research shows that a creature’s habits can affect the function of its genes. For example, the licking and grooming habits of rat mothers affects the gene expression and brain development of their offspring, which in turn affects their behaviour and the gene expression and brain development of their offspring. Portera and Mandrioli provide other examples from contemporary epigenetics to show how habits can become heritable. The early Darwin’s thinking on habit and instinct can thus be seen as an early forerunner of ideas from epigenetics. In “The Discourse Ecology Model: Changing the World One Habit at a Time”, Susan Notess discusses social change and the way that linguistic habits can figure in it. She begins by observing that people often assume that changing the language we use can alter our nonlinguistic behaviour. This is reflected, e.g. in the concern with hate speech and campaigns to end it. A question this raises is whether hate speech is only able to function as such because of the oppressive social context (and so its status as hate speech depends on the context), or whether hate speech is what creates, or helps to create, the oppressive social context (the context depends on hate speech). Notess draws on Dewey’s account of the mutual relationship between habit and environment to offer what she calls the “discourse ecology model”, showing how linguistic habits both help create and depend on the environment in which they are exercised. She then offers an analysis of the role played by language in the shift from vegans being a small minority viewed as oddities by the rest of society, to veganism being a much more widespread and socially accepted behaviour. Notess argues that the gradual introduction of terms such as “free range”, “flexitarian”, and “veganuary” have played a role in this shift, but were only able to do so because of other changes to the social environment that have also taken place. This example serves as an illustration of how linguistic habits more generally can support other behavioural habits, and are supported by them in turn. Clare Carlisle’s chapter, “Habit and Practice”, develops some ideas from her book On Habit. It aims to make and/or clarify some conceptual distinctions that will enable us to better understand the phenomenon of habit. She begins by offering a very general account of habit, according to which, habits are the capacity to take on a form that endures over a period of time. For example, my habit of cycling a particular way to work means that my behaviour has a particular “shape” that is sustained for as long as I possess this habit. As such, habits are characterized by four elements. Receptivity to change—habits can be acquired. Resistance to change—habits provide stability to behaviour, thought, etc. and require some effort to break. Repetition—habits are acquired by repeatedly doing the same thing in the same way. Desire—this motivates the behaviour that leads to the acquisition of, and constitutes, the habit. Carlisle then presents the concept of practice, which she takes to be a particular type of habit. Practices consist in repetition aimed at cultivating some particular ability. When I engage in 9

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dance practice, e.g. I intentionally carry out a set of movements over and over with the aim of improving my skill at dancing. The category of practice admits of further distinctions, and Carlisle identifies three types in this chapter: skilled practice (such as driving), art practice (such as ballet), and spiritual practice (such as meditation or prayer). The final part of the chapter indicates how these concepts can be used to illuminate some historical ideas on habit, including those found in the work of Aristotle, Kant, and Ravaisson. William Hornett’s chapter, “Habit-Formation: What’s in a Perspective”, takes MerleauPonty’s account of habit as its starting point. Hornett interprets Merleau-Ponty as arguing that acquiring a habit brings about a change in one’s perspective: a person “may gain a new sensitivity to already existing facts, or those facts’ practical salience; there may be shifts in what they attend to or care about; or they may gain new reasons or motives for action” (p. n). Hornett offers textual support for this interpretation of Merleau-Ponty as well as reasons for thinking it is an independently plausible claim. He then argues that Merleau-Ponty’s account of this change is problematic. Merleau-Ponty holds that acquiring a habit involves gaining new practical knowledge of relevant parts of the world. Tools involved in the habit become integrated into the body schema, and the agent perceives relevant environments as offering opportunities to perform the actions that characterize her habit. Hornett points out that Merleau-Ponty’s account is based on consideration of skills, which he does not distinguish from habit. However, there are reasons for treating these phenomena as distinct. Hornett then offers an alternative account of the change in perspective wrought by gaining a habit: habitual situations feel familiar, and this accounts for their motivational power. The final chapter is Cathy Legg’s “Habits in Perception: A Diachronic Defence of Hyperinferentialism”, in which she appeals to the pragmatist C. S. Peirce’s philosophy of habit in order to argue that perception should be understood diachronically—as something evolving in time—rather than as synchronically—as an event such as a representation. She contextualizes Peirce’s position within contemporary debates in analytic philosophy by showing that he defends a form of hyperinferentialism according to which cognition is entirely composed of inferences. One of the challenges for such a position is that it neglects the contribution of the world outside of cognition. By means of Peirce’s account of “habits of association”, Legg shows how Peirce is able to overcome this challenge and provide a unified account of perception, which has significant advantages over Robert Brandom’s dualistic account of inferentialism.

References Dewey, J. (1922) Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Hume, D. (2000) An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by Tom L. Beauchamp. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hume, D. (2007) A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton. Oxford: Clarendon Press. James, W. (1890) The Principles of Psychology. New York: Henry Holt and Company. Sparrow, T. and Hutchinson, A. (2013) History of Habit: From Aristotle to Bourdieu. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

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PART I

Habit and Ancient Philosophy

1 SOCRATES ON HABITUATION AND POLITICS: PLATO’S GORGIAS 509C6–510A4 Leo Catana

1.1 Introduction In Plato’s Gorgias 509c6–d6, we find the following exchange between Socrates and Callicles: SOCRATES:

Of these two things, then, of doing what’s unjust (adikein) and suffering it (adikeisthai), we say that doing it is the greater evil and suffering the lesser one. With what, then, might a man provide himself to protect himself (paraskeuasamenos anthrōpos boēthēsein) so that he has both these benefits, the one that comes from not doing what’s unjust and the one that comes from not suffering it? Is it power (dynamin) or wish (boulēsin)? What I mean is this: is it when a person doesn’t wish (mē boulētai) to suffer what’s unjust that he will avoid suffering it, or when he procures a power (dynamin paraskeuasētai) to avoid suffering it? CALLICLES: When he procures a power (dynamin). That is obvious at least. (Trans. Zeyl, p. 90.) It hardly comes as a surprise that the procurement of some kind of power (dynamis) is needed in order to avoid suffering from unjust actions, where the person suffering is different from the agent causing the suffering: mere wish (boulēsis), on the part of the person suffering, does not provide protection against suffering.1 What is surprising is that wish (boulēsis) is insufficient in order to avoid doing unjust actions, even if the wish is located in the person committing injustice. However, that is Socrates’ position in the text that follows in 509d7–510a4: SOCRATES:

And what about doing what’s unjust? Is it when he doesn’t wish (mē boulētai) to do it, is that sufficient—for he won’t do it—or should he procure (paraskeuasasthai) a power (dynamin) and craft (technē) for this, too, so that unless he learns (mathē) and trains (askēsē) it, he will commit injustice? Why don’t you answer at least this question, Callicles? Do you think Polus and I were or were not correct in being compelled to agree in our previous discussion when we agreed that no one does what’s unjust because he wants to, but that all who do so do it unwillingly? CALLICLES: Let it be so, Socrates, so you can finish up your argument. SOCRATES: So we should procure (paraskeuasteon) a certain power (dynamin) and craft (technēn) against this too, so that we won’t do what’s unjust. (Trans. Zeyl, p. 90, modified.) DOI: 10.4324/9781315186436-3

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What is surprising here is that wish (boulēsis) is insufficient in order to avoid doing unjust actions, even if the wish is located in the agent committing injustice: why does that wish not stop the agent from committing unjust actions? Why is something more required in order to protect the person against committing unjust actions, as Socrates and Callicles agree, namely the procurement of a power (dynamis) and a craft (technē), that is supported by learning (mathēsis) and training (askēsis)? One may ask a range of questions related to this second passage: what is meant by “doing what’s unjust” (adikein)? What, precisely, is meant by power (dynamis) and craft (technē)? And what is meant by the “learning” (mathēsis) and “training” (askēsis) that is necessary in order not to commit unjust actions?2 In what follows, I try to answer these questions. I argue that according to Socrates, habituation plays a significant role in the endeavour not to suffer from unjust actions, but not in the endeavour not to commit unjust actions. To Socrates, there is a categorial difference between suffering from unjust actions and committing unjust actions, since these two categories denote two different roles within the structure of a political community. Theoretically, one single agent may switch between these roles, but in Socrates’ analysis and historical examples, that is not what we see. Instead, we find subjects of a political community seeking protection against suffering injustice, and political leaders of a political community seeing protection against committing injustice—or rather, political leaders who ought to seek this form of protection but who do not always do so. This analysis is relevant to the on-going discussion of the so-called Socratic intellectualism (also called ethical cognitivism). Adherents of this position use Plato’s Gorgias 460b3–c6, among other passages in Plato’s dialogues, as evidence for their interpretation: according to Socrates, the moral agent who has knowledge (epistēmē) about what is just (ta dikaia), will also act justly. Opponents to this position have pointed out that non-cognitive elements, such as emotions and habituation, also play a significant role in Socratic ethics.3 In this chapter, I largely agree with those attributing to Plato’s Socrates a non-cognitivist ethics, in which habituation plays a significant role. It is not my intention, however, to enter this discussion about Socratic intellectualism head-on. Instead, I argue that Plato’s Socrates does not hold a universalistic ethics, in which habituation plays the same role to all individuals, but a role sensitive ethics within which habituation is only important to some roles, and, vice versa, that in some other roles still other concepts are important. This argument, primarily based on the Gorgias 509c6–510a4, has not yet been examined in the literature discussing Socratic intellectualism.

1.2 Not Suffering from Unjust Actions: The Role of Habituation to Partisans of Regimes Socrates proceeds to the scenario of not suffering from unjust actions immediately after the above quotations. The way in which one procures a power (dynamis) not to suffer from unjust actions is, Socrates asserts, either to become a ruler oneself, perhaps even a tyrant (tyrannos), or to become a partisan (hetairos) of the regime (politeia) in power (510a7–10). The “regime” (politeia) discussed over the following lines is either tyranny (510b2–e3) or democracy (512d8–513c8). In either case, the power in question consists in political or brute force. Habituation, as a psychological phenomenon, derives from the endeavour to become a partisan of a regime, and Socrates undertakes the following analysis of ethical individuation applying to a person seeking protection against suffering injustice within tyranny. The partisan’s role in relation to the tyrant is to be some sort of a friend (philos); it is characteristic to a friend to be like the person befriended (ho homoios tō homoiō), in this case the tyrant (510b2–5). “Like” in this context means that the partisan’s ethical character is like that of the tyrant, implying that 14

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only a partisan “of like character” (homoēthēs)—neither superior nor inferior—will be able to befriend the tyrant and achieve this form of protection (510b7–d3). One might think that this is simply a question of measuring the respective ethical characters of the partisan and the tyrant, and then assess the degree of likeness: that would leave little room for ethical development on part of the partisan. However, that is not the case. The partisan, here a young person, may over time develop a character that is similar to that of the tyrant: SOCRATES:

So, if some young person (tōn neōn) in that city were to reflect, “In what way would I be able to have great power (dynaimēn) and no one treat me unjustly (mēdeis me adikoiē)?” this, evidently, would be his way to go: to get himself habituated (ethizein) from childhood (ek neou) on to like and dislike the same things as the master, and to make sure that he’ll be as like him as possible (malista homoios estai ekeinō). Isn’t that so? 4 CALLICLES: Yes. (Plato, Gorgias 510d4–10, trans. Zeyl, p. 91, modified.) It is difficult to indicate a specific age from which a youngster (ho neos) could embark on such a process of ethical individuation under a tyranny, given the amorphous nature of tyrannical rule. However, Socrates makes it clear that it is also possible to seek protection against suffering injustice under another political regime (politeia) than tyranny, namely democracy; here too the partisan will seek to make his ethical character conform with the democratic regime, or rather, with its power-holding people (dēmos) (512d8–513c8).5 If Socrates were willing to allow youngsters a period dedicated to habituation under democracy, as in the case of tyranny, then the “young man” (ho neos) in 510d4–9 might also refer to a young man living in democratic Athens, just before he turns 20, or is in his 20s: here, citizens aged 20 would gain political rights, but it was not before they were aged 30 that they gained the right to become a juror in the People’s Court, or a legislator or a magistrate.6 The young Athenian man turning 20, or in his 20s, would find himself in the fortunate situation where he could habituate himself to the ethos of the demos and hope for political influence and personal protection against suffering injustice. In the Gorgias, we are told that Callicles is entering a political career (515a1–2), and it is clear that he intends to gain influence in the Athenian Assembly (512d8–c3): in all probability, Callicles represents a young Athenian citizen in, or near, his 20s, who intends to embark on a political career, and to whom this sort of ethical habituation is of personal import. So far protection against suffering injustice has been discussed on a fairly general level. There is, however, a biographical dimension to this discourse: it is a recurring theme in the Callicles–Socrates debate that Socrates may end up suffering injustice at the Athenian law court (486a3–c3, 508c4–d3, and 521b4–d4). This biographical dimension unfolds in the next section, where we find Socrates’ imaginary litigants among those committing unjust actions.

1.3 Not Committing Unjust Actions So much for not suffering from unjust action. Now let me turn to the other category, not to commit unjust action. Contrary to the first category, we find no general treatment of this second category. As mentioned above, Plato discusses the first category in general terms right after the above quotation in 509c6–510a2, namely in 510a6–e4, but he does not discuss the second category in general terms in the remaining part of the dialogue; it seems as if it has dropped out of sight. That is not the case, however. The second category is treated, but at the level of individual persons exemplifying it, and here, we find two groups, namely political leaders committing injustice, the prime example being Archelaus (478e6–479e7, 525b1–526b4), and Socrates’ 15

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imaginary litigants (486a3–c3, 508c4–d3, 521b4–d4), who are not named in the Gorgias, but elsewhere, namely in Plato’s Apology 23e4–5: Anythus, Meletus, and Lycon. Archelaus and these three litigants are historical persons, and Archelaus was famous for his shocking crimes (Thucydides 2.100.2).7 Now if members of these two groups want to protect themselves against acting unjustly—which they should, according to Socrates, because committing injustice is the greatest evil, even to the wrongdoer him- or herself (474b2–5, 509b1–c3, 527b2–6)—then they ought to conform with the requirements spelled out by Socrates in 509c6–510a4, cited at the beginning of this essay. I now return to my questions from the Introduction keyed to the scenario where the moral agent is intent on not committing unjust actions.

1.3.1 What Is Meant by “Doing What’s Unjust” (Adikein)? In 509c6–510a4, Socrates mentions repeatedly “doing what is unjust”, but without defining what he means by that expression. It would be difficult to understand this expression as the lack of strict adherence to written law, since the foundation of written law is problematized in the dialogue (e.g. 482c4–484c3). Instead, we may understand the meaning of this expression of Socrates by paying attention to his usage in this dialogue. Let me make two observations. First, Socrates stipulates that unjust actions are breaches in speech or action in regard to men or gods—for instance, when he says to Callicles that the way of living exemplified by Socrates himself is superior to that of Callicles, “as long as he (i.e. any ethical agent) has protected himself (ei beboēthēkōs eiē hautō) against having spoken or done anything unjust relating to either men or gods (mēte peri anthrōpous mēte peri theous adikon mēden mēte eirēkōs mēte eirgasmenos)” (522c7–d2. Also, 507b1–3). Second, Socrates gives examples of unjust persons, and here he lists political leaders. The Macedonian king Archelaus, for instance, committed the “most heinous crimes”: despite the fact that he was a slave by birth, and therefore without right to the throne, he killed his uncle and cousin and drowned a boy of seven, a legitimate heir to the throne, in order to gain political power (470c9–471d2). Still, Archelaus was not punished for his wrongdoing while alive (478e6–479e7). But, Archelaus, and other powerful political leaders, who, due to their political position, have had the possibility of incurring unjust actions, and who have actually carried out such actions, are finally given their fair judgement at the reformed afterlife tribunal (525b1–526b4). Earlier in the dialogue, Socrates had argued that it is worse to commit injustice than to suffer injustice, and that it is worse to not accept punishment if one has committed injustice than not to do so, because punishment is the only way of restoring one’s soul (472e1–479e6). Archelaus is certainly one notable example of a man who commits actions that one might label “unjust”, and he does so without being punished while alive. Socrates’ statement in 509c6–510a4, about how to protect oneself against committing “unjust actions”, would indeed apply to him and other persons in politically powerful positions. Archelaus and the other potentates, orators, and tyrants continue committing unjust actions and avoid being “lectured and disciplined” (mēte noutheteisthai mēte kolazesthai) (478e6–479a3); they indulge in their pleasures and desires without discipline (akolasia), a concept defended by Callicles (e.g. 492c3–8). As we have seen, “habituation” (ethizein) is not mentioned in Socrates’ analysis of the ethical behaviour of unjust people in such political roles. That does not necessarily mean that habituation is not taking place in the lives of persons fulfilling such roles, which would be implausible, only that it is psychologically less important when they are about commit unjust actions. 16

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1.3.2 What Is Meant by “Power” (Dynamis) and “Craft” (Technē)? In 509c6–510a4 Socrates makes a very strong claim when asks whether the agent intent on not committing injustice “should…procure a power (dynamin) and craft (technēn) for this, too, so that unless he learns (mathē) and trains (askēsē) it, he will commit injustice?” (509e1–2.) As we know, the answer to this question is affirmative. So, first, what is meant by “power” and “craft”? The “power” in question is clearly related to ethical agency, but contrary to the protection against suffering from unjust actions—where the agent is the object of actions carried out by other agents—the power in question regards protection against committing unjust actions. Since the starting point of action in the present scenario is the agent him- or herself, the power in question must relate to psychological components in the agent him- or herself, such as autonomy and willpower. In 491d4–e1, Socrates examines political leaders—fulfilling roles in which injustice may be, and often is, committed, according to Socrates—and he argues that in the case of political leaders, one may legitimately distinguish between the ability to rule others and to rule oneself: the latter he describes as being “master of oneself ”, egkratēs (491d12). Xenophon, in his portrait of Socrates, had pointed out that enkrateia, autonomy or will power, is opposed to akrasia, weakness of will, in Socratic moral psychology (Memorabilia 1.5, 4.5.5–8).8 Hence, by “power”, in the Gorgias 509c6–510a4, Socrates may refer to enkrateia. So much for “power”. I now turn to “craft”. Socrates also refers to “craft” (technē) as a central requirement of protection in 509c6–510a4, but he does not explain what it means on that occasion. However, he had carried out an extensive discussion of this concept with Gorgias and Polus earlier in dialogue, and here Socrates had singled out three features of “craft”. First, a craft is teleological, namely as far as it provides what is best (beltiston) in the end for the object cared for. For instance, the doctor cares for the body’s health (464c3–d3; see also 465a1–2). Second, a craft is capable of giving an explanation (logos) of the nature (physis) of the object in question (465a2–5). Third, a craft can determine the cause (aitia) for the state of each object falling under the province of the craft (465a4–5; see also 500e4–501a3). We may assume that these three features also apply to his concept of craft stipulated in 509c6–510a4. Hence the persons, e.g. political leaders, who want to protect themselves against avoiding to commit unjust actions, should master some craft. One may still ask precisely which craft Socrates has in mind. Given the context, political leaders intent on not committing unjust actions, we may assume that it is the political craft that Socrates has in mind in 509c6–510a4. Socrates makes the following statement about the political craft: SOCRATES:

I believe that I’m one of a few Athenians—so as not to say I’m the only one, but the only one among our contemporaries—to take up the true political craft (politikē technē) and practise (prattein) the true politics (ta politika). This is because the speeches I make on each occasion do not aim at gratification but at what’s best (to beltiston). (521d6–9. Trans. Zeyl, p. 105, modified.)

This passage picks up on one of the three features of craft, since it is said to be teleological; it aims at what is best (to beltiston). Socrates’ political craft may also fulfil the two other requirements to a craft, as far as Socrates asserts elsewhere that he is able to account for the nature of the object in question, humans (the second feature), and as far as he claims he is able to determine the cause (aitia) of the state of the humans in question, their respective sōphrosynē (the third feature) (503d5–504d4, 506c5–507a4).9 17

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In the last quotation Socrates claims that he not only masters the political craft, but also that he practises it. I now turn to the two last concepts that are essential to avoiding committing injustice, namely “learning” and “training”.

1.3.3 What Is Meant by “Learning” (Mathēsis) and Training (Askēsis)? As we have seen, in 509e1–2 Socrates makes the strong claim that “learning” (mathēsis) and training (askēsis) are not only desirable but necessary if an ethical agent wants to avoid committing unjust actions. What kind of learning does Socrates have in mind? And what sort of training? He has not spelt it out in 509c6–510a4. Let me turn to “learning” first. As we have seen, Archelaus and the other potentates, orators, and tyrants continue committing unjust actions and avoid being “lectured and disciplined” (mēte noutheteisthai mēte kolazesthai) (478e6–479a3). Here, Socrates does not use the term mathesis for learning, but the verb noutheteō, meaning “I put in mind”—in 478e7–8 used as a medium infinitive meaning “being instructed”. Archelaus and similar political leaders clearly lacked learning as a means to avoid committing evil. Archelaus was the king of Macedonia and he was clearly not held accountable to anyone, but free to follow his own whims and pleasures. One minimal way of interpreting the “learning” in question may consist in this, not being held accountable to one’s actions. Socrates’ method, cross-examination of one’s beliefs, would also count as learning in this sense; his method too denotes a form of accountability (471d3–5, 474e6–474b5; compare it with Polus’ rhetorical method in 471e2–c4, 473e1–3). A less restricted way of explaining this concept of learning might involve positive knowledge, perhaps even metaphysical knowledge, as the philosopher kings in the Republic V 473c5–e4. In the Gorgias, however, this kind of knowledge is not explicitly attributed to political leaders. Now let me turn to “training”. It is of interest that the compound of learning and training is necessary to the agent seeking to avoid committing injustice. The Greek term from which the verb “training” in 509e2 is translated, askēsē, has connotations like “asceticism” in modern parlance. To the ancient Greeks, however, this term had a variety of connotations, including non-religious ones. The corresponding ancient Greek noun askētēs referred to anyone who trained, exercised, or cultivated any art or trade what-so-ever, for which reason the noun cannot simply be translated into “ascetic”. For instance, Plato referred to an athlete as an askētēs, and in doing so he conformed with ancient Greek usage (Republic III 404a7, 404c7). In Plato’s usage, such an athlete, intending to get his body in a good shape (hexis), should abstain from certain forms of food, for instance (Republic III 404c6–8). Clearly, this has little to do with religious or spiritual abstinence. The modern meaning of askētēs, an ascetic, derives from the Christian tradition—for instance, the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (20 BCE–50 CE), who gave the term askētēs the meaning of a monk or hermit (Philo 1.643). The Christian tradition thus gave the term askētēs a new meaning, which was partly foreign to the ancient Greeks, but which came to dominate the medieval and post-medieval tradition. When Plato refers to the act of training (askein) in 509e2, we have to bracket this Christian tradition. For the present purpose, it is Plato’s use of the verb, askein (“to train”), which is significant, because that is the verb used in 509e2 (askēsē). The corresponding noun, askēsis (“training”) is also relevant, and it occurs frequently in Plato’s dialogues, including the Gorgias.10 Even though askeō and askēsis have a variety of meanings in ancient Greek, including the ethical meaning of cultivating ethical virtue (e.g. 527d2, 527e4), the training mentioned in 509e2 must be understood in relation to the “power” and “craft” in question; neither of these two concepts are explained in the Gorgias as an outcome of socially embedded emulation leading to some internalization of an ethos—be it that of a tyrant or that of a dēmos—as in the case of the moral 18

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agents seeking protection against suffering from unjust actions. The closest Plato comes to elaborate on “training” in the Gorgias is when he has Callicles exhorts Socrates to “practise (askei) the sweet music of an active life and do it where you’ll get a reputation for being intelligent” (486c5, 5, trans. Zeyl, p. 57); Plato juxtaposes this exhortation with Socrates’ statement that he is “practising truth” (tēn alētheian askōn, 526d6; see also 500c1–d4). Within Socratic moral psychology, training (askēsis) and habituation (ethizein) both explain how ethical virtue is established through practice, but the way in which they are employed in 509c6–510a4 and its context differ: Socrates reserves “habituation” (ethizein) for the partisan within a political regime who seeks protection against suffering unjust actions, whereas he uses “training” (askēsis) for the political leader seeking protection against committing unjust actions.

1.4 Conclusion Plato does not provide a universalistic account of ethical habituation (ethizein) that is valid to all human beings, but a role sensitive account. He distinguishes between agents seeking protection against suffering from unjust actions carried out by others, on the one hand, and agents not incurring unjust actions on others: ethical habituation has its proper and important place amongst the first group of agents, whereas it is less important to the second group of agents. Members of this first group comprises partisans (hetairoi) of a regime, whose role it is to support the regime in power and benefit from its protection. In democratic Athens, that would mean all ordinary Athenian citizens. To the second group, ethical habituation takes place as well, but it is not as decisive as it is to the first group. Members of this second group comprise political leaders committing injustice, like Archelaus, and wicked litigants indicting good citizens, like Socrates’ hypothesized litigants. Members of this second group, who are intent on not incurring unjust actions on others, should procure a power (dynamis) and a craft (tehcnē), which must be supported by learning (mathesis) and training (askēsis). Agents entering such roles may be said to subject themselves to ethical individuation, as far as the craft, learning and training, shapes their ethical make-up; but it differs from the ethical individuation of the first group in at least two respects. First, whereas the ethical individuation of the first group largely conforms with a collective habituation shared by all other partisans, e.g. other citizens in a democracy, the ethical individuation of the second group will be more solitary. Second, whereas members of the first group are only required to undertake some form of ethical mimesis, emulation, in regard to the regime in question, members of the second group are not required to carry out such an imitation, but, instead, they are required to master a power and a craft that is rigorously supported by learning and training. It is fully possible for one agent to move between the two groups, between the two roles, in which case a radical adjustment of the agent’s ethical state would be needed. Nevertheless, it would not alter the function and place of habituation.

Notes 1 For the argumentative role of “protection” (boētheia) in the Gorgias, see Catana (2019). 2 For the statement in the quotation that “no one does what’s unjust because he wants to, but that all who do so do it unwillingly”, see Segvic (2000). 3 For discussions of Socratic intellectualism, see Aristotle, Magna moralia 1182a; Grote (1865: I, 399–400); Taylor (1933: 141); Gould (1955: 3–30); Vlastos (1957); O’Brien (1958); Dodds (1959: 218–219); Rickless (1998); Cooper (1999: 43–46); Segvic (2000); Carone (2004); Brickhouse & Smith (2010); Rowe (2012); Brickhouse & Smith (2012); Doyle (2014); Pangle (2014: 44–80); Blackson (2015); Jonas (2018).

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Leo Catana 4 Another instance of ethizein in the Gorgias is to found in 454c3. An examination of the noun ethos, or ēthos, in the Gorgias can be completed fairly quickly, since Plato only uses this term three times (482d2, 484d6, 513c1). 5 (Catana, 2020). 6 (Hansen, 1999: 88–89). For being a juror at the People’s Court, where the age requirement was 30 years, see 181. For the ethos of these young and politically ambitious men, see Roisman (2005). 7 For Archelaus, see Nails (2002: 333). For Anythos, Meletos, and Lykon, respectively, see pp. 37–38 (Anytus), 202 (Meletus), and 188–189 (Lycon). For Socrates’ trial, see Brickhouse & Smith (2004); Nails (2009). 8 For enkrateia in Plato’s Gorgias and in Xenophon’s Memorabilia, see Dorion (2012). 9 For a discussion of Socrates’ political philosophy, see Griswold (2011). 10 For askēsis and its cognates in Plato’s Gorgias, see 486c5, 487c5, 500c6, 507d1, 508a7, 509e2, 526d6, 527d2, 527d3, and 527e4.

References Primary Sources Plato (1959) Gorgias, Greek text, English with introduction and commentary by Dodds, E.R. Oxford: Clarendon. Plato (1987) Gorgias, English translation and introduction by Zeyl, D.J. Indianapolis: Hackett. Plato (1900–1907) Laws, in Burnet, J. (ed.) Opera, 5 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, Vol. 5. Plato (2003) Republic, in Slings, S.R. (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Xenophon (1920) Memorabilia, in Marchant, E.C. & Xenophon (eds.) Opera omnia, 5 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, Vol. 2.

Secondary Sources Blackson, T.A. (2015) ‘Two Interpretations of Socratic Intellectualism’, Ancient philosophy, 35, pp. 23–39. Brickhouse, T.C. and Smith, N.D. (2004) Plato and the Trial of Socrates. London: Routledge. Brickhouse, T.C. and Smith, N.D. (2010) Socratic Moral Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press. Brickhouse, T.C. and Smith, N.D. (2012) ‘Reply to Rowe’, Journal of Ethics, 16 (3), pp. 325–338. Carone, G.R. (2004) ‘Calculating Machines or Leaky Jars? The Moral Psychology of Plato’s Gorgias’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 26, pp. 55–96. Catana, L. (2019) ‘The Ethical Discussion of Protection (boētheia) in Plato’s Gorgias’, Classical Quarterly, 68 (2), pp. 425–441. Catana, L. (2020) ‘Plato on Recognition of Political Leaders: The Importance of Mirrored Character Traits’, Polis, 37, pp. 265–289. Cooper, J.M. (1999) Reason and Emotion. Essays on Ancient Moral Psychology and Ethical Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Dodds, E.R. (1959) ‘Commentary’, in Plato, Gorgias, Greek text, English with introduction and commentary by Dodds, E.R. Clarendon: Oxford, pp. 188–391. Dorion, L. (2012) ‘Enkrateia and the Partition of the Soul in the Gorgias’, in Barney, R. and Brittain, C. (eds.) Plato and the Divided Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 33–52. Doyle, J. (2014) ‘Plato: Moral Psychology’, in Sheffield, F. and Warren, J. (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Ancient Philosophy. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 171–184. Gould, J. (1955) The Development of Plato’s Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Griswold, C.L. (2011) ‘Socrates Political Philosophy’, in Morrison, D.D. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Socrates. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 333–354. Grote, G. (1865) Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, vols. 3. London: Murray. Hansen, M.H. (1999) The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes. Structure, Principles, and Ideology. Translated by Crook, J.A. 2nd edn. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Jonas, M.E. (2018) ‘The Role of Practice and Habituation in Socrates’ Theory of Ethical development’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 26 (6), pp. 987–1005.

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Socrates on Habituation and Politics Nails, D. (2002) The People of Plato. A Prosopography of Plato and other Socratics. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett. Not cited. Nails, D. (2009) ‘The Trial and Death of Socrates’, in Kamtekar, R. and Ahbel-Rappe, S. (eds.) A Companion to Socrates. West Sussex: Blackwell, 2005. Reprint/new edition 2009, pp. 5–20. O’Brien, M. (1958) ‘Modern Philosophy and Platonic Ethics’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 19, pp. 452–458. Pangle, L.S. (2014) Virtue is Knowledge: The Moral Foundations of Socratic Political Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rickless, S.C. (1998) ‘Socrates’ Moral Intellectualism’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 79 (4), pp. 355–367. Rowe, C. (2012) ‘Socrates on Reason, Appetite and Passion: A Response to Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith’, Socratic Moral Psychology’, Journal of Ethics, 16 (3), pp. 305–324. Roisman, J. (2005) The Rhetoric of Manhood, Masculinity in the Attic Orators. Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press. Segvic, H. (2000) ‘No One Errs Willingly’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 19, pp. 1–45. Taylor, A.E. (1933) Socrates: The Man and his Thought. Edinburgh: Peter Davies. Vlastos, G. (1957) ‘Socratic Knowledge and Platonic “Pessimism”’, The Philosophical Review, 66 (2), pp. 226–238.

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2 GUIDED PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT: HABITUATION INTO FULL VIRTUE IN ARISTOTLE’S ETHICS 1 Karen Margrethe Nielsen

In this chapter, I wish to examine the nature of “habituation” (ethismos) as Aristotle describes the process in the Nicomachean Ethics (EN). In recent work, readers have tended to attribute a needlessly narrow model of habituation to Aristotle, which makes virtue the product of a process of repeated activity that bypasses our rational faculties. This attribution is textually unwarranted, and furthermore makes it hard to understand how a process of habituation could produce the state that Aristotle calls “virtue of character” (êthikê aretê) and defines, proleptically, in EN II 6. Aristotle here declares that virtue is a “state that decides” (hexis prohairetikê), thereby signalling that the rational part of the soul is engaged in making the right determinations when we act well. A decision (prohairesis), as Aristotle defines it, is produced by reasoning with a practical aim. It proceeds from a wish (boulêsis) for an end, which is a rational desire for the good (specifically, the good that appears to the agent). Virtuous agents will have a true conception (hupolêpsis) of their end, and will deliberate correctly about the acts that they should do in pursuit of this end. As Aristotle puts it, “the excellent person (ho spoudaios) judges each sort of thing correctly (hekasta krinei orthôs), and in each case what is true appears to him (kai en hekastois t’alêthes autôi phainetai)” (EN III 4, 1113a29–30).2 In EN VI 1–2, Aristotle reaches back to this definition when he examines phronêsis, “practical wisdom”, or “prudence” (following the Latin).3 He calls prudence a “true state” (hexis alêthes) since it makes us judge practical matters correctly. Truth (alêtheia) is the function of thought, and the function of thought about practical matters is “truth agreeing with correct desire” (alêtheia homologôs echousa têi orexei têi orthêi, VI 2, 1139a30–31). It appears, then, that virtue of character is a state that not only requires prudence to reach its perfected state, but a state that is intrinsically rational, since the very activity of virtue—decision making—is a rational activity.4 This means that Aristotle’s examination of virtue is only complete at the end of book VI, which examines intellectual virtues and sets out criteria for good deliberation (euboulia). Virtue is a state that comprises both the rational, deliberative part of the soul, and our desires. Because they recognize—correctly—that the process by which virtue is produced must match the nature of the product, readers who adopt a narrow, non-rational model of habituation also invariably defend a non-rational account of virtue. Thinking that the nature of habituation is “better 22

DOI: 10.4324/9781315186436-4

Guided Practice Makes Perfect

known to us” than the nature of virtue, those who defend the non-rational model of habituation further use their assumptions about habituation to guide their analyses of virtue. Specifically, they argue that, since the process of habituation trains the non-rational part of our soul only, virtue of character must be a non-rational state. As Jessica Moss puts the inference: “If habituation is sufficient for virtue, virtue must be a state of the non-rational part of the soul” (Moss, 2012: 172). I wish to reverse the explanatory order that Moss posits: given Aristotle’s description of virtue in books II–VI of the Nicomachean Ethics, what must habituation involve to produce a state with the characteristics that Aristotle attributes to virtue? Contrary to what is commonly assumed, I do not think that Aristotle’s account of habituation is “better known to us” than his account of virtue, and so we need to reconsider the standard analysis of the process by which virtue is acquired. Once we clarify the options, and revisit the textual evidence, we will see that Aristotelian habituation does not bypass our rational faculties.

2.1 Virtue, Full Virtue, and Phronêsis Those who defend a non-rational account of virtue face a problem accommodating Aristotle’s remarks about “full” or “perfect” virtue (kuria arête) in EN VI 13 (1144b4; 17). While there can be no doubt that “full virtue” (as Aristotle describes the state) requires phronêsis, they hold that virtue can be defined independently of phronêsis. On Moss’s analysis, virtue is wholly and entirely the perfection of the non-rational part of the soul, “the part with appetites and, in general, desire” (EN I 13, 1102b31); phronêsis is the perfection of the rationally calculating part (to logistikon/bouleutikon). When we put the two together, we have full virtue.5 This means that there are two separate states, virtue and full virtue, where full virtue is virtue plus phronêsis. The corollary of the two-component model of full virtue is a “two-track” model of virtue acquisition. On the two-track model of virtue acquisition, each component of full virtue arises through a distinct process, habituation, and teaching, respectively. During the first stage of moral habituation, children develop good habits through practices that shape their non-rational appetites and emotions. Only when their desires are properly habituated will the state teach its future citizens how to deliberate and decide about action. This instruction will produce phronêsis. However, the intellectual aspect of their education presupposes that their emotions and desires have already been prepared “like ground that is to nourish seed” (EN X 91179b26) so that they are pleased by virtuous acts and pained by acts that fall short of virtue (EN I 3, 1095a2–13; II 3, 1104b10–13). There can be no doubt that teaching on Aristotle’s model presupposes that habituation has prepared the non-rational part of the soul adequately, but on the two-track model, it is teaching rather than habituation that is responsible for shaping the rationally calculating part of the soul so that it can perform its function well. The domains of teaching and habituation differ, and the power by which teaching does its work differs from the power by which habituation effects its work. The “ground and seed” model allows that habituation starts out shaping our non-rational desires and emotions. However, Aristotle’s endorsement of the reciprocity of virtue and phronêsis at the end of book VI precludes a model according to which virtue develops before prudence. Virtue is the state that is “with (meta) correct reason”, and “phronêsis is correct reason in the practical realm” (VI 13, 1144b26–28).6 Whether we take “with” (meta) to denote that prudence is an intrinsic part of virtue, or to entail mere reciprocity (one has virtue if and only if one has prudence, as Moss suggests), virtue cannot arise on its own, before we have developed the corresponding intellectual virtue, namely prudence. Conversely, we cannot develop 23

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prudence before we have virtue (VI 13, 1144b30–45a2).7 As Aristotle puts it, “one has all the virtues if and only if one has phronêsis, which is a single state” (VI 13, 1145a1–2). The question is why Aristotle makes these dependence claims if the being of each virtue is independent of the other. If the function and activity of virtue-sans-phronêsis can be specified independently of the function and activity of phronêsis-sans-virtue, then it seems to be a striking coincidence that we can’t have one without the other. Proponents of the two-component view owe us an explanation of why Aristotle denies that virtue of character could ever exist without phronêsis. Why, for instance, would it not suffice to have appetites that were obedient to prudence in another person, such as a parent or a teacher? If prudence is a single state, practical wisdom in the political and private realm furthermore cannot come apart. Prudence is excellence in deliberation about what promotes living well in general (VI 5, 1140a28) both for a political community and for the citizens that make it up. Prudence in turn is necessary for virtue, since virtue, as a hexis prohairetikê, requires excellent deliberation (euboulia). This means that virtue cannot arise prior to phronêsis. Though habituation could start earlier than teaching, habituation cannot reach its end earlier than teaching. But even if we recognize that perfection of the non-rational and rational parts of the soul aren’t attained successively, it is still critical for the two-component model that virtue and prudence are produced by distinct processes—habituation and teaching respectively. Habituation attains its end without in any way affecting the way we think and reason.8 One striking problem with the two-track model is that it creates a conspicuous gap in Aristotle’s account of virtue acquisition. For the teaching that Aristotle has in mind in book I consists in philosophical inquiry into the human good (I 2, 1094a22–26; I 3, 1095a2–11). This is the kind of dialectical inquiry that the Nicomachean Ethics exemplifies. However, it is hard to see how this theoretical study, which is part of political science, will give us the kind of experience in deliberating and deciding that is required for phronêsis. Experience of particulars is necessary to develop euboulia (good deliberation): it is not enough to know the nature of the human good. If habituation does not also train our rational part by providing opportunities for exercising our capacity for deliberation and decision, philosophical study of the human good alone would have to suffice to make us good deliberators. But this simply isn’t the case. Experience in the practical realm is not, as Moss maintains, simply a matter of having had “repeated practical pleasurable perceptions” of virtuous activity as good (p.155). It requires experience in thinking about individual cases, and in exercising sound practical judgment about particulars in the private and public domains (1109b20; 1141b18; 1142a14–16; 1143b11; 1147a21; 1103a16; 1154b4; 1116b3; 1158a14; 1181a19).9 We therefore have prima facie reason to reject the two-track model, even when it does not posit two successive stages for the acquisition of virtue and phronêsis but rather two parallel processes that inexplicably reach completion simultaneously. And so we should ask whether Aristotle in fact thinks of habituation as a process that only shapes the state of the non-rational part of the soul.

2.2 Three Models of Virtue Acquisition I will distinguish between three models of virtue acquisition, and argue that Aristotle thinks that habituation is a kind of “guided practice” that shapes reason and emotion in equal parts by making us experienced in practical matters.10 I shall focus on habituation into virtue, though as Rachel Barney (2019) has rightly observed, “habituation” for Aristotle describes a process that can produce either good or bad states.11 There is such a thing as habituation into vice. From the point of view of ethics, however, what matters is habituation into virtue, and this is the concern of the lawgiver Aristotle advises.12 24

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Broadly, these are the three models of virtue acquisition to be considered (I use “virtue” as shorthand for what Aristotle calls character virtue (êthikê aretê)): α “Mere Repetition” Model The virtuous state is produced simply by doing the corresponding acts repeatedly. The teacher’s role is not to explain or to make you reflect on your practice, but to make you engage in the relevant activities to the point where they become second nature and you take pleasure in activities of this kind. β “Guided Practice” Model The virtuous state is produced by doing the relevant acts repeatedly while simultaneously reflecting on your practice. The teacher’s role is to explain and make you reflect while you are engaging in the relevant activities. As a result, you will take pleasure in the activity and gain experience in judging and thinking about action. γ “Mere Intellect” Model The virtuous state is produced by acts on intellection. The teacher’s role is to explain and make you reflect until you acquire knowledge, whether through Socratic dialectic, philosophical study, or, less plausibly, direct “transfer of knowledge” from the teacher’s mind. The α-model sees virtue as an intrinsically non-rational state that belongs to a properly shaped non-rational part of the soul. The β-model allows that habituation of very young children or those who are just starting to acquire a skill may start out as the α-model describes, but denies that habituation is restricted to shaping the non-rational part of our soul, (or our body, in the case of skills). When practice is guided by a teacher, we come to acquire an understanding of the rights and wrongs of the activity as we improve. We converse about our practice and understand both what we should do and start seeing why it is correct. In fact, Aristotle never endorses the α-model. His aim in EN II is to reject the overly intellectual γ-model, not to endorse the α-model. Since our minds contain desires and emotions that can listen to reason without being able to “give” the reason, these non-rational desires need guidance to respond appropriately, and they need to learn by doing, just as we learn the crafts by doing the relevant activities. The practice that shapes us is not non-rational, however, but engages our intellects as it shapes our desires.

2.3 Virtue of Character: Aristotle’s Definition Aristotle presents his definition of virtue of character immediately after his analysis of habituation and the doctrine of the mean, but before he has defined a central term in the definition, namely decision (prohairesis) (III 2–3). In II 4, he notes that someone might be puzzled by what he means by saying that “we become just by doing just actions and become temperate by doing temperate actions”. For one might suppose that if we do grammatical or musical actions, we are thereby grammarians or musicians, and similarly, if we do just or temperate actions, we are thereby just or temperate. In other words: the objection Aristotle envisions is that what it is to be an F person just is to do F acts. If that is true, the objection goes, doing F acts can’t be what causes us to develop an F state, since our ability to do the acts by themselves suffice for having attained the end. Aristotle responds that the objection rests on a false conception of what is required to possess virtue. The learner and the virtuous person will do virtuous acts differently. While we become virtuous by doing 25

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virtuous acts, a person who is virtuous will do these acts because he is virtuous. That is, he will decide on them and decide on them for themselves, from a firm and unchanging state. The state is produced by the acts, and does not simply consist in a certain pattern of behaviours. This alerts us to the significance of decision for virtue. Aristotle observes that “the virtues are decisions of some kind, or require decision” (II 5, 1106a 3–4; cf. III 2 1111b5–6). Virtue is a “firm and unchanging state” that makes us decide on acts that are virtuous insofar as they are virtuous. The specific virtuous-making properties of acts will vary with the circumstances, but in all cases depend on the act’s promoting human wellbeing. Aristotle’s response to the puzzle about habituation and states paves the way for his definition of virtue as a state that decides: Virtue, then, is a state that decides (hexis prohairetikê), consisting in a mean (en mesotêti ousa), the mean relative to us, which is defined by reason (hôrismenêi logôi), that is to say, the reason by which the prudent person would define it (kai hôi an ho phronimos horiseien) (EN II 6, 1107a1–3). The exact import of the claim that virtue is “defined by reason” is disputed, as is the significance of the specification in the relative clause. The difficulties are compounded by variation in readings between Aspasius’s 2nd century AD commentary and the manuscripts (mss have horismenê logôi and hôs an ho phronimos). However, it is indisputable that the mean (mesotês) is “defined by reason”. Importantly, this is a claim about the definition of the mean relative to us that virtue of character consists in, rather than the intermediate amount of some emotion that the virtuous agent chooses.13 Since virtue (qua mean state) can only be defined by reason—i.e. since reason is the defining term that specifies the kind of mean in question, and the type of reason in question is the one possessed by the phronimos—we have a chain of definitional dependencies.14 Virtue is a state that decides; if we want to know what kind of state, we define it as a state that is mean; if we want to know what this mean state is, it is a rational mean, the one the phronimos represents. And so, we have a transitive argument for thinking that virtue can only be defined with reference to prudence: prudence is an aspect of virtue. This makes virtue an intrinsically rather than an extrinsically rational state. Aristotle offers further reasons for thinking that virtue is an intrinsically rational state when he defines decision in III 3. Acting on a decision requires more than a mere desire for an end and a belief that the end will satisfy that desire. It requires that we have a wish (boulêsis) for the end, and so want the end because we believe it to be unqualifiedly good. It further requires that we have deliberated about how to promote this end in practice. Deliberating is a kind of inquiry that seeks to identify the means (broadly speaking) to an end that has been laid down. Such inquiry is a process of rational thought: it seeks a cause, namely acts that are up to us and conducive to our end. We only decide when we have identified such a cause.15 The part of the soul that decides in the “hêgoumenon” (III 3 1113a5–7)—the part of the soul that issues commands to the non-rational part. These considerations show that the virtuous person lays down good ends and reasons well about how to attain them. But this requires euboulia, good deliberation, which Aristotle in VI 9 describes as the state by which we “reach a good”—i.e., an action that is beneficial for us, via correct reasoning. The reasoning is only correct for Aristotle if we reach the right conclusion via the right middle term (VI 9, 1142b17–36). Had Aristotle thought that virtue of character only makes us desire the right end, it would not be a hexis prohairetikê, but rather a hexis hupoleptikê, since it would merely furnish ends.16 However, he does not.17 As far as Aristotle’s definition of virtue of character is concerned, it is the best state of both the non-rational and 26

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rational parts of the soul: that is, it includes phronêsis as a part. The exact contribution of phronêsis is not yet explained, but Aristotle’s definition establishes the intrinsically rational nature of virtue of character. How can the process of habituation contribute to the development of this decisionmaking state? Aristotle’s analysis of virtue of character extends from book II through book VI. But his remarks about habituation are brief and confined to EN II 1–4 and X 9.18 We gain a clearer sense of habituation if we work from his description of the end product, the virtuous person’s activity as characterized in EN II 4 and the definition of virtue of character in II 6. EN II 4 and 6 are later invoked in Aristotle’s discussion of phronêsis and virtue in book VI 2 and 12 (viz., at VI 2 1139a22–23 and VI 12 1144a11–20), and so we should investigate what Aristotle’s earlier remarks in book II tell us about the state that Aristotle calls “kuria aretê” (full virtue) in VI 13. There are, I think, compelling reasons for thinking that “full virtue” is nothing other than the character virtue Aristotle started analysing in book II, of which prudence is a necessary component rather than a mere prerequisite. The description of virtue in book II includes references to prudence, but these are only fully spelled out in book VI, and so we are alerted to the significance of Aristotle’s earlier references several books after his account of habituation is complete. Remarkably, Aristotle never investigates or even mentions the mode by which prudence is acquired in book VI. The reason is simple: he has already told us how we start training the deliberative part of reason in his account of habituation in book II. In EN II 4, Aristotle has observed that to have virtue, we must know that our acts are virtuous, decide on virtuous actions for themselves, and do so from a firm and unchanging state. He then adds: “As a condition for having virtue, however, the knowing counts for nothing or [rather] for only a little, whereas the other two conditions are very important, indeed, all-important. And we achieve these other two conditions by the frequent doing of just and temperate actions” (EN II 4, 1105b2–10, my emphasis).19 In other words: habituation makes us decide on virtuous actions for themselves, from a firm and unchanging state. Aristotle concludes: “It is right, then, to say that a person comes to be just from doing just actions and temperate from doing temperate actions; for no one has the least prospect of becoming good from failing to do them” (1105b10–12). This reveals that habituation produces the state by which we deliberate and decide correctly. Consequently, it must affect the rational and not just the non-rational part of the soul. Aristotle leaves open the possibility that something else is required, namely philosophical reflection. But if study of the human good is to be beneficial, this presupposes not just that we have come to take pleasure in fine action, but that we are also trained to deliberate and decide correctly. Once we acquire a firm grasp of the human good, we have prudence. However, the deliberative excellence we then possess presupposes that we have already started training the rational part through deliberating about individual cases. My analysis can be summed up as the conjunction of three claims: 1 2

3

Habituation trains the deliberative part of the soul as well as the non-rational part. Virtue and prudence arise simultaneously when the non-rational and deliberating rational parts have been habituated well and we have grasped the nature of the human good through philosophical reflection. Prudence is an aspect of virtue, and virtue is the same as full virtue. (That, incidentally, is why Aristotle’s work as a whole is referred to as “ta êthika”—the ethics: it is a study of the nature and origin of virtue).20 27

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It should be noted that (1) is not simply the standard response to a worry about “mindless repetition” or “mechanical performance” that scholars routinely voice in response to Aristotle’s account of habituation. Aristotle claims that we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, and so forth. But, the objection goes, simply repeating a single type of act again and again, in the manner of “brushing teeth”,21 is unlikely to produce a stable disposition to decide on virtuous actions for the their own sakes, which is a requirement of Aristotelian virtue (II 4, 1105a31–32). It is therefore widely acknowledged that Aristotelian habituation must engage our cognitive powers somehow. However, the type of cognition involved is typically said to be limited to judging that actions are virtuous, or even to judging that they are fine. Some think that we can make such judgment simply in virtue of our perceptual—and so nonrational—powers (Moss is among them), while others maintain that they involve higher-order cognitive powers only available to rational animals when they have reached a certain stage of psychological development. Still, even those who think higher-order powers are involved portray the contribution of reason to the process of habituation as ancillary: it helps us label virtuous actions correctly. This labelling is not yet sound judgment, and so training the virtues of practical reason is not a built into the process of habituation. That role, instead, is ascribed to teaching (didaskalia) alone.

2.4 Disambiguating EN II 1, 1103a15–17 Why has the standard analysis of habituation as a process that bypasses reason taken hold? Aristotle’s opening remarks in book II must take some of the blame, as his choice of examples. A stone, he says, won’t learn to travel upward even if we throw it in the air ten thousand times. The implication is taken to be that habituation of human minds is akin to tossing a stone in the air: a mechanical repetition of movements, like eating fish on Fridays and learning to like it or moving your fingers just so on the keyboard again and again until it’s been automated. This is thought to support a non-rational model of habituation. Having divided the soul in I 13 into a part “with appetites and in general desires” that listens to reason as if to father and friends, and another part that is rational insofar as it “gives the reason”, Aristotle notes that the division between virtues accords with—is “kata”—this division: some are virtues of character, others are virtue of thought.22 He maintains that “while virtue of thought arises and grows mostly from teaching” (to pleion ek didaskalias), and therefore requires “experience and time” (empeirias kai chronou), “virtue of character results from habit”, as its name suggests, being slightly varied from “ethos” (mikron parekklinon apo tou ethous) (II 1, 1103a15–17). How should we understand the contrast between “teaching” and “habituation” that Aristotle draws in the opening lines of book II? Does Aristotle here argue that experience and time is not a part of habituation? That would be odd. Or is he rather allowing that gaining experience through time is a part of habituation, and that teaching, as on the β-model, happens alongside practical training that shapes the non-rational part of the soul? There is enough ambiguity in Aristotle’s claim that it requires further unpacking. In II 1, Aristotle contrasts his own claim that character (êthos) results from habit (ethos) with the view that our character states arise naturally. Had they been natural, then habituation could not affect our states: “For if something is by nature in one condition, habituation cannot bring it into another condition” (EN II 1 1103a20–21). He contrasts the capacities of the soul that ground our states with the natural capacities of the elements: a stone, being earthen, by nature moves downwards, and habituation cannot make it move upwards, even if we threw it upwards ten thousand times to habituate it. Nor could habituation make fire move downwards, or bring 28

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anything else that is by nature in one condition into another condition. The stone and the fire have a natural telos, an end that they seek, and there is no way to affect or influence their movement so that they come to acquire a state which makes them behave differently. However, animals do not attain their telos in such a simply way. Although some of our capacities can be activated immediately, and used without intervening training, these capacities are typically not those that define the animal as a being with a certain kind of life. We do not acquire the senses by frequent hearing or seeing, but already have the capacity to see and hear when we use them. This is not the case with the virtues, since we acquire these by first activating the capacities of which they are perfections. That is why the virtues “belong to us neither by nature nor against nature”: “rather, we are by nature able to acquire them and they are completed [or…perfected] through habit (teleioumenos de dia tou ethous)” (EN II 1, 1103a24–25). In this respect, virtues are like crafts: we learn a craft by first producing the same product that we must produce when we have learned the craft. We become builders by building and harpists by playing the harp—and “we become just from doing just actions and temperate from doing temperate actions” (1105b11–12). “The many do not do these actions”, observes Aristotle. “Instead they take refuge in arguments, thinking that they are doing philosophy, and that this is the way to become excellent people. They are like a sick person who listens attentively to the doctor, but acts on none of his instructions. Such a course of treatment will not improve the state of the sick person’s body; nor will the many improve the state of their souls by this attitude to philosophy” (EN II 4, 1105b13–19). The need for habituation does not void the benefits of reflection, however. That reflection sometimes goes along with practice and is sometimes undertaken in the cool hour by those who have acquired experience. Aristotle’s own aim in the Nicomachean Ethics is to provide an analysis of happiness that will “offer a little help” to lawgivers by getting the target of their science into clearer view. This inquiry will not make a practical difference if his students are not already inclined towards the good: “for those who accord with reason in forming their desires and in their actions, knowledge of political science will be of great benefit”. If he tends to follow his feelings, his study will be futile and useless. This establishes that practice is necessary for virtue of character. But importantly, it does not establish that practice is sufficient for virtue, as the twotrack model posits. Political science is a practical discipline, with practical aims, and that these aims will be undercut if we think that philosophical study will make us good by itself. In this respect, Aristotle warns against excessive intellectualism (the γ-model). But in holding, on the strength of Aristotle’s prefatory remarks in EN II 1, that phronêsis is produced by teaching, readers have foisted another type of intellectualism on Aristotle: the unfounded and implausible view that phronêsis is acquired exclusively through the study of philosophy, and that practical training is not part of the acquisition of phronêsis. On the β-model of habituation, it includes practice in deliberating correctly. It further leads us to form a universal conception of the good that informs the wishes that are the starting points of deliberation. This is not to deny that the earliest stages of habituation (from infancy through to the age of seven) proceed through non-discursive means—mainly through music and gymnastics—as described in Politics VII and VIII. Nor does it preclude that the molding of the youth continues to rely on non-discursive means to some extent. But increasingly, the trainee will employ his rational faculties in thinking about action. This is the stage of habitation that Aristotle describes in the Ethics, and that does not end when we mature: habituation continues throughout the citizens’ lives (X 9, 1180a1–4). This training prepares the way for philosophical study of the human good. Habituation, then, helps promote all the practical virtues (hai praktikai aretai 1177b6) including phronêsis and practical understanding (nous), consideration (gnomê), and comprehension (sunesis). That is why phronêsis is a unified state.23 29

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Proponents of the non-rational notion of virtue take Aristotle’s claim that the division between the virtues “accords with”—is kata—the division in the soul to entail that virtue of character just is the perfection of the part “with appetites and in general desires” and that virtue of thought just is the perfection of the part that has reason fully, by having reason within itself. This has consequences for their interpretation of the opening lines of book II, where Aristotle maintains that virtue, as a perfection of the soul, necessarily is of two sorts, since the capacities of which virtue is a perfection are also two—the capacity for listening to reason and obeying it, displayed in character virtues like mildness and temperance, and the capacity for giving the reason, displayed in virtues of thought like phronêsis, comprehension, and wisdom. It bears considering the exact wording of II 1 more closely to determine what it does and does not say: “Virtue, then, is of two sorts, virtue of thought and virtue of character. Virtue of thought arises and grows mostly (to pleion) from teaching; that is why it needs experience and time. Virtue of character [i.e. of êthos] results from habit [ethos]”; hence its name “ethical”, slightly varied from “ethos” (EN II 1, 1103a14–18). The first thing to notice is that Aristotle here speaks of virtue of thought in general, not phronêsis in particular. The virtues of thought are scientific knowledge (epistêmê), craft (technê), nous (theoretical understanding), and prudence (phronêsis). These arise and grow “mostly from teaching”. The first three don’t require that our desires be cultivated appropriately, except perhaps indirectly, and so learning that only engages the intellect seems enough. Phronêsis is a special case, since phronêsis is an aspect of virtue, and so demands desires that are properly shaped: hence Aristotle’s cautious qualification (to pleion). This leads to a further question: what, exactly, is the contrast that Aristotle intends to draw when he says that while “virtue of thought arises mostly from teaching”, virtue of character “results from habit”? The claim admits of at least two incompatible interpretations. a b

Virtue of thought arises and grows mostly from teaching, whereas virtue of character does not arise from teaching but [rather] from habituation. Virtue of thought arises and grows mostly from teaching, whereas virtue of character does not arise mostly from teaching, but mostly from habituation.

On the first interpretation (a), assumed by proponents of the α-model of habituation, the contrast is one between teaching and no teaching—while virtue of thought “mostly arises through teaching”, virtue of character does not arise through teaching at all, but rather through habituation. This suggests that habituation precludes teaching, and that teaching is not a cause of virtue. On the (a) reading, the process of habituation clearly cannot contribute directly to the development of any virtue of thought by training the rational part. However, Aristotle’s craftanalogy undercuts the latter view: as Aristotle puts it: The sources and means that develop each virtue, also ruin it, just as they do in craft. For playing the harp makes both good and bad harpists, and it is analogous in the case of builders and the rest; for building well makes good builders, and building badly makes bad ones. Otherwise no teacher would be needed, but we everyone would be born a good or a bad craftsman (EN II 1, 1103b8–13, my emphasis).

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The teacher in this case instructs the students about how to build or play an instrument, just as parents and legislators direct the practice of the young through their instructions and rational guidance. Their instructions are not purely theoretical, but go along with practice. And so, students develop the ability to think about virtuous actions as they are learning to do them. On the second interpretation (b) Aristotle contrasts virtue of thought with virtue of character by saying that, while the first is mostly acquired through teaching (which is why it needs time and experience), virtue of character is not mostly acquired through teaching, but mostly through habituation. This reading allows that teaching is a cause of virtue of character, and that experience in making decisions is a part of habituation, as II 4 requires. All it rules out is that teaching is mostly responsible for virtue of character: the negation of “mostly by teaching” is “not mostly by teaching”. In other words, it rules out what I have called the γ-model. EN II 1 1103b8–13, conjoined with II 4, shows that (b) is not just a possible reading of II 1, but the reading we should prefer.

2.5 Explaining the Appeal of the α-Model Why, given the evidence, has the α-model seemed so intuitive to Aristotle’s readers? Undergraduate students of the Nicomachean Ethics often assume that for the order of exposition of virtue of character and virtue of thought in Aristotle’s treatise reflects their order of acquisition: Aristotle discusses virtue of character first because it arises first. They are then confused and surprised when they reach book VI, and especially puzzled by VI 13. Aristotle’s analysis of virtue is not complete at the end of book V, however. As Rachel Barney (2011) notes, the Nicomachean Ethics, just like the Republic, is ring-composed.24 This affects the way in which we should understand claims about virtue at the start of the treatise. Aristotle introduces themes and presents analyses at the start of the Ethics without adding in all the necessary details or explaining the full import of his claims. We need to read the earlier claims as rough outlines, awaiting refinement (e.g. I 7, 1098a21–35), as Aristotle himself underlines in his methodological remarks. This applies in particular to his claims about “right reason” and the contribution “right reason” makes to virtue of character, which is explicitly postponed until later (husteron) at EN II 2, 1103b31–34). We should expect a further element to be added to the analysis of the relation between it and “the other virtues”—viz, those having to do with action. It is therefore misleading to treat Aristotle’s remarks in II–V as if they were his final word about virtue, or to dismiss evidence from later book on the ground that they contradict earlier claims as these appeared at first blush. For this reason, “taking Aristotle at his word” by treating his claims in book II as his last word is tantamount to not taking Aristotle at his word when he makes his methodological remarks. Aristotle’s analysis of virtue in II is an outline. Book VI clarifies the picture.25 In discussing correct reason in the sphere of action—and especially phronêsis—Aristotle makes good on promise from EN II 2. He there noted that “actions should accord with correct reason. That is a common belief and let us assume it. We shall discuss it later, and say what the correct reason is and how it is related to the other virtues” (II 2 1103b3–35). The sequential model of virtue acquisition seems to fit with Aristotle’s observation in EN I 4 that “we need to have been brought up in fine habits if we are to be adequate students of fine and just things, and of political questions generally. For we begin from the belief that something is true; if this is apparent enough to us, we can begin without also knowing why it is true. Someone who is well brought up has the beginnings or can easily acquire them” (I, 4 1095b5–8). “A youth”, says Aristotle, “is not a suitable student of political science; for he lacks experience in the actions in life, which are the subjects and premises of our argument”. “Moreover”, adds Aristotle, “since the youth tend to follow his feelings, his study will be futile 31

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and useless; for the end of political science is action, not knowledge” (I 3, 1095a3–6). “But for those who accord with reason in forming their desires and their actions, knowledge of political science will of great benefit” (I 3, 1095a10–11). In other words, unless our souls have been habituated correctly, we will not benefit from studying political science—the science whose ends include the end of all other sciences in the city insofar as it studies the human good. This is the science of which Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics forms a part. None of Aristotle’s remarks about the proper preparation for philosophical study entail that a student at the earlier stages possesses any virtues, however. Habituation must be pretty far along for philosophical inquiry to be of benefit, but it can’t have reached its telos: virtue. Again, what matters is not how habituation starts, but how it ends. The α-model of habituation has further seemed compelling to readers because it appears to cohere with Aristotle’s account of early childhood education (paideia) in the Politics. Politics VII 15–VIII 7 outlines the educational programme that he recommends for citizens of a just state, starting in infancy, and continuing through childhood and youth. Some of his proposals remind us of tossing a stone in the air: in this case, he recommends dunking babies in cold water to toughen them up. This promotes health and prepares them for military service. He approves of the barbarian practice of plunging children into cold streams at birth, and the Celtic practice of wrapping babies in a light wrapper only: “for human nature should be early habituated to endure all which by habit it can be made to endure”, though, he adds, “the process should be gradual” (Pol. VII 17, 1336a11–22). Counterbalancing the Spartan abuse, babies should also be allowed to cry and scream loudly, Aristotle maintains, contrary to Plato’s proposal in the Laws, since the exertion produces strength, just as in exercise. They should be given toys, for instance the “rattle of Archytas”, which Aristotle calls a “fine invention” (Pol. VIII 6, 1240b26): not only does it prevent babies from breaking things around the house while keeping them entertained; it allows them to practice music as performers (VIII 6, 1340b25–31). Later on, young children should receive proper musical education. Rhythm and melody let them experience pleasure and pain rightly so they develop the right dispositions: “Rhythm and melody supply imitations of anger and gentleness, and also courage and temperance, and of all the qualities contrary to these, and of the other qualities of character, which hardly fall short of the actual affections (…) The habit of feeling pleasure and pain at mere representation is not far removed from the same feeling about realities” (Pol. VIII 5, 1340a19–26). Aristotle recommends the Dorian mode for moderation and the Phrygian for inspiring enthusiasm. The Mixolydian, on the other hand, should be avoided, since it makes the young sad and grave. None of the exercises or treatments Aristotle here recommends requires deliberation on the part of the trainee. And so, we may think that the young person envisioned in the Nicomachean Ethics is likewise habituated into doing courageous acts and temperate acts without deliberating about individual cases, and without attempting to comprehend what makes one act rather than another appropriate under the circumstances. While the account in the Politics is consistent with the account in the Ethics, the Politics describes the early stages of a process of habituation that is only completed once we have been trained as the Ethics prescribes. It is only when this process of habituation is complete that we will possess character virtue. In fact, the Politics too sees training of our rational faculties as a necessary step on the path to virtue. Consider Aristotle’s remarks about the causes of virtue in Politics VII 13. Echoing the Meno, Aristotle here submits that there are “three factors which make men good and excellent: nature, habit, and reason” (VII 13, 1332a38–40). In discussing the educational programme that the lawgiver should implement to promote the well-being of a political community, Aristotle argues that whoever cares for the character of the citizens must care for them as rational beings, and 32

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this entails perfecting their rational capacities: “the birth and cultivation of character [of citizens] (tên genesin kai tên tôn êthôn meletên) ought to be ordered with a view to reason and understanding (ho de logos kai ho nous)” since “these are the end (telos) of our nature” (Pol. VII 15, 1334b15–17). In Physics VII 3, Aristotle describes virtue as a “kind of perfection or completion (teleiôsis tis)—for when it acquires its own virtue, then we say that each thing is perfect, for then it is most in accordance with its nature (tote gar esti malista [to] kata phusin), just as a circle is perfect when it has become a circle to the highest degree and when it is best—and vice is a destruction of this and a departure [from this]” (Phys. VII 3, 246a13–17). This process of perfecting human nature will, says Aristotle, take different forms at different stages of human development: starting with the body, continuing with the non-rational part of the soul, and concluding with the rational part: As the body is prior in order of generation to the soul, so the non-rational is prior to the rational. The proof is that spirit and wish and appetite are implanted in children from their very birth, but reason and understanding are developed as they grow older. For this reason, the care of the body ought to precede that of the soul, and the training of the appetitive part should follow: none the less our care of it must be for the sake of the rational part, and our care of the body for the sake of the soul (Pol. VII 15, 1334b20–26). The aim of the educational programme, then, is to perfect the rational capacities of future citizens, and not simply to mold their non-rational desires and emotions. Aristotle’s specific proposals in Politics VII–VIII do not fully explain how this ultimate aim is attained, but the discussion is incomplete: the Politics ends abruptly in the middle of the discussion of musical education and rhythm and modes in VIII 7. We only learn in the Politics how the non-rational souls of children and adolescents are trained through music into “rejoicing and loving and hating rightly, so that they form the right judgments and are pleased by good states and fine actions” (Pol. VIII 5, 1340a14–19). How the programme of education proceeds from the cultivation of the right non-rational dispositions into the right rational ones is left undetermined. The Nicomachen Ethics presents the theoretical framework for an answer. I have argued that this framework sees habituation as a process that shapes our rational and nonrational part through guided practice. Having acquired the requisite experience and having developed sound judgment about practical matters, we study the good philosophically, taking Aristotle as our guide in intellectual inquiry. Only when we grasp the nature of the good will our habituation have reached its end.

Notes 1 I am grateful to Jeremy Dunham and Komarine Romdenh-Romluc for inviting me to speak at the British Society for the History of Philosophy meeting in Durham where I presented a first version of this paper, as well as to the other participants, and especially to my chair, Sophia Connell. I am further pleased to acknowledge my debt to Terry Irwin and Dhananjay Jagannathan for helpful discussion at our graduate seminar “Aristotle on Intellect and Virtue” in Oxford in Trinity Term of 2019. 2 Throughout this paper I use T. H. Irwin’s revised translation of the Nicomachean Ethics (2nd ed.) (Hackett, 1999). The Greek is Bywater’s for OCT. 3 In modern ethics, prudential concerns are often contrasted with moral demands. Aristotle’s notion of prudence sees self-interest and other-regard as necessarily and essentially aligned. The prudent person is not “cautious” in her pursuit of happiness, but rather wise. Keeping these points in mind, we may use “prudence” to translate phronêsis. 4 I discuss Aristotle’s theory of practical truth in Nielsen (unpublished).

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Karen Margrethe Nielsen 5 “Overall excellence in matters to do with actions (…) [i]s a composite state made up of two excellences: excellence in practical reasoning and excellence of non-rational character” (Moss, 2012: 169). 6 “Whenever people now define phronêsis, they say what state it is, and what it is related to, and then add that it is the state in accord with the correct reason. Now the correct reason is the reason in accord with phronêsis; it would seem, then, that they all intuitively believe that the state in accord with phronêsis is virtue. But we must make a slight change. For it is not merely the state in accord with the correct reason, but the state involving the correct reason that is virtue. And it is phronêsis that is the correct reason in this area. Socrates, then, used to think the virtues are [instances of] reason because he thought they are all [instances of] knowledge, whereas we think they involve reason. What we have said, then, makes it clear that we cannot be fully good without phronêsis, or phronimos without virtue of character” (EN VI 13 1144b22–33). 7 Aristotle’s reasons for making this claim turn on the role of the rational part. It has phronêsis not just if it knows what we should do and why (reason in its cognitive role), but when it governs the whole soul (reason in its executive role). The two roles are built into the name Aristotle gives to the rational part concerned with action: to hêgoumenon. Hêgeomai means both “I lead” and “I believe/hold”—perhaps a reason why Aristotle designates this part to doxastikon (1140b26; 1144b15) while still saying it has knowledge (gnôsis, 1139a11)). To hêgoumenon is the part that makes decisions (EN III 3, 1113a6–7). Its ability to perform its function well depends on how well the non-rational part works, and vice versa. The two are part of one system. It is possible to analyse the parts seriatim, as Aristotle does, but only if we keep in mind that their functions are, in the final analysis, interdependent, as VI 12–13 shows. A ruler does not perform his function well if his subjects resist his orders, even if they acquiesce in the end. Conversely, even if the subjects are inclined to do the right thing in the absence of a wise ruler, they will lose their way if they lack proper guidance. What matters is not just the capacity for ruling or being ruled well, should other parts be in a good state, but the psychological conditions for the successful exercise of virtue. Contrast my view with Coope (2012), who argues that the merely self-controlled unlike the phronimos, fails to take the right kind of pleasure in fine action. But why assume that the merely self-controlled won’t take pleasure in fine action? His problem is that he is also pleased by the thought of the objects of her bad appetites. 8 An interpretation along these lines is suggested by Leunissen: “Practical wisdom [phronêsis] is the proper virtue of practical reason that is acquired through teaching and indirectly via habituation, since habituation prepares the ground for moral education” (2017: 128). Also Burnyeat (1980: 69–92), and Moss (2011: 239). 9 Judging to whom one should give, how much, and from which sources, is not just a matter of taking pleasure in generous action. One needs to determine what generosity requires here and now before one can tell that this particular act is generous. “Using wealth correctly” (VI 1, 1120a9) is not just having a general disposition towards “giving”: it requires correct practical judgment. Importantly, I need to employ my own rational faculties to reach the point where I can take pleasure in doing this particular act qua generous or just or temperate—honing in on the particular properties that make the act generous in these circumstances. That is why teachers and people with experience can help us reach the right judgment, by directing our attention to the relevant properties of our situation and letting us see for ourselves. 10 Examples of guided practice include learning to play an instrument under a teacher’s supervision, practicing Ashtanga yoga under the guidance of a yogi, cooking with your parent, or developing philosophical skills with a tutor’s advice. Consider Milo the athlete—Aristotle’s example in EN II 6. When he practices, Milo does not simply repeat boxing moves over and over again without constant input from his trainer, who will adjust his technique and suggest ways of improving, ensuring that his charge comprehends why this or that move will make for a better defense or attack. If simply repeating movements over and over and again had been sufficient to develop athletic prowess, there would be no boxing trainers or ballet masters, only punching balls and barres. The ballet master and the boxing trainer have a certain kind of comprehension—as Aristotle says, experience has given them the eye—and they now employ their skills by training not just the bodies of their charges, but also their minds, insofar as the boxer and dancer comes to acquire the same kind of comprehension of what works and why in their respective arts. It is no coincidence that craftspeople can convey their crafts to trainees, and that the vast majority of excellent trainers started out as excellent practitioners of their art. 11 As Aristotle notes, “the sources and means that develop each virtue also ruin it, as they do in craft”. Playing the harp makes both a good and a bad harpist: if we are taught to play badly, we will turn into

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12

13

14 15 16

17 18

19

20

Hergé’s Cacophonix, the village bard. Not only does Cacophonix play his lyre badly, he also displays another sign of vice, namely his nescience of his own lack of skill. He, thus, combines unmusicality with folly, not knowing when to play, for whom, or how. Aristotle here picks up the thread from the Republic and Meno. The Meno opens with an abrupt trilemma: “Can you tell me, Socrates, can virtue be taught (ara didakton hê aretê)? Or is it not teachable but the result of practice (askêton), or is it neither of these but men possess it by nature or in some other way (alla phusei paragignetai tois anthrôpois ê allôi tini tropôi)?” (Meno 70a). Meno’s question fixes the alternatives, and suggests that they are exclusive. Aristotle arguably questions their exclusivity when he defends his own analysis of virtue in the Nicomachean Ethics.The question he asks in EN I 9 concerns happiness: “Is happiness acquired by learning (mathêthon), or habituation (ethiston), or by some other form of cultivation (allôs pôs askêton)? Or is it the result of some divine fate, or even of fortune?” (1099b9–11). Since Aristotle thinks virtue controls happiness, this is just one small remove from Meno’s question. In Politics VII 13 he considers the origins of virtue directly, using Meno’s alternatives (nature, practice, and teaching). That is, the definition identifies the hexis prohairetikê as a mesotês, and then explains further features of this state (“defined by reason”). It does not say, absurdly, that the state consists in a meson (intermediate or measured amount) of some emotion, or even that it makes us choose the intermediate amount (though the latter is true). Therefore, the appeal to the “logos” is not an appeal to some rational measure the phronimos would use in making choices, but rather a specification of the kind of mean state that virtue is, one that is defined by reason (specifically, excellent practical reason). I here draw out implications of Lesley Brown’s (2014: 64—80) analysis of the mesotês /meson distinction. I explore the issue further in Nielsen (2020). “… as the phronimos would define it” thus means: if we were to specify what kind of logos defines the mean state, it would be the type of reason that the phronimos represents (i.e., excellent reason of the practical kind). I expand on these points in Nielsen (2011). Hupolêpsis is consistently used to cover suppositions about ends in the EN—it’s an assumption (see entry in LS). The prefix “hupo” has the same sense as in hupothesis. In the practical domain, the end is the principle that needs to be kept fixed for the purposes of deliberation. All instances of the term in the EN occur in VI–VII (1139b17; 40b13; 31; 42b33; 45b36; 46b28; 47b4; also hupolambanein at 45b21; 26). Pace Moss and Schwab (2019), hupolêpsis is not Aristotle’s general term for belief: he never uses the term to refer to our cognition of means. Moss (2012: 180–81) thinks 42b33 uses “hupolêpsis” about beliefs about means and not ends, but Moss’s resolution of the scope ambiguity in this line is controversial. Even if Moss were correct about this line, it would be a lone example of this usage in Aristotle. Our ends being grasped by hupolêpsis—supposition about the good, see e.g. EN 1139b17; 1140b13, 31; 1142b33; 1145b36; 1147b4; 1146b28. The Eudemian Ethics is of little help, since its treatment of habituation is restricted to six Bekker lines (EE II 2, 1220a37–b4) that do not offer much philosophical clarification. Aristotle in the EE simply explains that the name of character (to êthos) derives from the name of habit (ethos), and states that unlike a stone, which will never be inclined to travel upwards even if it throw it in the air ten thousand times, a soul’s internal impulse can be changed through repetition of a certain motion, even if it is naturally not inclined this way or that. Myles Burnyeat (1980) presents an unnecessarily weak interpretation of this claim taking Aristotle’s claim to be that habituation to be responsible for our knowledge that acts are virtuous: “[A]ccording to ii. 4 the ultimate goal towards which the beginner’s practice is aimed is that he should become the sort of person who does virtuous things in full knowledge of what he is doing, choosing to do them for their own sake, and acting out of a settled state of character (1105a28–33). The beginner would hardly be on the way to this desirable state of affairs if he were not in the process forming (reasonably correct) ideas as to the nobility or justice of the actions he was engaged in; if you like, he must be on his way to acquiring a mature sense of values” (p. 73). But Aristotle’s point in II 4 is not that habituation is responsible for our knowledge of the fact that acts are virtuous, but rather that habituation is responsible for making the agent decide on virtuous actions for themselves from a settled state of character. That’s a stronger—and more interesting—claim. As Aristotle notes, contrasting craft knowledge and virtue, for the possession of virtue, “knowledge counts for only a little”. That prudence is an aspect of virtue means that they are related as part to whole: virtue makes the decision and goal correct (this is the task of virtue as a whole), but prudence is responsible for the part

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21 22 23 24 25

of virtue that makes the things promoting the goal correct (1144a7–9; a20). Compare: an excellent eye makes us see well, but an excellent cornea makes our eye focus well. Aristotle’s claim that “virtue makes the goal right” means that virtue as a whole, with prudence as a part, makes the goal right. But it’s a particular part of virtue—prudence—that is responsible for making the things promoting the goal right, just as a particular part of the eye, the cornea, is responsible for contributing sharp focus to sharp vision. See Kraut (2012: 539). Kraut’s own response is not far removed from my own. For discussion of the import of the claim that the division of the virtues follows (is “kata”) the division between two parts of the soul, see Hendrik Lorenz (2009). This is not equivalent to the claim that each of virtue and prudence are virtues of a part of the soul. These states all tend in the same direction, says Aristotle, since they are all concerned with things that are achievable in action (EN VI 11, 1143a25; 36). See also Dominic Scott (2015). Unlike the EN, the EE is not ring-composed. The phrase “taking Aristotle at his word” first appeared as the subtitle of Brown (2014). In Brown’s article, taking Aristotle at his word means paying proper attention to Aristotle’s terminology (specifically, the “meson”/mesotês distinction). Moss (2011) uses the phrase to denote a different approach, where it entails fixing the meaning of parts of Aristotle’s argument (individual lines) and fitting the whole around these particularly important lines. The opposite of “taking Aristotle at his word” is not “not taking A at his word”, however, but reading the Ethics in keeping with Aristotle’s plan and methodological remarks.

References Barney, R. (2011) ‘Ring-Composition in Plato: The Case of Republic X’, in McPherran, M. L. (ed.) The Cambridge Critical Guide to Plato’s Republic. Cambridge: CUP, pp. 32–51. Barney, R. (2019) ‘Becoming Bad: Aristotle on Vice and Moral Habituation’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 57, pp. 273–308. Brown, L. (2014) ‘Why is Virtue of Character a Mean? Taking Aristotle at his Word (NE ii 6)’, in Polansky, R. (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Cambridge: CUP, pp. 64–80. Burnyeat, M. (1980) ‘Aristotle on Learning to Be Good’, in Rorty, A.O. (ed.) Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 69–92. Coope, U. (2012) ‘Why Does Aristotle Think That Virtue is Required for Practical Wisdom?’, Phronesis, 57 (2), pp. 142–163. Kraut, R. (2012) ‘Aristotle on Becoming Good: Habituation, Reflection, and Perception’, in Shields, C. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle. Oxford: OUP, pp. 529–555. Leunissen, M. (2017) From Natural Character to Moral Virtue in Aristotle. Oxford: OUP. Lorenz, H. (2009) ‘Virtue of Character in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 37, pp. 177–212. Moss, J. (2011) ‘Virtue Makes the Goal Right: Virtue and Phronêsis in Aristotle’s Ethics’, Phronesis, 56 (3), pp. 204–261. Moss, J. (2012) Aristotle on the Apparent Good. Oxford: OUP. Moss, J., and Schwab, W. (2019) ‘The Birth of Belief’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 57 (1), pp. 1–32. Nielsen, K.M. (unpublished) ‘What Is ‘Practical Truth’? A Deflationary Reading of Nicomachean Ethics VI 2’. Nielsen, K.M. (2011) ‘Deliberation as Inquiry’, Philosophical Review, 120 (3), pp. 383–421. Nielsen, K.M. (2020) ‘The Definitions of Phronêsis and Euboulia in Nicomachean Ethics VI’, in Natali, C. and Morel, P.-M. (eds.) ‘Aristote. Les definitions en philosophie pratique’, special issue of Revue de Philosophie Ancienne, tome, 38(2), pp. 291–318. Scott, D. (2015) Levels of Argument. Oxford: OUP.

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3 ARISTOTLE ON THE NATURE OF ETHOS AND ETHISMOS Margaret Hampson

3.1 Introduction In Nicomachean Ethics 2.1 Aristotle draws a distinction between two forms of virtue and the corresponding ways in which they are developed: Virtue, then, is of two sorts, virtue of thought and virtue of character. Virtue of thought arises and grows mostly from teaching; that is why it needs experience and time. Virtue of character [i.e. of ēthos] results from habit [ethos]; hence its name ‘ethical’, slightly varied from ‘ethos’ (1103a15–18).1 The aim of this chapter is to secure a firmer understanding of what Aristotle means when he writes that character virtue results from habit (ex ethous periginetai), via an examination of Aristotle’s notions of ethos and ethismos (habit, habituation) as presented in the Nicomachean Ethics. That character virtue is produced, according to Aristotle, through a process of moral habituation is a familiar feature of his ethics.2 And yet our feeling of familiarity with the notions of habit and habituation can engender a like feeling of familiarity with the process Aristotle describes, and encourage us to conceive of this process in an overly narrow or restrictive way.3 The distorting influence of certain ways of thinking about habit and habituation is perhaps clearest in the writings of nineteenth-century commentators such as Grant, who writes dismissively that “a mechanical theory is here given both of the intellect and the moral character, as if the one could be acquired by teaching, the other by a course in habits” (Grant, 1885: 482).4 This characterization of Aristotle’s account of moral habituation has, of course, been widely discredited, and it is customary for scholars to articulate their account of Aristotelian habituation in opposition to a “mindless” or “mechanical” view of this process.5 Indeed, some have encouraged us to construe the process in a relatively broad sense, on the basis of the richness and psychological complexity of Aristotle’s account of character virtue.6 And yet resistance to such readings remains, in the form of the continued insistence, by some, that moral habituation is clearly, perhaps essentially, a “non-rational” process.7 Like several other commentators, I believe that Aristotle’s account of moral habituation should be understood broadly rather than narrowly. That is, I believe that the process Aristotle DOI: 10.4324/9781315186436-5

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describes can be understood as involving a range of activities–active, reflective, non-discursive, and discursive8—which engage and develop a variety of psychological capacities, belonging to both parts of the soul. Understanding Aristotle’s account of habituation in this way has significant advantages over a narrow interpretation of the process, according to which habituation consists in the non-rational training of the non-rational part of the soul alone, effected through repeated movement with respect to pleasure and pain. Such narrow interpretations of the process incline towards a highly compartmentalised picture of the soul, of virtue and of moral development, on which an agent’s psychological capacities are treated as relatively discrete, and trained or developed through isolated processes.9 It is a distorting picture of human psychology and an unlikely picture of moral education. Moreover, such interpretations leave unexplained, and even mysterious, how virtue as a unified state of a person comes to be present. In defending a broad view of the process, however, I want to take a different approach than the one more familiar in the scholarly literature, which begins from Aristotle’s account of the nature of character virtue, and from this infers what the habituation process must be like.10 For I wish, instead, to attend directly to Aristotle’s remarks on ethos and ethismos in the Ethics to gain a better understanding of Aristotle’s characterization of this process, and thus what he means to convey when he states that character virtue arises ex ethous. As a defence of a broad reading of this process my aims are largely negative then: to show that Aristotle’s remarks on habituation resist a narrow reading and that, to this extent, we should avoid placing limitations on what this process might involve that are not imposed by the text. It remains for a fuller account of this process to flesh this picture out. In what follows, I will argue that, whilst there is clearly a distinction, for Aristotle, between ethos and logos (reason, argument, word, account, explanation)11 as sources of moral improvement, to characterize habituation as non-rational as such is misleading, particularly when this characterization forecloses questions about what kinds of activity may be involved in the process of habituation, and what kind of states can be produced as a result. Habituation, as I will show, is not characterized as a non-rational process, but a process that involves action and activity; the concepts of action and activity, and not that of rationality (or lack thereof) are most appropriate for capturing Aristotle’s notion of habituation and understanding his claim that character virtue arises ex ethous. The fact that habituation consists in action and activity, however, does not tell us about the nature of such activity; certainly, one cannot argue from this fact alone that it must exclude forms of activity that involve, or appeal to, an agent’s rational, as well as non-rational, capacities. To insist that habituation is non-rational, and to draw conclusions on this basis about the nature of moral habituation, is not only to impose unnecessary limits on how we explain our development as moral beings, but also to miss Aristotle’s crucial insight about such development, and the questions this raises. For if habituation consists primarily in action or activity, this raises important questions about what it is that such activity affords. Thus, in gaining a better appreciation of Aristotle’s notion of habituation we are enabled not only to look upon the process of moral habituation with fresh eyes, but also to better appreciate the kinds of philosophical questions Aristotle’s account gives rise to.

3.2 An Assumption about the Nature of Habituation The view I wish to challenge is the view that habituation is clearly a non-rational process. This is not to be confused with the view that habituation is non-cognitive: the view, seemingly endorsed by scholars such as Grant (1885), that habituation consists in the ‘mindless’ repetition of certain action types, from which a tendency to perform such action types – a mere habit – is produced. The latter view is characterized as non-cognitive because what emerges is a mere 38

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behavioural disposition, and the emergence of this disposition is explained by appeal to a mechanism.12 As I noted above, this view has been long discredited, since it leaves mysterious how anything like the state of character virtue, as Aristotle’s describes it, could be produced by such a process. Yet since Aristotle’s notion of the non-rational is not equivalent to that of the non-cognitive, it is argued that the denial that habituation is non-cognitive does not entail the denial that habituation is non-rational (Moss, 2012: 158, n.14; 172).13 But what does it mean to say that habituation is ‘non-rational’? What this label picks out exactly is not often spelled out, but it appears that this characterization is either thought to entail, or is used to justify, (i) a claim about what is involved in the process of habituation or what the process consists in, and (ii) a claim about the kind of state, and of which part of the soul, the process effects.14 For it is argued that (i) habituation does not involve discursive activities, and in particular that providing descriptions and explanations to the moral learner cannot form a part of the habituation process. Furthermore, the claim that habituation is nonrational is invoked to support the claim that (ii) the habituation process can only develop capacities or produce a state belonging to the non-rational part of the soul.15 Whether these two claims are contained, as it were, within the claim that habituation is non-rational, or thought to follow immediately from this claim, the label ‘non-rational’ clearly carries substantial commitments about the nature of habituation and what this process effects. We should note, however, that Aristotle nowhere characterizes habituation as non-rational, that is, as alogon. This fact alone should give us pause, for Aristotle is upfront in calling things alogon when he wants to. He uses this locution to divide the parts of the soul (e.g. EE 1219b31, NE 1102a28, Pol. 12607, DA 432a26), in categorising capacities of the soul (e.g. DA 432a30, 432b6), or certain forms of desire (EE 1247b19, NE 11111b13, Rhet. 1369a2), in characterising the emotions (NE 1111b1), or even types of living being (NE 1172b10). That Aristotle does not describe habituation as alogon, then, already casts doubt on the appropriateness of this label and should invite us to consider his characterization afresh. Nevertheless, it might be suggested that whilst Aristotle does not explicitly characterize ethos as alogon, he does juxtapose ethos with logos on a number of occasions, particularly in the context of becoming good (e.g. Pol. 1332a39-40, NE 1179b6-31). Does this not suggest that ethos is, in contrast to logos, alogon? In response to this suggestion, however, it is worth reminding ourselves that logos has a notoriously wide semantic range – it can mean not only ‘reason’ or ‘rationality’, but ‘argument’, ‘word’, ‘speech’, ‘account’, and so on – and thus its meaning on any given occasion will largely be determined by the context. And indeed when we look at those contexts in which ethos is contrasted with logos, particularly in the context of becoming good, it appears that Aristotle has something quite specific in mind. For instance, when Aristotle contrasts ethos, logos and phusis (nature) as means to becoming good in the final chapter of the Nicomachean Ethics, he does this in the context of a discussion of the sufficiency of logoi, specifically in the form of words or speeches, to make people good (1179b4ff).16 Thus when Aristotle goes on to contrast ethos with logos, he appears to be contrasting ethos with the power of words and speeches, rather than ‘reason’ in general. The apparent contrast between ethos and logos, then, simply does not justify a kind of wholesale characterization of habituation as non-rational.17 Let us consider one final piece of evidence that has been cited in support of the view that habituation is non-rational: the thought, in Jessica Moss’ words, that Aristotle’s discussions of habituation “explicitly present the repetition of actions and passions as what does the work” (2012: 171). In support of this claim Moss cites the following passage:18 For, acting as we do in our dealings with men, some of us become just, some unjust; by acting as we do in terrifying situations, and becoming habituated to fear (prattontes 39

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de ta en tois denois kai ethizomenoi phobeisthai) or to be confident some become brave, some cowardly… To sum it up in one phrase: like states come about through like activities (NE 1103b14–22). Is this evidence that ‘the repetition of actions and passions does the work’ and, moreover, that habituation is thereby non-rational? I believe not. First, Aristotle does not say here that ‘the repetition of actions and passions does the work’. But more to the point, Aristotle only tells us here that we become virtuous by “becoming habituated to fear or to be confident”; he does not tell us how this process works. So Moss is simply not entitled to conclude, as she does, that this process is ‘non-rational’ (or contains ‘no intellectual elements’) without assuming that the process of becoming habituated (ethizomenoi) is non-rational.19 Yet since our aim is to understand whether the habituation process is non-rational, or whether it includes any rational or discursive elements, Moss in effect begs the question. As we shall see, Aristotle’s remarks indicate that there is an irreducible role for an agent’s own activity in her habituation, but this does not tell us anything about what is involved in such activity, or what needs to accompany such activity for it to be effective. Despite the insistence by a number of prominent scholars that habituation is essentially nonrational, there is an absence of clear textual evidence to support this characterization of the process. I suggest, then, that we should instead be guided by Aristotle’s own presentation of the issue in the Nicomachean Ethics and that we consider what we learn from his discussion free of preconceptions of the nature of habit and habituation.

3.3 Ethos and Ethismos in Aristotle’s Ethics 3.3.1 Ethos in the Eudemian Ethics Before we turn to Aristotle’s discussion of ethos in the Nicomachean Ethics, I want to begin by noting what, at first, appears to be a parallel discussion in the Eudemian Ethics. For here Aristotle offers a quasi-definition of habituation: Character exists, as the name signifies, because it develops from habit (apo ethous echei tēn epidosin) and a thing gets habituated as a result of a pattern of conduct that is not innate (ethizetai de to hup’agōgēs mē emphutou), by repeated movement of one sort or another (tōi pollakis kineisthai pōs), so that it is eventually capable of being active in that way (houtōs ēdē to energētikon) (1220a39–b3, trans. Inwood and Woolf).20 There is a temptation to read this definition in a reductive way, as suggesting something like the non-cognitive picture of habituation mentioned in §2, and to import this reading into Aristotle’s discussion of habituation in the Nicomachean Ethics. But we should resist both of these temptations. The passage tells us that a subject is habituated when, as a result of some form of repeated movement, change or process (kineisthai), it becomes capable of being active on its own. On a reductive or non-cognitive reading, there is no more to explaining the resulting capability than the fact of the subject’s repeated movement;21 this is the ‘mechanism’ to which I referred in §2. Read in a less reductive way, however, we can grant that repeated movement (or indeed a change or process) of some sort is necessary for explaining the emergence of the capability, whilst acknowledging that it remains open in what way the subject’s repeated movement (or the change or process in question) contributes to the emergence of a capability. At any rate, the 40

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definition does not tell us that, through repetition, “an act tends to reproduce itself” (Grant, 1885: 484, my emphasis). I will return to this thought in §4. Moreover, recent scholarship on the relation between the EE and NE, and in particular their respective accounts of habituation, has urged caution in supposing that passages of the two works are strictly parallel, and importing thoughts expressed in one work to the other.22 My point, as I hope will become clear, is not that the quasi-definition of the EE is inconsistent with Aristotle’s remarks in the NE. But it is notable that Aristotle does not introduce the concept of habituation in this way in the latter work; to this extent the EE presentation provides something of a contrast in virtue of which we can appreciate the particular emphasis of the NE account.

3.3.2 Ethos and Ethismos in the Nicomachean Ethics Let us now turn to Aristotle’s introduction of habituation in Nicomachean Ethics and consider what a reader – free of preconceptions about the nature of this process – discovers about this as she follows Aristotle’s discussion throughout the work. We are first introduced to the notion of habituation early in Book 1 when Aristotle discusses the appropriate student for his lectures. Here Aristotle explains that: a youth is not a suitable student of political science; for he lacks experience of the actions of life, which are the subject and premises of our arguments. Moreover, since he tends to follow his feelings, his study will be futile and useless; for the end [of political science] is action, not knowledge (1095a2–6). Nevertheless, for those “who accord with reason in forming their desires, and in their actions” (1095a10-11), knowledge of political science will be of great benefit. Aristotle goes on to explain that since we ought, in investigations, to begin from things known to us (tōn gnōrimōn): This is why we need to have been brought up in fine habits (dio dei tois ethesin ēchthai) if we are to be adequate students of fine and just things, and of political science generally. For we begin from the that (hoti); if this is apparent enough to us we can begin also without the why (dioti) (1095b4–7). Proper habituation, it turns out, is a prerequisite for benefitting from Aristotle’s lectures. The fraught issue of what Aristotle has in mind when he speaks of the ‘that’ and the ‘why’ of political science is not our present concern. What is relevant for our present investigation is that Aristotle returns to the subject of the ‘that’ – which he calls a first principle (archē) – some pages later, and here explains that: Some principles are studied (theōrountai) by means of induction, some by means of perception, some by means of some sort of habituation (ethismōi tini), and others by other means (1098b3–4). These passages are instructive, and in a number of ways. First, that Aristotle refers in the latter passage to ‘some sort of (tini) habituation’ is revealing in itself, for it signals Aristotle’s acknowledgment that habituation might come in various forms. The ethismos through which sheep are trained to run together in thunder (HA 610b33-11a2) or through which infants become accustomed to the cold (Pol. 1336a12-18) may be quite different, not only in terms of the activities each involves, but in the way in which each works, to the ethos involved in the 41

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acquisition of virtue. At any rate, the ethismos that has been introduced to us in Book 1 of the Ethics is identified, first, with having suitable experience of action.23 Moreover, it is presented as a mode of grasping principles, as something that will contribute to a certain sort of knowledge, and something that will make us excellent judges. Of course, that habituation has cognitive powers is a familiar thought, at least since Burnyeat’s seminal article on the topic.24 What I wish to bring out is that this is how we have been set up to think of habituation right from the start of the Nicomachean Ethics, and that this is the conception we should have in mind when we come to Aristotle’s fuller discussion of habituation in Book 2 and beyond. Aristotle does not begin with a narrow or reductive understanding of habituation as a form of repeated movement as his paradigm, and then later add that this process also has cognitive powers; rather he begins with the thought that habituation is identified primarily with experience of action, and that this is a mode of grasping first principles. Turning now to Aristotle’s discussion in Book 2, whilst Aristotle apparently contrasts ethos and teaching (didaskalia) as modes of virtue acquisition at the outset of NE 2.1,25 in what follows it becomes evident that the relevant contrast for understanding habituation and its contribution to the development of character virtue is not teaching but nature (phusis). In an immediate elaboration on the claim that character virtue arises ex ethous, Aristotle explains that it is clear that none of the virtues arises in us naturally: For if something is by nature in one condition, habituation cannot bring it into another condition. A stone, for instance, by nature moves downwards, and habituation could not make it move upwards, not even if you threw it up ten thousand times (muriakis) to habituate it (1103a19–22). The reference here to throwing a stone muriakis might encourage us to think of habituation as consisting, essentially, in repeated movement, from which a disposition to so move is produced. Yet we have already been made aware in Book 1 that habituation can take various forms, and that whilst some forms might consist primarily in repeated movement, this is not necessarily true of all.26 More revealing, I submit, is Aristotle’s second piece of evidence that character virtue is not had by nature, for here he explains that: if something arises in us by nature, we first have the capacity for it, and later perform the activity (husteron de tas energeias apodidomen). This is clear in the case of the senses; for we did not acquire them by frequent seeing or hearing (ek tou pollakis idein ē pollakis akousai), but already had them when we exercised them, and did not get them by exercising them. Virtues, by contrast, we acquire, just as we acquire skills, having first been active (energēsantes proteron) (1103a26–32). Here habituation is again characterized by way of contrast with nature (rather than teaching or logos), and what the contrast reveals is that habituation – of the sort relevant to the case of virtue acquisition – consists precisely in being active.27 Of course, Aristotle makes reference again to repetition, but it remains clear from the context that the most important concept (and that which distinguishes nature from habit) is the concept of prior activity, rather than repetition per se. And this is just what Aristotle’s subsequent discussion goes on to underline. For, as he explains, just as we acquire skills by attempting to do what we will do once we have acquired the skill in question, so too in the case of the virtues “we become just by doing just actions (ta dikaia prattontes)” (NE 1103b1-2). His emphasis is on action (poieisis, 1103a33; praxis, 1103b1) and engagement in certain forms of activity. 42

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Aristotle continues to emphasise the analogy between the acquisition of character virtue and skill, an analogy which encourages us to think of habituation as a relatively sophisticated process (cf. Met 1047b2), consisting essentially in the activity of the agent. Moreover, the analogy with skills also invites us to reflect on the important role teachers have to play in this process and the contribution these make to its successful outcome (1103b12). Indeed, if we reflect on the way in which skills are taught, it becomes clear that a teacher’s role is not simply to guide their student to perform the ‘right’ actions, but to offer certain explanations as they proceed. A master builder does not merely instruct her apprentice to lay stones a certain way, but also explains that laying them in this way makes the structure stronger, and so on.28 The student needs to lay stones herself, of course, but to insist that a teacher does no more than guide the student to lay the stones in the right way would be to ignore the way in which skills are typically taught, and what the skills analogy thus invites us to see about what successful habituation involves. For a student’s practice to get the right kind of purchase, often explanation and reflection are required as well, and these are not clearly any less important for successful habituation than the ‘doing’ itself.29 Nevertheless, in the case of skill acquisition – and in the case of virtue – there is clearly an ineliminable role for the agent’s own engagement in the relevant activity, and this is just what Aristotle in NE 2.1 makes clear. What we do in in our dealings with others, what we do in terrifying situations, and likewise how we comport ourselves with regards to appetites and anger, makes us just, courageous, temperate and mild – or the opposite (1103b13-21). “In one word, from similar activities come similar states (kai eni dē logōi ek tōn homoiōn energeiōn hai hexeis ginontai)” (1103b21-22). The question remains, of course, just how this works and how it is that the agent’s activity contributes to her successful development. But what Aristotle’s remarks make clear is that the habituation process consists importantly in the agent’s own active engagement in a relevant activity; this is at the core of his notion of ethical habituation. Indeed, we can see Aristotle underlining just this point in NE 2.4. Although the language of ethos or ethismos is absent from this chapter, its back reference at 1105a17-19 to his claim that we become just by doing just things clearly indicates that this chapter is a continuation of the previous discussion. Aristotle’s task is to show why practice of virtuous actions should be necessary for becoming virtuous; as he goes on to explain, it is only through practice that we come to meet the three agential conditions that are constitutive of character virtue (1105a31-33). Here Aristotle refers again to the importance of repeated performance (pollakis, 1105b4-5), but once more the context makes clear that his emphasis is on the importance of actively engaging in virtuous action, rather than on the notion of repetition as such.30 This is brought clearly to our attention in Aristotle’s concluding lines, where he asserts that “no one would ever become good without doing these things” (1105b11-12). He goes on pointedly to contrast those who engage in the right activities with those who “do not do these things, but rather taking refuge in logos they think that they are doing philosophy, and in this way will become decent” (1105b12-18), reinforcing the idea that active engagement is at the core of habituation. This contrast, in particular, should be in our minds when Aristotle returns to the topic of habituation at the end of the Ethics, and help us to appreciate the force of his argument there. For the present, it serves to underscore what appears to be Aristotle’s central thought when he claims that character virtue arises ex ethous: that character virtue is established only as a result of the subject’s own engagement in a relevant form of activity.

3.3.3 Ethos and Teaching in NE 10.9 We are now in a position to appreciate Aristotle’s discussion of habituation in the final chapter of NE. This passage in particular has been cited as evidence that habituation cannot include 43

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(and indeed, must precede) any discursive modes of instruction, such as description and explanation, and to bolster a narrow understanding of moral habituation and what it effects. Here Aristotle observes that: if logoi were sufficient by themselves to make people decent, the rewards they would command would justifiably have been many and large, as Theognis says, and rightly bestowed. In fact, however, logoi seem to have enough influence to stimulate and encourage the civilised ones among the young people, and perhaps to make virtue take possession of a well-born character that truly loves what is fine (kalon); but they seem unable to turn the many toward being fine and good. For the many naturally obey fear, not shame; they avoid what is base because of penalties, not because it is disgraceful. For since they live by their feelings, they pursue their proper pleasures and the sources of them, and avoid the opposed pains, and have not even a notion of what is fine and [hence] truly pleasant, since they have had no taste of it (tou de kalou kai hōs alēthōs hēdeos oud’ennoian echousin ageustoi ontes). What logos, then, could reform people like these? For it is impossible, or not easy to alter by logos what has long been absorbed by one’s character traits. […] Now some think that it is nature that makes people good; some think it is ethos; some that it is teaching. […] Logos and teaching surely do not prevail on everyone, but the soul of the student needs to have been prepared by habits for enjoying and hating finely, like ground that is to nourish the seed. For someone who lives in accord with his feelings would not even listen to an argument turning him away, or comprehend it; and in that state how could he be persuaded to change? And in general feelings seem to yield to force, not to logos. Hence, we must already in some way have a character suitable for virtue, fond of what is fine and objecting to what is painful (1179b4-29). The passage appears to contrast the role and effects of logoi in moral education, with the role and effects of ethos, and in such a way – as noted in §2 – that might suggest that ethos is essentially non-rational, and thus cannot involve teaching (at least of the sort that involves logos). As Howard Curzer forcefully states: Aristotle’s main point in the passage is that this habituation must precede ‘argument and teaching.’ Farmers prepare the earth before they sow. The two activities are not mingled” (2012: 322, my emphasis).31 In particular, Curzer argues that this passage excludes description and explanation from the notion of habituation: “description and explanation are teaching, and Aristotle insists that successful teaching presupposes successful habituation. He denies that descriptions and explanations should accompany parental commands and exhortations” (2012: 322, n.13). This is a strong claim and not one that Aristotle explicitly makes. On the contrary, it is far from clear that the passage quoted does indicate that description and explanation are excluded from the notion of habituation, or that this passage ultimately supports a narrow interpretation of this process. Let us look again at the passage, particularly in light of what we have established about the nature of habituation. The passage begins by challenging the supposition that logoi are sufficient (autarkeis) to make people good. We have already seen, in §2, that Aristotle is contrasting habituation with the power of words and speeches, rather than with reason in general. More importantly, however, Aristotle’s question is about the sufficiency of words and speeches to make 44

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people good; he is considering whether these alone could produce virtue. Aristotle’s answer is, of course, ‘no’. As he explains, such logoi can have influence on a character that truly loves what is fine, but they cannot turn the many towards the fine and the good. What explains the difference between the two? The many, Aristotle explains, have no sense of shame and instead obey only fear; indeed, they have not even a notion of what is fine, having never tasted it. Someone who has no notion of the fine, and obeys only fear, will not be made good by speeches that appeal to notions of what is fine and shameful. Indeed, in an important sense they will not even comprehend such speeches. The taste metaphor implies that an agent’s relevant grasp of the fine comes as a result of first-hand experience, and Aristotle’s later emphasis on the importance of practising virtuous actions and continuing in decent practices (1180a2-4, 15-16) implies that such first-hand experience comes in the form of action. This, I submit, is the insight of this passage. That we require first-hand experience, in the form of engagement in virtuous action, to be able to grasp the fine in the relevant sense, and for speeches, arguments and further teaching about virtue to be effective. The passage makes clear that there is an essential role for an agent’s own experience of virtuous action in coming to appreciate the fine. But whilst a certain form of teaching and certain sorts of logoi – in particular, speeches and arguments about virtue – are dependent on a subject’s own prior engagement in virtuous action, this does not rule out a role for logoi as such – and in particular, description and explanation – as part of the process through which a love of the fine is instilled. An essential role for experience and practice in instilling a proper appreciation of the fine does not entail that experience and practice, considered by themselves, are sufficient to produce such appreciation. It may be that descriptions and explanations are required on the part of a guide – and perhaps also some form of reflection on the part of the learner – to appreciate those aspects of her experience and practice that are necessary for gaining a proper appreciation of the fine.32 How it is that such an appreciation is developed, and what is required for this, is a matter for further investigation. But that a range of activities may be involved in this process is in no way ruled out by this passage.

3.4 Approaching Aristotelian Habituation Afresh In seeking a better understanding of Aristotle’s claim that character virtue arises ex ethous, I have sought to challenge a prevailing assumption about the nature of habituation and urged that we attend specifically to Aristotle’s own remarks on ethos and presentation of the topic in the Nicomachean Ethics. When we do so, we discover that, far from the concept of the non-rational being the guiding concept in Aristotle’s account, it is the concept of prior engagement in activity which characterizes ethos and distinguishes this from other sources of moral development. To claim, then, that character virtue arises ex ethous is to claim, above all, that character virtue arises through a process in which the ethical subject is necessarily engaged in some relevant activity. And nothing in the nature of habituation, so understood, entails that this process should be understood in a narrow as opposed to broad way. Nevertheless, this chapter remains a prolegomenon to a fuller account of the habituation process, and I want to close by noting two remaining tasks for such an account.

3.4.1 What Kind of Activity? First, whilst I have argued that Aristotle’s central claim is that the learner must herself be engaged in some relevant activity, Aristotle does not tell us – or not in sufficient detail – what kind of activities the moral learner must engage in. We know, of course, that she must practice ‘doing just things’ and become habituated to feeling appropriate passions, but precisely what is 45

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involved in doing these things is not spelled out. It is here, perhaps, that one’s conception of the nature of character virtue will play a role in fleshing out an account of the habituation process and, in particular, of the capacities of the soul that must be engaged in the course of the learner’s practice. Those who endorse a narrower conception of the nature of character virtue, as consisting simply in disposition of the non-rational part of the soul, might then argue that the relevant activities of the learner will be limited to those that engage and develop the capacities of the nonrational part (though this is not entailed by the nature of habituation as a process itself). But for those who take character virtue to consist in more than a disposition of the non-rational part of the soul, it is plausible to suppose that the learner will be engaged in activities which engage and develop a range of psychological capacities, not least her capacity for deliberation.33

3.4.2 The Contribution of “Activity” Moreover, in coming to appreciate that the concept of activity, and not the concept of the nonrational, is the central concept in Aristotle’s characterization of habituation, an important question now comes into focus, concerning the way in which prior activity contributes to the establishment of the relevant state or disposition. When noting Aristotle’s quasi-definition of habituation in the EE, I pointed to one way of thinking about the nature of habituation, according to which the very repetition of some prior movement simply results in a tendency to be active in that way in the future. The emphasis, in accounting for the resulting capability, is placed on the mechanism of repetition.34 But Aristotle’s remarks in Books 1 and 10, in particular, open up another way of thinking about the process. We saw that ethos affords a certain grasp of first principles and enables ethical subjects to have a ‘taste’ of the fine. Such remarks suggest that activity can also be understood as a mode of learning or discovery and provides a certain form of apprehension or insight – particularly into matters of value – that cannot be gained in any other way. If this is the case, this raises questions for the moral psychologist about what sort of apprehension an agent’s activity affords, and why it is that such apprehension cannot be gained but through her own active engagement in relevant sorts of activity.35 This possibility raises interesting questions not only about what is afforded by action, but about the cultivation of emotional responses. For is it the case, as per the first way of thinking about habituation, that by repeatedly disdaining (or attempting to disdain) frightening situations, a subject simply comes, over time, to disdain frightening situations on her own? Or is it that, in assuming an attitude of disdain, the subject comes to discover something about such situations that she did not previously grasp and, as a result, to see such situations differently? On the latter view, the very act of assuming, or attempting to assume, a particular evaluative attitude or emotional response would seem to enable a kind of discovery that informs the subject’s responses in the future. If such a possibility is suggested by Aristotle’s account of habituation in the Nicomachean Ethics, this points to a possible epistemic role for emotional responses and with it a new avenue for research on Aristotle’s account of the emotions; one, moreover, that is not unaligned with contemporary concerns.36

Notes 1 Quotations are from NE unless otherwise stated; translations follow Irwin (1999), with occasional modifications. 2 In speaking of “moral habituation”, I am referring primarily to habituation towards (character) virtue. Of course, “moral habituation” can also result in vice (1103b14-17). Rachel Barney has recently

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3

4 5 6 7

8

9 10

11 12 13 14 15

developed an account of what she calls “brute” habituation, which is neutral between virtue or vice (see Barney, 2019: 279–288); she grants, however, that since virtue and vice are not symmetrical in all respects, neither are the respective habituation processes. Virtue might require what she calls an ‘enriched’ form of habituation. As I note in §3, Aristotle’s reference to “a certain habituation” at 1098b4 supports the thought that Aristotle allows for different forms of habituation. This is not to claim that “habit” and “habituation” are inappropriate translations of “ethos” and “ethismos”. It is rather to acknowledge that certain preconceptions about what constitutes a habit, or of what are paradigmatic cases, can encourage a narrow view of ethos and ethismos, and what this entails in the moral case. See also Stewart (1892: 170-1). See, amongst others, Sorabji (1973-4: 107, 126), Cooper (1986: 8), Hursthouse (1988: 211), Broadie (1991: 109), Vasiliou (2007: 42), and Kraut (2012: 538). These include, but are not limited to, Burnyeat (1980), Sherman (1989), Lawrence (2011), and Nielsen in this volume. See Moss (2011: 205); (2012: 171-2). Moss takes it to be so obvious that habituation is non-rational that she appeals to this claim to bolster her view of the nature of character virtue: “habituation is a nonintellectual [i.e. non-rational] process […] If habituation is sufficient for virtue, virtue must be a state of the non-rational soul alone” (2012: 171-2). See also Engberg-Pedersen (1983: 160); Jonathan Lear (1988: 169). Annas refers to “non-rational” habituation, though she expresses scepticism that such a process could furnish a grasp of ends (1993: 88-89). That is, a learner’s practice might involve not only the actual performance of certain sorts of actions, but also practice at deliberation, reflection on her actions (or failures to act), listening to descriptions and explanations offered by a teacher or guide. In Hampson (2019) I offer an account of how emulation and imitation, involving the adoption of another’s perspective, also play a role in a learner’s successful development. In particular, certain commentators have insisted that descriptions and explanations cannot form part of the habituation process, and should be understood as part of a distinct, temporally posterior process. See especially Curzer (2012: 322-3). See also Moss (2012: 171). Discussions of the nature of habituation are often associated with a debate about the target of moral habituation, of what part of the soul—non-rational or also rational—the process is directed towards. This debate is, in turn, tied up with a debate about the nature of character virtue—whether it is a state of the non-rational soul alone or the rational part also—and a further debate about the relation between character virtue and phronēsis. Starting from a position on the nature of character virtue, scholars then infer either that habituation must be a non-rational process, targeted at the non-rational part of the soul or that it must include intellectual elements, producing a state of the rational part of the soul also. In adopting a different approach, I am not suggesting that it is inappropriate to draw inferences about the nature of moral habituation from Aristotle’s account of character virtue; I am particularly sympathetic to those arguments which point to the psychological richness and complexity of character virtue as Aristotle describes it, and argue that however we are to understand the nature of habituation, we must be able to account for the development of such a state. Karen Margrethe Nielsen’s contribution to this volume is a particularly persuasive example of this approach, and I intend the argument of this chapter to complement her own. Nevertheless, I believe there is value in understanding of Aristotle’s conception of habituation itself, independently of the contentious debate about the part of the soul to which character virtue belongs. The translation of logos is notoriously vexed, and what Aristotle means by logos can change depending on the context, as we shall see. To the extent that many accounts of Aristotelian habituation, presented in apparent opposition to this view, still appear to explain its workings by appeal to a mechanism, it is worth considering how much they ultimately diverge from it. This, however, is a matter for another occasion. For background, see (Cooper, 1998: 244–5). Note the pervasiveness of the assumption that habituation is non-rational is shown in Moss’ supposition that the view needs to be disproved, rather than proved. Thus, for example, Moss states that the process consists in “the shaping of non-rational cognition” (Moss, 2012: 171). See Ch.8 of her 2012 for further discussion. “But [the claim that habituation involves learning explanations of why certain actions are appropriate] fits poorly with the distinction we have just seen between acquiring states through habituation and acquiring them through teaching or logos (EN II.1, cf. Pol. 1334b8ff.). Moreover, Aristotle’s extensive discussions of habituation not only make no mention of any intellectual aspects, but explicitly present

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16

17 18

19

20

21 22

23 24 25 26 27

28

the repetition of actions and passions as what does the work […]. It is by doing the actions and feeling the passions that one attains the corresponding state. The same is implied by the passages which describe habituation as working mainly by means of pleasure and pain: see e.g. EE VII.2 1237a1-7 and EN II.3 1104b8-12. Thus habituation is a non-intellectual process […]. But it is very difficult to see how non-intellectual training on its own can yield an excellent intellectual state; therefore we should conclude that the virtue which results solely from habituation is itself non-intellectual, a disposition to feel the right passions and motivations in the right ways – which is precisely how Aristotle seems to be describing virtue at many points in EN II and EE II. If habituation is sufficient for virtue, virtue must be a state of the non-rational soul alone” (Moss, 2012: 172). We will examine this passage more closely in §3. That Aristotle is referring to “words or speeches” here is indicated not only by his use of the plural logoi, and his reference to what people will “hear” (akouō, 1179b27), but in particular by his reference to the poet Theognis (1179b6) who, in the verse Aristotle is quoting, refers to the power of “muthoisi” (words, speeches, narratives). For further discussion see Aufderheide, 2020: 231-32. Broadie and Rowe also translate logoi here as “words”. As we shall see in §3, Aristotle is not contrasting ethos and logos in a straightforward way either. Moss also claims support from those passages which “describe habituation as working mainly by means of pleasure and pain: see e.g. EE VII.2 1237a1-7 and NE II.3 1104b8-12” (2012: 172). Interestingly, whilst NE 2.3 is clearly central to Aristotle’s account of moral development, it is notable that the language of ethos is absent from this chapter. See Jimenez (2015) for critical discussion of the role of pleasure and pain in moral habituation. Moss appears to assume a narrow understanding of what is involved in practising virtuous actions, where to practise an action is thought to be non-rational. Yet whilst it might be unproblematic to say that an action such as walking is “non-rational”, it is not obvious that this is true of performing a just action. I quote Inwood and Woolf, though this translation of the passage has been much disputed. “Pattern of conduct” is perhaps misleading as a translation of hup’agōgēs, which has agein, to lead, as its root. Barney thus translates the line: “by a guidance which is not innate” (2019: 281); Di Basilio opts for “by a noninnate guide”. It might be argued that “movement” as a translation of “kineisthai” begs the question somewhat, since kinēsis can also mean “change” or “process” (see especially Broadie, 1982). I thank Matthew Duncombe for drawing this to my attention. See Di Basilio (2021), who argues that the Nicomachean conception of habituation is not assumed in the EE, and likely represents Aristotle’s more developed thoughts on the nature of virtue acquisition. Thus, where Di Basilio urges against importing assumptions from the Nicomachean account into the EE, I also caution against importing elements of the Eudemian picture into the NE. Cf. Jimenez (2019), who argues for a distinction here between empeiria and ethismos. Given his preceding argument, Aristotle’s claim that ethos will produce an appropriate student surely implies that ethismos involves experience of action. See (Burnyeat, 1980: 73). See Nielsen in this volume [her §6] for discussion of how this contrast is less stark than first appears. The example appears to be chosen for argumentative effect: even if a stone is thrown ten thousand times, it will immediately revert to downwards movement when the source of upwards motion is removed. In speaking of “being active”, I am speaking relatively loosely, and intend the term to encompass the thought that habituation can involve the performance of actions, but also the experience of emotions, and perhaps also engagement in other sorts of mental processes such as deliberation. I do not use the term in a technical sense, as a translation of Aristotle’s term energeia, nor in my usage of the term do I mean to suggest that in “being active” an agent is thereby “actualising a capacity”. Nevertheless, it should be acknowledged that Aristotle does seem to imply here (and perhaps in the EE etymology passage too) that certain capacities, capacities to be active in a certain way, are acquired precisely by being active in that way. This, of course, raises the question as to how this is possible; Aristotle himself raises a similar question and gestures at a response in Metaphysics 9.8, 1049b29-1050a2. To the extent that I wish to emphasise the centrality of the notion of activity (in a loose sense) to Aristotle’s notion of habituation, my account naturally invites reflection on these issues (and perhaps in a way that an account which emphasises the mechanism of repetition does not). However, these are issues for Aristotle’s metaphysics in general, and not for my particular interpretation of his notion of habituation. To say that the apprentice receives explanations does not collapse the distinction between their training and a more theoretical training that, e.g. an architect receives.

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Ethos and Ethismos 29 Note that in the case of skill acquisition, the teacher or guide will expect the student not only to understand their instructions and explanations, but to remember these explanations in the future without guidance from the teacher, and to act with this in mind—reflectively. I thank Fiona Leigh for this point. 30 The “pollakis” is intended to contrast with the thought implicit in the opening challenge, that insofar as someone performs a virtuous action, she is immediately virtuous. The “pollakis” emphasises the sense in which an agent must continually engage in virtuous action if the agential conditions are to be met. 31 It is worth noting that the translation of logos as “argument” here already assumes a particular interpretation. 32 I am not claiming that these are always required, but that these cannot be ruled out as part of the process on the basis of the contrast between ethos and logos in this passage. 33 Karen Margrethe Nielsen’s contribution to this volume provides such an argument, and one with which I am broadly in agreement. I believe, however, that the most promising starting point is not the question of the part of the soul character virtue belongs to, but a description of the kind of activity in which the mature virtuous agent is engaged, the realization of which an account of habituation should seek to explain. 34 More sophisticated versions, such as Barney’s (2019), might elaborate on this picture: insofar as habitual movements become increasingly like natural movements, they become increasingly pleasant, since what is felt to be natural is felt to be pleasant (Rhet. 1370a3-6). Habitual actions will be easy and pleasant to do, in the same way that physically natural movements are (Barney, 2019: 283-4). Certainly, the latter is a plausible account of how some forms of habituation work. 35 I raise some of these questions, and gesture at some possible answers, in Hampson (2020). 36 I am grateful to Elena Cagnoli, Saloni de Souza, Giulio Di Basilio, Matthew Duncombe, Fiona Leigh, Daniel Vazquez, and Ellisif Wasmuth for discussion of the material in this paper. I thank Jeremy Dunham and Komarine Romdenh-Romluc for the opportunity to contribute to this volume.

References Annas, J. (1993) The Morality of Happiness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Aufderhedie, J. (2020) Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics Book X. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barney, R. (2019) ‘Becoming Bad: Aristotle Vice and Moral Habituation’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 57, pp. 273–307. Broadie, S. [as Waterlow] (1982) Nature, Change and Agency in Aristotle’s Physics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Broadie, S. (1991) Ethics with Aristotle. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Burnyeat, M. (1980) ‘Aristotle on Learning to Be Good’, in Rorty, A.O. (ed.) Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics. Berkeley, pp. 69–92. Cooper, J.M. (1986) Reason and the Human Good. Indianapolis: Hackett. Cooper, J.M. (1998) ‘Some Remarks on Aristotle’s Moral Psychology’, in Cooper, J.M. (ed.) Reason and Emotion. Princeton, pp. 237–252. Curzer, H. (2012) Aristotle and the Virtues. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Di Basilio, G. (2021) ‘Habituation in Aristotle’s Ethics: The Eudemian Ethics, the Common Books, the Nicomachean Ethics’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 59(4), pp. 531–557. Engberg-Pedersen, T. (1983) Aristotle’s Theory of Moral Insight. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Grant, A. (1885) The Ethics of Aristotle. London: Longmans, Green and Co. Hampson, M. (2020) ‘The Learner’s Motivation and the Structure of Habituation in Aristotle’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie [Preprint]. https://doi.org/10.1515/agph‐2019‐0053 Hampson, M. (2019) ‘Imitating Virtue’, Phronesis, 64, pp. 292–320. Hursthouse, R. (1988) ‘Moral Habituation: A Review of Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Aristotle’s Theory of Moral Insight’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 6, pp. 201–219. Irwin, T. (trans). (1999) Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics. Indianapolis: Hackett. Jimenez, M. (2015) ‘Aristotle on “Steering the Young by Pleasure and Pain”’, The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 29, pp. 137–164. Jimenez, M. (2019) ‘Empeiria and Good Habits in Aristotle’s Ethics’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 57, pp. 363–389.

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Margaret Hampson Kraut, R. (2012) ‘Aristotle on Becoming Good: Habituation, Reflection, and Perception’, in Shields, C. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Aristotle. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lawrence, G. (2011) ‘Acquiring Character: Becoming Grown‐Up’, in M. Pakaluk and G. Pearson (eds.) Moral Psychology and Human Action in Aristotle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 233–284. Lear, J. (1988) The Desire to Understand. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moss, J. (2011) ‘“Virtue Makes the Goal Right”: Virtue and Phronesis in Aristotle’s Ethics’, Phronesis, 56, pp. 204–261. Moss, J. (2012) Aristotle on the Apparent Good. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sherman, N. (1989) The Fabric of Character: Aristotle’s Theory of Virtue. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sorabji, R. (1973–74) ‘Aristotle on the Role of Intellect in Virtue’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 74, pp. 107–129. Stewart, J. (1892) Notes on the Nicomachean Ethics, vols 1-2. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vasiliou, I. (2007) ‘Virtue and Argument in Aristotle’s Ethics’, in Tenenbaum, S. (ed.) New Trends in Philosophy: Moral Psychology. Amsterdam/New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 37–76.

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4 MAKING PROGRESS: EPICTETUS ON HABITUATION John Sellars

4.1 Training Students Habituation is a central theme in the work of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus.1 His Discourses, based on classroom discussions in his school at Nicopolis, often comment on how best to overcome bad habits and how to cultivate better, new ones.2 These remarks were directed primarily at students who had come to study philosophy. As we shall see, Epictetus was insistent that philosophy is a life-changing activity, a task of self-transformation, and the way it does this is by attending to our habits. With this in mind, Epictetus was particularly concerned by students of his who happily talked about philosophy but never moved on to the next stage of transforming their habits in the light of the philosophical ideas they had embraced. In a chapter of the Discourses entitled ‘To those who set out to become lecturers without due thought’, he says: Those who have taken in philosophical principles (theôrêmata) raw and without any dressing immediately want to vomit them up again, just as people with weak stomachs bring up their food. (Diss. 3.21.1) Instead, he advises: Digest them first, and then you won’t vomit them up in this way. Otherwise they do indeed become nothing more than vomit, foul stuff that isn’t fit to eat. (Diss. 3.21.2) This process of digestion or assimilation is essential, says Epictetus, if one is to make any philosophical progress, for it is only through such a process that one is able to benefit from the content of philosophical principles. He continues: But after having digested them, show us some resulting change in your ruling centre (hêgemonikon), just as athletes show in their shoulders the results of their exercises and diet, and those who have become expert craftsmen can show the results of what they have learned. A builder doesn’t come forward and say, ‘Listen to me as I deliver a discourse about the builder’s art’, but he acquires a contract to build a house, and DOI: 10.4324/9781315186436-6

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shows through actually building it that he has mastered the art. And you for your part should follow a similar course of action: eat as a proper human being, drink as a proper human being, dress, marry, have children, perform your public duties […]. Show us these things to enable us to see that you really have learned something from the philosophers. (Diss. 3.21.3-6) All of this is built on Epictetus’s view that philosophy is, like building, an art or craft: something that one can talk about but also, primarily, something that one does. In particular he thinks philosophy is the art of living, a skill that enables us to live well (Diss. 1.15.2).3 The master of this art – the Stoic sage – will display his or her mastery not in words but in actions. By contrast, the beginning student remains wedded to words: ‘Come and listen to me reading out my commentaries.’ Away with you, look for someone [else] to vomit over. ‘Yes, but I’ll expound the teachings of Chrysippus to you like no one else can, and analyse his style with perfect clarity, and even mix in some of the brio of Antipater and Archedemus.’ (Diss. 3.21.6-7) This is one of many passages in the Discourses in which Epictetus warns his students against getting lost in textual interpretation for its own sake (cf. Diss. 1.4.6-7). As a number of commentators have noted, that this warning was deemed necessary might indicate that Epictetus and his students in fact devoted a good deal of time to reading and analysing the works of Chrysippus in the classroom.4 Epictetus does not seem to have had a problem with the activity of close textual analysis; his concern was with what one does with the results of such work. The goal, he insists, is ethical self-transformation. Students may well become experts in the analysis of philosophical texts, but: Shouldn’t they return home as people who are patient and helpful towards others, and have minds that are free from passion and agitation, and are furnished with such provisions for their journey through life that they’ll be able, by that means, to face up well to everything that comes about, and draw honour from it? (Diss. 3.21.10) Epictetus goes on to compare the student who becomes so infatuated by philosophy that they think it might be a good idea to try to teach it, to someone who thinks they are qualified to work as a doctor simply because they have acquired a supply of medicines, even though they don’t know how to administer them (Diss. 3.21.20-21).5 To such people who want to rush into the profession of talking about philosophy all day, Epictetus counsels the following: But if philosophical principles hold a fascination for you, sit down and reflect on them within yourself, but don’t ever call yourself a philosopher, and don’t allow anyone else to apply that name to you. (Diss. 3.21.23) Instead of launching into a career of teaching philosophy, the student serious about the subject ought to take some time out to reflect privately. The Discourses were, according to the prefatory letter that has been transmitted with them, written down by Arrian, one of Epictetus’s students, who went on to become a noted historian 52

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(Diss. Praef. 1-2). Arrian is also credited with compiling the Handbook, a much shorter collection of material that summarizes the key ideas running through the Discourses (Simplicius, in Ench. Praef. 4-9).6 Towards the end of the Handbook there is one chapter that picks up on the same theme. It opens with similar advice: Do not call yourself a philosopher on any occasion, and do not talk much about philosophical principles in the presence of non-philosophers, but practise what follows from those principles. For instance, at a banquet do not say how people should eat, but eat as people should. (Ench. 46.1) The vomit is not far behind, so to speak: And when a discussion arises about some philosophical principle among nonphilosophers, keep silent for the most part; for there is a fair risk that you will vomit up immediately what you have not digested. (Ench. 46.2) Once again, Epictetus insists on the importance of digestion of philosophical principles (theôrêmata). Whereas in the Discourses he used builders as his example, emphasizing his idea that philosophy is an art or craft (technê), here in the Handbook he takes digestion more literally: For sheep, too, do not bring their food to the shepherds to show them how much they have eaten, but after they have digested their food within themselves, they produce wool and milk outside themselves; you too, therefore, do not show the philosophical principles to the non-philosophers, but show them the deeds that result from the principles as digested by you. (ibid.) At first glance, then, Epictetus’s view seems fairly clear: students of philosophy are all too keen to talk about philosophy, vomiting up what they have just heard. Instead, they ought to focus their attention on assimilating philosophical principles in order to affect self-transformation. The ideal wise person or sage, by contrast, will be less concerned with talking about philosophical ideas, and more concerned with behaving in accordance with them. They will demonstrate their excellence of character through actions rather than words.7

4.2 Making Progress While this distinction between sages and beginning students captures something of what Epictetus says, it cannot be the whole story, in part because Epictetus himself complicates this dichotomy. According to early Stoic doctrine, humankind divides into two categories: the wise (sophoi) and the non-wise or foolish (phauloi).8 The wise, we are told, are exceedingly rare, so almost every one falls into the category of the non-wise.9 Those who make progress towards wisdom, no matter how far they come, nevertheless remain firmly among the non-wise until some moment of transition at which they attain wisdom.10 As Plutarch reports it, somewhat sarcastically, ‘the sage changes in a moment or a second of time from the lowest possible inferiority to an unsurpassable character of virtue’.11 In a memorable image, Chrysippus is reported by Plutarch to have said that approaching wisdom is like drowning in a few feet of water: one might be close to the surface, but one is still drowning.12 As Cicero put it, ‘when submerged in water one can no more breathe if one is just below the surface and on the verge of getting out, than one can in the depths’.13 One of the reasons why the Stoics insisted on this 53

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sharp division is because they took virtue or excellence (aretê) to be something that does not admit of degrees. It is, according to them, a completeness (teleiotês) and the perfection (teleiôsis) of a thing.14 As Chrysippus put it in another image, a stick is either straight or bent; likewise, one can be either virtuous or vicious.15 One of the central doxographical reports says the following: They [the Stoics] hold that there is nothing in between virtue and vice, whereas the Peripatetics say that between virtue and vice there is moral progress. For according to the Stoics, just as a piece of wood must be either straight or crooked, so a man must be either just or unjust (not more just or more unjust), and likewise with the other virtues. And Chrysippus holds that virtue can be lost, whereas Cleanthes says that it cannot be lost, the former maintaining that it can be lost as a result of drunkenness and melancholy, the latter that it cannot, owing to the virtuous person’s firm cognitions. (Diog. Laert. 7.127, SVF 3.536, LS 61I) Despite the minor difference of opinion between Chrysippus and Cleanthes reported here, the association of virtue with straightness as two things that do not admit of degrees remained current throughout the Stoa right through to the Roman period, with Seneca commenting that just as a straight line cannot be improved by any further change, so too in the case of virtue: ‘it too is straight; it does not admit of curvature’ (Ep. 71.20; cf. Ep. 66.8). As Graver and Long note (2015, 537), the same Latin word, rectus, means both ‘straight’ and ‘right’, so there is something of a play on words here. In both cases these are all or nothing affairs. This stark division in the early Stoa between the wise and the non-wise looks like it might map on to the division in Epictetus between sages and beginning students. The matter is complicated, however, by the fact that Epictetus places great weight in his Discourses on an intermediate category: those who are making progress (prokopê).16 As we have just seen, Diogenes Laertius reports that this was a Peripatetic idea, not a Stoic one; indeed, he explicitly contrasts it with the Stoic view. Whether Epictetus was influenced directly by the Peripatetic tradition, or by what have been called ‘Peripateticizing Stoics’,17 the figure of the person ‘making progress’ is ubiquitous throughout the Discourses. Such a person is no longer a beginning student; they have started to make genuine progress towards wisdom, even if strictly speaking they remain drowning a couple of feet under the surface. This more advanced student focuses their efforts on the assimilation and digestion of philosophical principles in order to develop the appropriate character. In his commentary on the passage from the Handbook quoted earlier, the Neoplatonist Simplicius suggests that: He [Epictetus] addresses these comments to the person still making progress (not to the complete philosopher, who would no longer need such advice; nor would he say to a complete philosopher ‘there’s a great danger that you will immediately vomit up material that you have not digested’) because people still making progress are troubled by the emotion of love of honour or showiness. (Simplicius, in Ench. 64.3-7) Simplicius is surely right to note that this advice is directed to those who are making progress (prokopê). The complete philosopher (teleios philosophos), by which Simplicius presumably means a sage, need not worry about discord between their words and their actions, and so Epictetus’s admonitions regarding talking too much about philosophy do not apply. 54

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4.3 Contrary Habits So, Epictetus says that those who want to make ethical progress, but are caught in the habit of merely talking about philosophy, ought to cultivate the habit of silence. One might wonder whether this advice to remain silent is somewhat excessive. Epictetus answers this concern elsewhere (Diss. 1.27.3-6; 3.12.6): if someone has developed an unfortunate habit, the most effective way to remedy this is to replace it with a contrary habit (enantion ethos). For someone in the precarious state of making progress, mere moderation is not enough, he suggests; only going to the opposite extreme will do the work of undermining the engrained bad habit. In this he might be seen to be echoing the advice of Aristotle, who had recommended sometimes aiming at the contrary extreme of a vice in order to end up in the appropriate virtuous intermediate state (Eth. Nic. 1109b4-6). As to how one goes about developing a new opposed habit, Epictetus suggests that it is all very simple. All of our habits are the product of the relevant type of action. Again, this might be taken as an echo of Aristotle’s advice that the best way to learn something is simply by doing it (Eth. Nic. 1103a33-b2). Epictetus puts it like this: Every habit (hexis) and capacity (dunamis) is confirmed and strengthened by the corresponding actions, that of walking by walking, that of running by running. If you wish to be a good reader, read; if you wish to be a good writer, write. (Diss. 2.18.1-2) The term translated in this passage as ‘habit’ is hexis, whereas when Epictetus talks about opposing habits with contrary habits he uses the word ethos. These two terms are both regularly translated as ‘habit’ by his recent English translators, although early modern Latin translations keep the distinction clear by using consuetudo for ethos and habitus for hexis, while the very first translation of the Discourses into English, by Elizabeth Carter, used ‘custom’ for ethos and ‘habit’ for hexis.18 I follow recent translators in using ‘habit’ for both terms, and there are, I think, reasonable grounds for doing this, not least because Epictetus himself slides between the two terms in the chapter from which this passage comes. However, it is also worth noting that for the Stoics hexis is a technical term in their physics, referring to a level of pneumatic tension in objects that generates cohesion and gives them certain qualities.19 Plutarch reports the following: In his books On Hexis, he [Chrysippus] again says that the hexeis are nothing but currents of air: ‘It is by these that bodies are sustained. The sustaining air is responsible for the quality of each of the bodies which are sustained by hexis; in iron this quality is called hardness, in stone density, and in silver whiteness. (Plutarch, St. Rep. 1053f, SVF 2.449, LS 47 M) In this context hexis is sometimes translated as ‘cohesion’, ‘condition’, or ‘tenor’.20 It is responsible for qualities that can vary in intensity, such as hardness, density, or whiteness. It forms one part on the Stoic Scala naturae, in which differing qualities in the physical world are explained by reference to varying degrees of tension (tonos) within the pneuma that permeates all things. Within this continuum, hexis is the lowest level of tension, binding together physical objects and giving them their qualities. Next comes phusis, a more complex degree of tension generating life in organisms; then psuchê, giving powers of perception and movement to animals; and finally, logikê psuchê, producing reason within humans.21 The notion of hexis is thus firmly embedded within Stoic physics. 55

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The Stoics contrast this variable hexis with a diathesis, sometimes translated as ‘disposition’ or ‘character’, which is invariable.22 These are sometimes referred to as scalar and non-scalar properties.23 Thus, in Chrysippus’s earlier example, the straightness of a stick is a diathesis, because it cannot vary in intensity: the stick is either straight or not.24 Similarly, virtue is a diathesis, an all or nothing affair that is invariable.25 By contrast, the hardness of iron can vary in intensity, they claim. It is worth noting that this is the terminological reverse of the view of Aristotle, who, in the Categories, says that virtue is a hexis, a state, which is stable, and not a diathesis, a condition, which is changeable.26 Simplicius, whom we met earlier, is one of our key sources here, writing in his commentary on the Categories: It is worthwhile to understand the Stoics’ usage in regard to these terms. In the opinion of some people, they reverse Aristotle by taking character (diathesis) to be more stable than habit (hexis). […] For they say that habits can be intensified and relaxed, but characters are not susceptible to intensification or relaxation. So they call the straightness of a stick a character […]. For the straightness could not be relaxed or intensified, nor does it admit of more or less, and so it is a character. For the same reason the virtues are characters […] because they are not susceptible to intensification or increase. (in Cat. 237,25-238,1, SVF 2.393, LS 47 S) Despite this apparent difference in kind, it is also worth noting that the Stoics define character (diathesis) as an unshakeable habit, that is, a special kind of hexis that is invariable and does not admit of degrees.27 In other words we ought to understand hexis in two senses: i) a broad category encompassing properties that both can and cannot be varied, and ii) a narrower sub-category restricted to properties that can be increased or decreased, in contrast to the other sub-category of unchanging diathesis.28 The important point in the present context is that for Epictetus there is a contrast between the sage who has the diathesis of virtue, which is an invariable, and the person who is making progress, who has a variable hexis that can be strengthened or weakened through processes of habituation. Returning to our passage from Epictetus after this lengthy detour, a hexis or habit can be strengthened by the relevant actions. Similarly, refraining from an action will weaken any corresponding habit (Diss. 2.18.2-3). This leads Epictetus to argue that actions always have a twofold impact. Every good action is both good in itself but also beneficial in a further way, in so far as it contributes to the maintenance or development of a good habit. Likewise for bad actions, which damage us both immediately and in the longer term, in so far as they perpetuate a bad habit (Diss. 2.18.5-12). Consequently every action we undertake will potentially contribute to either a virtuous or a vicious circle. Given this, Epictetus suggests that it is essential at all times to remain in a continual state of vigilance, for even a tiny slip can have greater negative consequences than one might expect. Not only that, once one stops paying attention to one’s actions, one will also develop a habit of not paying attention, making it much harder to maintain one’s fragile state.29 He writes: When you relax your attention (prosochê) for a little while, do not imagine that whenever you choose you will recover it, but bear this in mind, that because of the mistake which you have made today, your condition must necessarily be worse as regards everything else. For, to begin with – and this is the worst of all – a habit (ethos) of not paying attention is developed. (Diss. 4.12.1-2) So, one must remain vigilant in order to avoid developing bad habits, but also vigilant about remaining vigilant, in order to avoid developing a habit of inattention. As Epictetus’ teacher 56

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Musonius Rufus put it, ‘to relax the mind is to lose it’.30 Epictetus likens these processes of habituation to physical damage and recovery (Diss. 2.18.11). The mistaken judgement one makes that leads to a bad action leaves a mark on the mind, just as a whip might leave a weal on the flesh. Unless that mark is able to heal completely, the next time it will become a deeper wound.31 Repeated bad actions damage the mind just as the whip cuts into the flesh. In the terms of Stoic physics, the hexis that is the state of one’s soul is weakened by a reduction in its pneumatic tension. To someone who is easily provoked to anger, Epictetus says two things: keep quiet and remain vigilant (Diss. 2.18.12-14). Count how many days in which one has not got angry. The longer one can go without getting angry, the weaker the habit (hexis) will become until eventually it will be destroyed (Diss. 2.18.13). Thus, the positive counterpart to the vicious circle he warns about is that every tiny success will have a twofold virtuous impact, with the potential quickly to snowball into significant progress towards wisdom.

4.4 Negative Influences So far we have seen Epictetus advocate the overcoming of existing bad habits by cultivating new ones that are diametrically opposed to them. While, as noted earlier, this might be taken to echo Aristotle’s advice of aiming at an opposed extreme in order to land at the virtuous mean, it might equally follow the example of Diogenes the Cynic, who claimed that his own extreme behaviour deliberately set the note a little too high, in order to ensure that everyone else would hit the right note (Diog. Laert. 6.35), and it is worth noting that Epictetus nowhere mentions Aristotle in the Discourses, while his admiration for Diogenes is quite explicit. Indeed, Epictetus’s most important extended discussion of Cynicism (Diss. 3.22) is in the chapter of the Discourses that comes immediately after the one with which we opened about those who wish to become lecturers in philosophy (Diss. 3.21). I do not think this is by accident, for Epictetus takes Cynicism to be the archetypal example of a philosophy expressed in actions rather than words, and also the one where the potential for dissonance between actions and words is at its greatest.32 Another common theme in the Discourses is Epictetus attacking his students for merely playing the part of the Cynic – such as not washing before coming to lectures – rather than acting in accord with Cynic principles (e.g. Diss. 3.22; 4.11.25-30). As well as recommending this, Epictetus goes on to suggest that a particular danger for those trying to make progress is the influence of other people, especially given that almost every person that one is likely to encounter will be foolish, without virtue, and riddled with bad habits. He suggests that if two people spend time together, one will inevitably end up being influenced by the other: you will start to be shaped by their influence, or they will be shaped by you (Diss. 3.16.1-3). As he puts it rather bluntly, if you get too close to someone covered in dirt, you will end up covered in dirt yourself (Diss. 3.16.3). He goes on to analyse an encounter between someone trying to make progress and a typical non-wise person (Diss. 3.16.7). In a social encounter the non-wise person will be much stronger than the student of philosophy in two ways: first, their views will be based on firm judgements, albeit incorrect ones, and, second, their actions will be in accord with their beliefs, even if the actions are vicious and the beliefs are false. The student of philosophy, by contrast, will still be unsure about their judgements and won’t yet act fully in harmony with their professed commitment to virtue. In short, the fool is secure in his ignorance while the student remains in a fragile state. Thus Epictetus argues that in such an encounter it will always be the student who is trying to make progress who will suffer the negative influence of the non-wise, and never the other way around (Diss. 3.16.6). 57

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Epictetus’s solution to this is to counsel withdrawal from social situations where one might come into contact with non-philosophers. He writes: Until these fine ideas of yours are firmly fixed within you, and you have acquired some power which will guarantee you security, my advice to you is to be cautious about joining issue with the non-wise (idiôtês). (Diss. 3.16.9) Or, as he puts it elsewhere, ‘flee far away from things that are too strong for you’ (Diss. 3.12.12). Of course, spending time with the wise will cause no problems; in fact it will only benefit, but the wise are few and far between (Diss. 2.18.21). So Epictetus’s advice for students of philosophy trying to make progress is to avoid social situations in order to avoid the harmful influence of other people’s bad habits. He also recommends a complete dislocation from one’s past life in order to break free from past habits and unhealthy influences (Diss. 3.16.11). And he chastises philosophy students who, having left home to study philosophy, persist with their old habits as soon as they step outside of the classroom (Diss. 3.16.14). Real philosophical progress requires a complete break with the non-wise lives of other people and with one’s own past non-wise way of life. A common theme in Epictetus’s Discourses is the image of the philosopher as a doctor, the classroom as a hospital, and the student as a patient in need of treatment (Diss. 3.22.30). We might extend that medical analogy further by saying that bad habits are contagious and so the most appropriate treatment for those in recovery is quarantine. It is also worth noting, though, that the Stoics claimed that by nature people are disposed towards virtue, a point stressed by Epictetus’s teacher, Musonius Rufus.33 Despite the rarity of the sage, everyone, it is claimed, has an innate moral sensibility, and, left to their own devices, will develop towards virtue. Thus bad habits that lead us away from virtue are contrary to our natural state, and so in this sense they are a sickness or illness, perverting us from our natural, healthy state of progress towards virtue. Hence the medical analogy. This also means that the sickness of bad habits is often the product of some external influence, and so the one definitive way to avoid them is via social isolation. The student of philosophy should avoid all non-philosophers, for the health of their soul depends on it. It may be that Epictetus is deliberately setting the note a bit too high here, but his point is clearly made.

4.5 Non-Cognitive Training All of this hopefully gives a good sense of the processes by which Epictetus thought one might transform one’s habits for the better. Much of this is what might be called noncognitive training. It involves a clear contrast between the study of philosophical theory, which his beginning students have completed, and separate acts of training designed to digest that theory, which they have not. This was a distinction that Epictetus inherited from Musonius. In one of Musonius’s lectures a contrast is drawn between theory (logos) and habit (ethos): theory tells us what is right (orthôs), while habit is concerned with acting in accordance with theory.34 Musonius goes on to insist that in practical contexts such as medicine, navigation, or music, one would always choose someone accomplished in action over someone who had only mastered theory. Surely the same applies in the case of virtuous action, he adds: ‘is it not much better to be self-controlled and temperate in all one’s actions than to be able to say what one ought to do?’.35 Yet like Epictetus, Musonius does not reject the value of theory altogether, for it is after all the foundation of the entire enterprise: 58

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Theory (logos) which teaches how one should act is related to application, and comes first, since it is not possible to do anything really well unless its practical execution be in harmony with theory. In effectiveness, however, practice (ethos) takes precedence over theory (logos) as being more influential in leading humans to action. (Diatr. 5, Hense, 1905, 21,22-22,3) To some, this focus on habits might seem out of place within the context of early Stoic philosophy. The early Stoics have a reputation for being cognitivists in ethics and moral psychology.36 According to a fairly standard view, the early Stoics argued that an individual’s actions are determined by impulses (hormai) that are, in turn, determined by beliefs (doxai), which are the product of giving assent (sunkatathesis) to impressions (phantiasiai).37 Once a belief has been generated by an assent, the impulse automatically follows, leaving no obvious room for weakness of will. If that is so, what role is there for habituation? If one believes that a certain course of behaviour is the right or desirable thing to do, then on this Stoic model the individual will surely simply do it, their impulses being determined by their beliefs. Epictetus’s focus on a variety of non-cognitive practices of habituation might at first glance seem to call into question his orthodoxy as a Stoic. As we have seen, his concern with this kind of practical training was inherited from his teacher Musonius. Traditionally Musonius has been taken to be a Stoic, although recently that view has been challenged and he has instead been presented as simply a generic (and potentially eclectic) philosopher.38 This raises the possibility that his focus on training may have come from some other, non-Stoic philosophical source. Roughly contemporary with Musonius, we also find an interest in non-cognitive habituation in Seneca. In Seneca’s case the non-Stoic influence is quite explicit: he quotes from the Pythagorean Golden Verses and he reports that he learned at least some of these practices from his teacher, Sextius, who operated a philosophy school in Rome.39 The school of Sextius was known for being eclectic in outlook, drawing on Stoic and Pythagorean ideas among others. All this might lead one to wonder if the stress on non-cognitive practices of habituation by Roman Stoics such as Epictetus, Musonius, and Seneca was the product of non-Stoic influences that drew them away from the purely cognitive approach to human action associated with the early Stoa. If that were the case, it would make Epictetus a heterodox Stoic. Yet the standard view of Epictetus is that, despite his own distinctive approach, he remained a thoroughly orthodox follower of the early Stoa. Over a century ago, Bonhöffer argued that Epictetus paid little or no attention to the supposedly heterodox ‘middle Stoics’, instead confining his points of reference to the early Stoics, especially Chrysippus.40 More recent commentators have reiterated this view, even where they have highlighted the distinctive and original aspects of Epictetus’s approach.41 So, on the one hand, Epictetus is widely held to be an orthodox Stoic while, on the other, his focus on non-cognitive practices of habituation appear to take him away from core Stoic teaching about the cognitive basis for human action. To complicate matters further, Epictetus himself seems to express agreement with the orthodox Stoic view when, for instance, he says that ‘it is impossible to judge one thing to be advantageous and yet desire another’ (Diss. 1.18.2). If that is the case, then why does he also think that we need to engage in non-cognitive processes of habituation? Before trying to respond to that question directly, it is worth noting the way in which Stoics in general responded to the problem of weakness of will. Because, on their account, there can be no inner conflict between competing faculties in the mind, they needed to give some other explanation for situations in which people appear to act against their judgements. They did so by suggesting that such cases can be explained in terms of an inconsistency of judgement, understood as an oscillation: ‘a turning of the single reason in both directions, which we do not 59

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notice owing to the sharpness and speed of the change’.42 It is not, on their view, the case that someone can believe one thing while at the same time acting against that belief. Instead, the apparent akratic has such unstable judgements that they might believe and act one way in a given moment, only to change their mind in the next, continually oscillating back and forth, unable to settle on a stable judgement. Indeed, this is one of the states that the Stoics thought ought to be avoided: Zeno’s initial formulation of the Stoic telos was to live consistently (to homologoumenôs zên), and consistency is one of the hallmarks of the Stoic sage.43 In the light of this, one would expect Stoic practices of habituation to be directed towards the cultivation of more stable and consistent judgements. The problem is not, according to the Stoics, that people act against their judgements; it is that their judgements oscillate between existing habitual patterns of judgement and newer ones that have not yet become fully embedded. Indeed, this is no doubt why Epictetus advised his students who were beginning to make progress to avoid contact with other people whose negative influence might contribute to an ongoing state of instability. Another aspect of the Stoic account of action relevant here is their understanding of impulse (hormê). Unfortunately, this is especially complex and only the basic outlines can be given here. Impulse is something shared by all animals and humans. In animals and children this is nonrational, but in adult humans this develops into what the Stoics call rational impulse (logikê hormê).44 Impulse is thus something that can develop, in this case from something non-rational and instinctive into something rational. An ideal process of development would see a human being mature into a fully rational agent with perfectly rational impulse. But, of course, things rarely work out that way: the process of development towards perfect rationality is often impeded or diverted. The important point to note in the present context is that impulse is something that can develop and improve. Indeed, Epictetus lists it as one of the objects of his programme of philosophical training. There are, he says, three areas (topoi) in which someone who wants to be good must be trained. The second of these is concerned with hormê and aphormê, so that one ‘behaves appropriately, in an orderly way, with good reason, and not carelessly’ (Diss. 3.2.2). One of our main sources for the early Stoic account of impulse (hormê) lists a number of different types, and one of these is hexis hormetikê, which one might translate as ‘dispositional impulse’,45 or, in the present context, ‘habitual impulse’. It is unclear at first glance where this ought to fit into the Stoic account of action: if impulses are produced by beliefs that are, in turn, produced by judgements, how can they also be underlying dispositions or habits? It has been suggested that in order to make sense of this the Stoics must have been committed to two different types of impulse: there are i) underlying dispositional or habitual impulses already in place before we make judgements, and ii) the impulses directly produced by our judgements.46 It has been argued that the first type have a strong influence on the second type, in so far as our underlying dispositions or habits will shape the sorts of propositions presented to the mind for assent.47 For example, a person at the beginning of a new diet may judge that they ought not to eat cake any more, but if their underlying disposition persistently presents to their mind the thought ‘I really like cake’, it is perhaps unsurprising that their still inconsistent judgement sometimes endorses that statement and they succumb to eating cake. The task at hand for such a person is to try to alter their underlying dispositional or habitual impulse (hexis hormetikê) in order to change the sorts of propositions presented to the mind for assent. This is why Epictetus pays so much attention to habituation. It is in order to transform these underlying dispositional or habitual impulses. For someone trying to transform their way of life, this often involves trying to overcome engrained habits of thinking that are at odds with a newly embraced set of beliefs. But how does one do this? Epictetus has already given us an answer. Each time someone manages to act in accordance with their new belief, they contribute to the 60

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inculcation of a new habitual way of thinking. Every time the person who habitually thinks ‘I really like cake’ manages to avoid assenting to this, and so resists eating cake, that underlying habitual way of thinking is weakened. If they resist eating cake often enough, they may eventually fall out of the habit of thinking about cake at all. The habitual impulse will be reshaped by a virtuous circle of the sort we saw Epictetus describe earlier. This will contribute to reaching the goal where one’s habitual impulses are fully in line with one’s professed beliefs. It is much easier to resist the temptation of cake if one is not continually thinking ‘I really like cake’!

Notes 1 Abbreviations: LS = Long and Sedley, 1987; SVF = von Arnim, 1903–24. Ancient texts are referred to using standard abbreviations, many of which are listed in the Oxford Classical Dictionary. 2 Epictetus’s Discourses (Diss.) are edited in Schenkl, 1916. Schenkl’s text is reprinted with minor modifications and a facing translation in Oldfather, 1925–28. The most recent complete translation into English is in Hard (2014), which I quote from, occasionally amended. 3 On the Stoic claim that philosophy is an “art of living”, see Sellars (2009). 4 See, for example, Barnes (1997: 48), and Cooper (2007: 10–11). 5 Compare this with the comments of Musonius Rufus, Diatr. 5 (Hense, 1905, 19–22), which stress the importance of practical experience: “Suppose there are two doctors. One of them can talk about medical matters as if he had the greatest possible acquaintance with them, but has never actually cared for sick people. The other is not able to talk about medical matters but is experienced in healing in accordance with medical theory. Which one would you choose as your doctor if you were ill?”. The interlocutor responds, “The one who is experienced in healing”. This passage is discussed later. See also the discussion in Stephens (2013). 6 The Handbook (Ench.) is edited and translated in Boter (1999). Simplicius’s commentary on the Handbook (in Ench.) is edited in Hadot (1996) and translated in Brennan and Brittain (2002). 7 We shall qualify this claim later. To be more precise, the sage will be able to express their virtue through both their actions and their words, which will be in complete accord with one another. Having said that, given that the goal is ultimately to act virtuously rather than merely talk about it, it is not unreasonable to give actions priority here. 8 See Stobaeus 2,99,3–5 (SVF 1.216, LS 59 N). I cite Stobaeus according to the volume, page, and line numbers of Wachsmuth & Hense, 1884–1912. This passage come from the epitome of Stoic ethics attributed to Arius Didymus, which is also edited and translated in Pomeroy (1999). Here, Arius refers to spoudaioi rather than sophoi. 9 Alexander of Aphrodisias, Fat. 199, 14–22 (SVF 3.658, LS 61 N). 10 For an extended discussion of this topic, see Brouwer (2014: 51–91). 11 Plutarch, De prof. in virt. 75c (SVF 3.539, LS 61 S). 12 Plutarch, De comm. not. 1063a (SVF 3.539, LS 61 T). 13 Cicero, Fin. 3.48 (SVF 3.530). 14 See Galen, PHP 5.5.39 (SVF 3.257) and Diogenes Laertius 7.90 (SVF 3.197), respectively. 15 Simplicius, in Cat. 237,31–238,1 (SVF 2.393, LS 47 S). 16 See, among other places, Diss. 1.4, which is devoted to the notion of making progress (prokopê). For a full list of places where Epictetus discusses this and the prokoptôn, the person who is making progress, see Schenkl (1916, 670). For further discussion see Roskam (2005: 103–24). 17 For this phrase, see Bonhöffer (1894: 227), where he refers in particular to Panaetius, citing Cicero, Off. 3.17. On Panaetius’s relative disinterest in the perfect wise person, see Seneca, Ep. 116.5 (LS 66 C). On his debt to the Peripatetic tradition, see Cicero, Fin. 4.79. 18 For English translations that translate both hexis and ethos as “habit”, see e.g. Long (1887), Matheson (1916), Oldfather (1925–28), and Hard (2014). For early modern Latin translations that render hexis as habitus and ethos as consuetudo, see Scheggio (1554), Wolf (1595), Upton (1741), and Schweighauser (1799–1800). For Elizabeth Carter’s use of “habit” and “custom”, see Carter (1758). 19 Hijmans (1959: 64), contrasts this narrow use of hexis in Stoic physics with a broader one used in ethical contexts. 20 Pomeroy (1999) translates hexis as “condition”; Long and Sedley (1987) translate it as “tenor”, while Cherniss (1976) opts for “habitudes”.

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John Sellars 21 See Philo, Leg. alleg. 2.22-3 (SVF 2.458, LS 47 P). 22 On hexis and diathesis in Stoicism, see Stobaeus 2.70,21–71,4 (SVF 3.104, LS 60 L); these are translated as “condition” and “disposition”, respectively, in Pomeroy 1999, 31, and as “tenor” and “character” in Long and Sedley (1987). On this distinction, see further Brouwer (2014: 31–2). 23 See e.g. Graver (2007: 135-8). 24 See Simplicius, in Cat. 237,25–238,20 (SVF 2.393, LS 47 S). 25 See Diogenes Laertius 7.127 (LS 61I) and 7.89 (LS 61 A): “virtue is a consistent character (diathesis)”. For further discussion of Stoic virtue as a diathesis, see Jedan, 2009, 58–65. 26 See Aristotle, Cat. 8, 8b25–9a13. The translations of hexis and diathesis as “state” and “condition”, respectively, come from Ackrill (1963: 24). Note also Eth. Nic. 1106a10-12 on virtue as a hexis. The difference is merely terminological; the Stoics agree with Aristotle that virtue is a stable state or condition. See further Rist (1969: 3). 27 On this point, see Brouwer (2014: 59). 28 So Sambursky (1959: 85), who sees diathesis as “a special case of hexis”, and Graver (2007: 136–7), who describes hexis as a broad class encompassing both diathesis, which is nonscalar, and hexis proper, which is scalar. 29 On the topic of attention (prosochê) in Epictetus, see Sellars (2018). 30 Musonius Rufus, fr. 52 (Hense, 1905, 133), from Aulus Gellius, NA 18.2.1. 31 One might compare this with Marcus Aurelius, who in Meditations 11.8 draws an analogy between a person cut off from society and a branch broken off a tree. Both can be grafted back on, but the more often this occurs, the weaker the bond will become. 32 Whether this is due to Epictetus or Arrian is impossible to know. It is conceivable that the existing discourses that have come down to us reflect the order in which they were recorded and so reflect the order in which Epictetus himself addressed these topics. It is equally possible that the order of the discourses was determined by Arrian himself as he sorted through his lecture notes and prepared them for publication. Either way, I suggest that this is not a random juxtaposition. 33 See Musonius Rufus, Diatr. 2 (Hense, 1905: 6–8). 34 Musonius Rufus, Diatr. 5 (Hense, 1905: 19,19–23). 35 Musonius Rufus, Diatr. 5 (Hense, 1905: 21,11–14). 36 See e.g. Lloyd (1978: 237), and Inwood (1985: 52), as just two established examples. For some scepticism, see Sorabji (2000: 44–5). 37 On impulses and assents, see Stobaeus 2,88,1–7 (SVF 3.171, LS 33I); on impressions and assents, see Cicero, Acad. 2.145 (SVF 1.66, LS 41 A). 38 See the case set out in Inwood (2017). 39 See esp. Seneca, De ira 3.36.1–3, with further discussion of Seneca and Sextius in Sellars (2014). 40 See Bonhöffer (1894: iii-iv). 41 See e.g. Long (2002: 7–8); Cooper (2007: 10); Klein (2021). 42 Plutarch, Virt. mor. 446 f (SVF 3.459, LS 65 G). For further discussion of the Stoic response to the problem of akrasia, see Gill (1983). 43 For Zeno’s telos formulation, see Stobaeus 2,75,11–12 (SVF 1.179, LS 63B). 44 See e.g. Stobaeus 2,86,17–87,13 (SVF 3.169, LS 53Q). 45 Stobaeus 2.87,9–13 (SVF 3.169). The text reads tês hexeôs tês hormêtikês, which Pomeroy (1999: 55), translates as “the condition which is able to impel”. Annas (1992: 91) opts for “impulsory state”. I take “dispositional impulse” from Klein (2021). 46 See the helpful discussion in Annas (1992: 100-101). 47 Ibid.

References Ackrill, J.L. (1963) Aristotle’s Categories and De Interpretatione. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Annas, J. (1992) Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind. Berkeley: University of California Press. Arnim, H.v. (1903-24) Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, vol. 1–4. Leipzig: Teubner. Barnes, J. (1997) Logic and the Imperial Stoa. Leiden: Brill. Bonhöffer, A. (1894) Die Ethik des Stoikers Epictet. Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke. Boter, G. (1999) The Encheiridion of Epictetus and its Three Christian Adaptations. Leiden: Brill. Brennan, T. and Brittain, C. (2002) Simplicius, On Epictetus Handbook, vol. 1–2. London: Duckworth.

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Making Progress: Epictetus on Habituation Brouwer, R. (2014) The Stoic Sage: The Early Stoics on Wisdom, Sagehood and Socrates. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carter, E. (1758) All the Works of Epictetus, Which are now Extant, Consisting of his Discourses, preserved by Arrian, in Four Books, the Enchiridion, and Fragments. London: S. Richardson. Cherniss, H. (1976) Plutarch, Moralia, vol. 13.2. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cooper, J.M. (2007) ‘The Relevance of Moral Theory to Moral Improvement in Epictetus’, in Scaltsas, T. and Mason, A. S. (eds.) The Philosophy of Epictetus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 9–19. Gill, C. (1983) ‘Did Chrysippus Understand Medea?’, Phronesis, 28, pp. 136–149. Graver, M. (2007) Stoicism and Emotion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Graver, M. and Long, A.A. (2015) Seneca, Letters on Ethics to Lucilius. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Hadot, I. (1996) Simplicius, Commentaire sur le Manuel d’Épictète. Leiden: Brill. Hard, R. (2014) Epictetus: Discourses, Fragments, Handbook. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hense, O. (1905) C. Musonii Rufi Reliquiae. Leipzig: Teubner. Hijmans, B.L. (1959) Askêsis: Notes on Epictetus’ Educational System. Assen: Van Gorcum. Inwood, B. (1985) Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Inwood, B. (2017) ‘The Legacy of Musonius Rufus’, in Engberg-Pedersen, T. (ed.) From Stoicism to Platonism: The Development of Philosophy, 100 BCE-100 CE. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 254–276. Jedan, C. (2009) Stoic Virtues: Chrysippus and the Religious Character of Stoic Ethics. London: Continuum. Klein, J. (2021) ‘Desire and Impulse in Epictetus and the Older Stoics’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 103, pp. 221–251, doi: 10.1515/agph-2017-0113. Lloyd, A.C. (1978) ‘Emotion and Decision in Stoic Psychology’, in Rist, J.M. (ed.) The Stoics. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 233–246. Long, G. (1887) The Discourses of Epictetus with the Encheiridion and Fragments. London: Bell. Long, A.A. (2002) Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Long, A.A. and Sedley, D.N. (1987) The Hellenistic Philosophers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Matheson, P.E. (1916) Epictetus: The Discourses and Manual, Together with Fragments of his Writings, vols. 1–2. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Oldfather, W.A. (1925-28) Epictetus, The Discourses as Reported by Arrian, the Manual, and Fragments, vol. 1–2. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pomeroy, A.J. (1999) Arius Didymus, Epitome of Stoic Ethics. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature. Rist, J.M. (1969) Stoic Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roskam, G. (2005) On the Path to Virtue: The Stoic Doctrine of Moral Progress and its Reception in (Middle-) Platonism. Leuven: Leuven University Press. Sambursky, S. (1959) Physics of the Stoics. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Scheggio, J. (1554) Arriani Nicomediensis de Epicteti philosophi, praeceptoris sui, dissertationibus Libri IIII. Basil: Joannes Oporinus. Schenkl, H. (1916) Epicteti Dissertationes ab Arriano Digestae. Leipzig: Teubner. Schweighauser, J. (1799-1800) Epicteteae Philosophiae Monumenta, vols. 1–5. Leipzig: Weidmann. Sellars, J. (2009) The Art of Living: The Stoics on the Nature and Function of Philosophy, 2nd edn. London: Bristol Classical Press. Sellars, J. (2014) ‘Seneca’s Philosophical Predecessors and Contemporaries’, in Damschen, G. and Heil, A. (eds.) Brill’s Companion to Seneca. Leiden: Brill, pp. 97–112. Sellars, J. (2018) ‘Roman Stoic Mindfulness: An Ancient Technology of the Self’, in Dennis, M. and Werkhoven, S. (eds.) Ethics and Self-Cultivation: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 15–29. Sorabji, R. (2000) Emotion and Peace of Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stephens, W.O. (2013) ‘The Roman Stoics on Habit’, in Sparrow, T. and Hutchinson, A. (eds.) A History of Habit: From Aristotle to Bourdieu. Lanham: Lexington Books, pp. 37–64. Upton, J. (1741) Epicteti Quae supersunt Dissertationes Ab Arriano Collectae Nec non Enchiridion et Fragmenta Graece et Latine, vol. 1–2. London: Thomas Woodward. Wachsmuth, C. and Hense, O. (1884-1912) Ioannis Stobaei Anthologium, vols. 1–5. Berlin: Weidmann. Wolf, H. (1595) Epicteti Stoici Philosophi Encheiridion Item, Cebetis Thebani Tabula De vita humana prudenter instituenda. Accessere, Simplicii in eundem Epicteti libellum doctissima Scholia. Arriani commentariorum de Epicteti disputationibus libri quatour. Cologne: Birckmann.

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PART II

Habit and Early Modern Philosophy

5 FORMING THE HABIT OF THINKING WELL: DESCARTES’S RESHAPING OF THE ACT OF REASONING Elodie Cassan1

In Descartes’s writings, habit serves as an operational concept qualifying, from an epistemological point of view, a way of thinking on theoretical and practical matters. In Descartes’s view, on the one hand, habit is a way of thinking that we are accustomed to and that we find reliable precisely for this reason. But, on the other hand, we should not take for granted the conclusions that mental habits lead to, as habits provide no epistemic justification towards certainty. Descartes makes his approach to habit very clear in the famous incipit of the Discourse on Method: Good sense is the best distributed thing in the world; for everyone thinks himself so well endowed with it that even those who are the hardest to please in everything else are not accustomed to desire more of it than they possess [car chacun pense en être si bien pourvu, que ceux même qui sont les plus difficiles à contenter en toute autre chose, n’ont point coutume d’en désirer plus qu’ils en ont]. In this it is unlikely that everyone is mistaken. It indicates rather that the power of judging well and of distinguishing the true from the false-which is what we properly call ‘good sense’ or ‘reason’- is naturally equal in all men, and consequently that the diversity of our opinions does not arise because some of us are more reasonable than others but solely because we direct our thoughts along different paths and do not attend to the same things. (AT 6: 1–2; CSM 1: 111. Translation modified and emphasis added) Descartes’s use of the term coutume, which we have underlined in the above passage, is noteworthy. Descartes uses it in order to account for the fact that, in his view, we are generally so confident that we do not find it necessary to question the opinions we have come to form about the way things work, should these opinions concern the physical world or the society they belong to. In other words, Descartes attributes to habit a pivotal role within the framework of the genealogy of error he works on in many of his texts. This phenomenon can be illustrated by the well-known criticism of childhood Descartes’s genealogy comprises. In the Discourse on the Method, this criticism is notably based on the claim that men tend to confuse with truth the familiar ideas and beliefs they have formed through the years on the ground of what their senses and their professors have taught them: DOI: 10.4324/9781315186436-8

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I reflected that we were all children before being men and had to be governed for some time by our appetites and our teachers, which were often opposed to each other and neither of which, perhaps, always gave us the best advice; hence I thought it virtually impossible that our judgements should be as unclouded and firm as they would have been if we had always been guided by it alone. (AT 6: 13; CSM 1: 117) According to this passage, we are all the more tempted to treat our current view on an issue as obvious if we either find it pleasant to do so, or if it has been dictated to us by an instructor. In Descartes’s eyes, possessing reason does not amount to knowing how to use it properly; each individual needs time, constant practice, and exercise. As a consequence, history comes into play. Descartes sharply contrasts the reasonable nature of the human being with his or her historical condition. The dimension of history is required as it symbolically provides room for the series of intellectual experimentations we need to go through in order to access that which is given to us by nature, that is, reason. It is clear that, from this viewpoint, the metaphor of childhood is highly significant as it shapes the paradoxical beginnings of the development of the mind for Descartes. In other words, as moments leading to the building of false judgments, which he calls “prejudices”, the first ever attempts to reason shed light on the huge obstacles that we must get past in order to avoid mistakes. As such, in Descartes’s view, these obstacles reveal that it is necessary to support the operation of reasoning with an assessment of the legitimacy of the established sources of knowledge. This is to say, first of all, that in addition to treating reason as a capacity to judge, Descartes basically addresses the operation of forming judgments and the proposition produced by this act; and, secondly, that rather than concentrating on propositions, as the primary bearers of truth and falsity, Descartes is concerned with determining how to form propositions based on an unquestionable content (Cassan, 2015a; Cassan, 2015b). This characterization of reason is made in connexion with a threefold theory of judgment, taken as a capacity to judge, as the operation of judging and as the result of this operation, that is, as a proposition. This connexion has an epistemological import. As this paper will show, the learning of the proper use of reason can be accounted for by Descartes’s consideration of habits of thought. Descartes’s understanding of habit in terms of habits of thought manifests a shift away from the traditional meaning of the term, which refers to a disposition to deal with our affections. For instance, in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle understands practical virtue in terms of a habit (hexis), that is, of a disposition towards our affections. In connection to this, he distinguishes hexis, pathe (appetite, anger, fear, boldness…) and dunamis (the capacity to experience such affections) as three phenomena of the soul distinct from each other (Aristotle, 1994: 100–102). Descartes distances himself from this ethical framework because he is mainly concerned with resorting to the concept of habit within the framework of his elaboration on science. This is not to deny the obvious moral import of his remarks about the ease with which men take sides. To a certain extent, these remarks are part of a well-known Montaigne-inspired strategy, designed in order to criticise men’s presumptions (Montaigne, [1965] 2004: 631–662; Descartes, 1976: 83). However, Descartes goes further than this. He also sees habits as ways of thinking about theoretical matters, which, under certain conditions, can generate true statements about these very matters. Descartes takes it that habits of thought can be changed in so far as they are sources of error. Put differently, he considers the possibility of a habituation towards the production of true judgments. A study of this consideration is crucial to understand his philosophical project. Such is the purpose of this paper. To be sure, Descartes’s normative approach to the concept of habit leads him to address the making of science as an issue involving both cognitive and formal features. To begin with, as far 68

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as cognition is involved, Descartes presents the acquisition of knowledge as the result of the acquisition of certain mental habits. He does so because he presupposes that we must learn how to make use of the resources of our intelligence if we are ever to contribute to the advancement of learning. He presupposes that a human being can have control over his or her own nature and he understands this nature in terms of a set of intellectual faculties requiring an actualization by the individual possessing them. In addition to that, with respect to formalism, Descartes supports the view that formation of the habit of thinking well results from the use of certain rules. In his eyes, in order to make scientific discoveries, it does not suffice to know how the operations of the mind work. It is essential to invent exercises that make these faculties produce actually true judgments, and it is necessary to get acquainted with these exercises. For the habit of thinking well is the result of an acculturation process. The intermingling of these cognitive and formal elements is particularly visible in the Rules for the Direction of the Mind. In this text, Descartes claims that the formation of true judgments is made possible by means of the decision to ground such judgments on the two intellectual acts that are productive from the viewpoint of science: intuition and deduction. Accordingly, in Rule III, he holds that whereas an intuition is the indubitable conception of a given object, a deduction is a chain of such intuitions, inferred one from another (AT 10: 368–369; CSM 1: 14–15). Furthermore, in Rule IV, he puts forward the method that governs the use of intuition and deduction to avoid confusing truth with falsity, and to attain all the knowledge that is accessible to the human mind (AT 10: 371–372; CSM 1: 16). Lastly, he designs exercises to reinforce intuition and deduction. Rule IX treats the art of entertaining intuition, that is of gaining perspicacity, and Rule X explains the art of entertaining deduction, that is, of gaining sagacity (Respectively: AT 10: 401; CSM 1: 33–34; AT 10: 404; CSM 1: 35). This whole argumentative structure illustrates that for Descartes, the acquisition of the habit of thinking well is crucial to the building of science. The purpose of this chapter is to illuminate the philosophical significance of this move. I shall defend the claim that Descartes’s approach to habit shows that he is deeply concerned with logical issues. My interpretation will provide, first, a new contextualisation of Descartes’s philosophy as I will contribute to a discussion of the standard narrative concerning the status of logic in Descartes’ philosophy, which scholars have seriously challenged over the past years. According to the traditional narrative, Descartes builds his philosophy by focusing only on psychological issues related to human cognition, and by undermining “strictly” logical matters. In this framework, Descartes’s interest in cognition is accounted for by the fact that he does not consider the object of knowledge in ontological terms but in epistemological terms (Cassirer, 2004). Schematically, as Descartes does not directly approach the establishment of rules for reasoning, the traditional subject of logic, via their metaphysical groundings, his own contribution to logic has been commonly viewed as very poor (Bochenski, 1956: 298; Kneale & Kneale, 1962: 310; Risse, 1970: 30–47). To put it in a nutshell, histories of logic are often conceived in terms of the birth and development of modern and contemporary formal logic, which is independent of psychology in many respects. In this framework, it is tempting to reduce the early-modern reformulation of logic to a mere replacement of logic by psychology of knowledge and to attribute to Descartes an important part in such “impoverishment”.2 But, as this chapter will contribute to show, it is no longer possible to see things this way, for Descartes sees logic as aiming at the forming of the habit of thinking well. Second of all, in studying logic this way, I will throw much-needed light on Descartes’s understanding of reason. According to a standard account, Descartes is a founding figure of early modern philosophy because he has created a new concept of reason and invented rationalism. To begin with, however suggestive this common approach to Descartes may be, the 69

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affirmation of the absolute power of reason has to do with the building of a myth, for it is impossible to get rid of traditions, culture, and history (Blumenberg, 1999). Furthermore, this traditional narrative is, strikingly, neither based on a systematic study of the genesis of Descartes’s concern with reason nor on a precise analysis of the modalities according to which he has articulated his concept of reason. To be sure, the equivalence between mens, animus, intellectus, and ratio, i.e. mind, soul, intellect, and reason, made by Descartes when he defines the res cogitans (the thinking thing) has been commented on (AT 7: 27; CSM 2: 18; AT 9: 21). Besides, the active part played by the search for truth towards happiness and the role of guide played by reason in the field of morals have been considered (Kambouchner, 1995; RodisLewis, 1998). Such studies have revealed that Descartes conceives of reason as a cognitive power whose possession differentiates a human being from an animal. However, we still need to understand how and why Descartes forges devices for reasoning well. The question at stake is: why does Descartes think that it is one thing to possess reason, and another thing to get to know how to use reason appropriately? In order to address this issue, an analysis of Descartes’s remarks about the acquisition of the habit of thinking well is required. As the shaping of habits plays a prominent role within the framework of his research on the means to construct true mental representations of things, we have to consider Descartes’s approach to habit from the viewpoint of logic. The general orientation of such research is not to turn Descartes into the philosopher of language he is not and does not pretend to be. Rather, the objective is to contribute to a demythologisation of Descartes’s philosophy: we must stop reducing it to a philosophy of privacy/interiority/subject if we want to fully make sense of what is going on in the early-modern philosophy. Let me begin with a brief survey of the secondary literature. Descartes’s observations about habits of thought may be read in the light of his conception of logic because it is now established that the terms “Descartes” and “logic” are not contradictory. The progress in scholarship has made it clear that according to Descartes, philosophy, which is about inventing the habit of thinking well, about cultivating the mental capacities in view of the building of science (Moreau, 2015), has to do with logic, as this discipline is understood in the Early-Modern period.3 Such is the conclusion one can draw from the concern of scholars both with Descartes’ very critical statements about the logic of his time and with the question of whether he built a kind of logic himself. In this respect, Ariew has convincingly made the case that Descartes’ wellknown insistence on the formalism of scholastic logic and on the syllogism’s lack of scientific productivity, in the Rules for the Direction of the Mind, in the Search for Truth by Means of the Natural Light and in the Discourse on Method, should not be interpreted as a general condemnation of logic as useless and harmful (Ariew, 2006, 2014, and 2021). As Ariew points out, it is true that in posterior texts such as the Conversation with Burman, not only does Descartes present his method as another logic, but he also recommends it as an efficient practical exercise to improve one’s mind. In other words, Descartes does not content himself with the standard Renaissance complaint about Scholastic logic. He considers that another logic is possible. This possibility is what he has in his sights in a passage of the lettre-preface to the French translation of Principles of Philosophy, which is also commented on by Ariew. In this passage, concerned with giving an outline of his philosophical system, Descartes holds the view that one should begin philosophical studies by learning logic, “[the logic] that teaches us how best to direct our reason in order to discover those truths of which we are ignorant”.4 In the same text, he calls his method and the four rules given in the Discours “the principal rules of logic”.5 Here, not only does he take logic to be a preparation for philosophy in general, but he also correlates logical inquiries to the building of his philosophy. In relation to this, he endorses an innatist view of 70

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mental faculties. He posits reason as a cognitive power given par nature. He defines this power in terms of a capacity to judge (Nuchelmans, 1983, 1998). He explores the inferential process from the point of view of its cognitive status with respect to intuition (Gaukroger, 1989). In the end, Descartes may be worried by the very limited achievements accomplished by the logic he was trained in, that is, by scholastic logic, he nevertheless acknowledges the philosophical importance of logic as such (Petrescu, 2018). His interest in the design of logic, which is to provide the grounding for the building of the philosophical discourse, renders him aware of the necessity of giving logic a new shape and it makes him eager to advance propositions in this direction, although he might not use the term “logic” when he works them out.6 His point is that since logic is a propaedeutic to philosophy, since philosophy is a search for knowledge involving scientific disciplines, logic should enable us to use our reason in order to discover new truths. But why does he see things this way? What entitles him to assimilate reason to a kind of inner light? Why does he think that this light needs to be shown the way to science? Descartes believes that we have the natural capacity to access truth. So why does he think that we must be taught the habit of thinking well? Is our “natural” reason weak? Now that the substantial connection Descartes makes between the mental and the technical has been restored by scholars, a new line of research can be drawn. In order to better address his approach to the forming of the habit of thinking well, we have to attempt to get a picture of the anthropological assumptions that underlie his circumscription of the task of logic. In order to do so, in the second part of this chapter, I shall pay attention to Descartes’ remarks about language. I will ground my account on three famous texts which Descartes dedicates to language: the 5th part of the Discourse on Method, a Letter to Newcastle (November 23rd, 1646) and a Letter to More (February 5th, 1649). These texts share a common purpose: Descartes uses his observations about man’s verbal behaviour and the apparent absence of such behaviour in animals in order to differentiate man from animal. Descartes’s thesis is that the use of language reveals the possession of reason. This claim entails that while animals are merely corporeal machines, human beings are not, insofar as, in addition to their body, they have a capacity to think which is made visible by the fact that they speak. I would like to show that Descartes’s treatment of the issue of cognition in connection with the issue of habits is determined by his characterization of the human being in terms of a speaking being. Schematically, as I will suggest, Descartes takes it that our discourses express our ways of thinking, so that our common experience of the rationality we dispose is shaped by the way we usually form our thoughts. In that respect, Descartes’s description of the phenomenon of speech is noteworthy. It goes along the same lines in the three texts I have mentioned above. In this threefold framework, Descartes remarks that even idiots and madmen, on the one hand, deaf and mute, on the other hand, have the capacity to express themselves, that is, to use words as signs for their mental conceptions.7 In other words, Descartes is strikingly concerned, first and foremost, with the fact of error, and with the fact of silence. Furthermore, he is aware of the variety of logics underlying human discourses. Last, he is also aware of the variety of means human beings can invent in order to express themselves. In his account, “reason” is nothing but the name of a hypothesis accounting for the fact of linguistic diversity, that is, 1) for the fact that humans can hold very different positions one from another; and, 2) for the fact that, in order to do so, they may resort to different systems of signs. Descartes does not depict reason as a triumphant mental faculty that would have immediate access to truth. Descartes defines reason in discursive terms, by referring to the many ways men have been habituated to build chains of reasonings. 71

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This claim has an anthropological import which can be deduced from a second series of observations made by Descartes in the same set of texts.8 There, Descartes remarks that a tame animal taught how to pronounce certain words is really just shown how to respond appropriately to certain stimuli. In other words, for Descartes, the humanlike sounds made by domesticated animals do not enable them to express their thoughts but to express their feelings, namely, the pleasure they experience once awarded some food they like, when they behave the way they are expected to. Descartes takes it that, on the contrary, a man, no matter how right or wrong he may be when he speaks, always responds to the meaning of what is said in front of him, and builds a discourse in order to exteriorize what he has been thinking by himself either on this occasion or prior to it. As Chomsky has already pointed out (1966), Descartes insists on the creativity illustrated by the human use of language and he accounts for this creativity with a presentation of reason as a “universal instrument which can be used in all kind of situation”.9 In other words, for Descartes, language is the vehicle of a potentially infinite mental content that is formed freely by the individuals, on practical as well as on theoretical matters. According to him, humans are fundamentally defined by their freedom and because of their freedom, they can err. It is Descartes attachment to freedom which makes him address logic in terms of the forming of the habit of thinking well. Still, one objection may be raised: why did we have to wait until the 1966 publication of Chomsky’s Cartesian Linguistics to become aware of this? In the third part of my chapter, I suggest that it is due to a lack of precise contextualization of Descartes’s philosophical project in recent scholarship. An example will make clear the issue I am pointing at: 17th-century historians of early modern philosophy commonly interpret Descartes’s philosophy as a contribution to the new shape given to logic in that period.10 They may disregard Descartes’s contribution, as does Father Rapin in his Réflexions sur la philosophie ancienne et moderne (Rapin, 1676). They may praise it, as Pierre Coste does in his Discours sur la philosophie où l’on voit en abrégé l’histoire de cette science (Coste, 1691). Either way, Descartes’s approach to reason and reasoning is placed in the larger context of the early modern assessment of the legitimacy of logic as a tool for discovery. In other words, in the 17th century, many readers of Descartes’s works are aware of the logical import of his philosophical project. Intellectuals such as Gassendi and Baillet in France discuss which of Descartes’s writings best deserve to be called a logic. While Baillet, Descartes’s biographer, addresses the Discourse on Method as the Logic of Descartes, Gassendi holds the view that it would more adequate to put this label on the Meditations on First Philosophy (Baillet, [1691] 2012: 291; Gassendi, 1658: 65, 90).11 People such as Wotton in England present the Discourse as one of the three major contributions to the Early Modern reshaping of logic, along with Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Tschirnhaus’s Medicina Mentis (Wotton, [1694] 1697: 171–172).12 In other words, for Descartes’s contemporaries, it is clear that his analysis of ideas in terms of modes of the mind and his assertion of the logical anteriority of reason towards language are two sides of the same coin.13 This view has only changed for historiographical reasons. To make a long story short, in the field of history of philosophy, from the second half of the 18th century on, Descartes’s connection between reason and language has been disregarded in many presentations of his philosophy. Historians and scholars have been very much impressed by Descartes’s view that reason can be made by itself responsible for the making of philosophy, and this led them into considering Descartes’s concept of reason all by itself. I will add here, more specifically, that this obsession with reason was also misleading: Descartes characterisation of the human being in terms of a thinking being was taken to entail that the human is a being who totally owes his substantiality to his interiority. This idea, shared 72

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for instance by Husserl (Husserl, 1970: 81–107) and Ryle (Ryle, [1949] 1978: 81–92), has given a distorted image of Descartes’s philosophical project. As a matter of fact, a thinking being is necessarily open to the world: he says what he thinks about what he sees and what he thinks does not count if he does not express it. In the end, as I will suggest in conclusion, the acquisition of the habit of thinking well is not all about learning how to form clear and distinct ideas. It is about learning at the same time how to form clear and distinct ideas and how to express them in discourse. Descartes exemplarily articulates this view in an article of his Principles of Philosophy. There, he recommends that men throw a critical eye on the common use of words because it can be misleading: because of the use of language, we tie all our concepts to the words used to express them; and when we store our concepts in our memory we always simultaneously store the corresponding words. Later on we find the words easier to recall than the things, and because of this it is very seldom that our concept of a thing is so distinct that we can separate it totally from our concept of the words involved. The thoughts of almost all people are more concerned with words than with things; and as a result people very often give their assent to words they do not understand, thinking they once understood them, or that they got them from others who did understand them correctly. (AT 9: 61: CSM 1: 220–221) Descartes warns his reader against the frequent abuse of words which makes the building of a solid reasoning almost impossible. Conversely, he holds that words have a signification if they express ideas. By teaching his reader how to become autonomous from an intellectual point of view, he gives him solid materials in order to explore the world. The Cartesian world is not the world of a solitary subject.

Notes 1 I wish to thank Jeremy Dunham for his patience and encouragement, for his comments, as well as for his help with the English. 2 For an account of the essential part played by psychology of knowledge in the shaping of logic in the Early-Modern period see Easton (1997) and LoLordo (2007). See Ashworth (1974) and Ashworth (1988) for an accurate account of the non disparition of traditional logic in the Early-Modern period. 3 For a general state of the art discussion concerning logic as a discipline in the Early-Modern period, see Cassan (2021). 4 “[La logique] qui apprend à bien conduire sa raison pour découvrir les vérités qu’on ignore.” (AT 9: 13–14; CSM 1: 186). 5 Descartes, 1985: 186. “les principales règles de la Logique” (AT 9: 15; CSM 1: 186). 6 The question why Descartes’ contemporaries see many of his texts as contributions to a reshaping of the purpose and the tools of logic is addressed in the last part of this paper. 7 Discourse on Method: AT 6: 57; CSM 1: 140. Letter to Newcastle, November 23, 1646: AT 4: 574; CSM 3: 303. Letter to More, February 5, 1649: AT 5: 27; CSM 3: 366. 8 Discourse on Method: AT 6: 56–57; CSM 1 139–140. Letter to Newcastle, November 23, 1646: AT 4: 303; CSM 3: 303. Letter to More, February 5, 1649: AT 5: 278; CSM 3: 366. 9 “La raison est un instrument universel qui peut servir en toutes sortes de rencontres” (AT 6: 57; CSM 1: 140). 10 For a synthetic study of the impact of Descartes’ theory of knowledge and of his theory of language on the building of logics in the Early-Modern period, see Pécharman (2016) and Corneanu and Vermeir (2022). 11 Rochot (1955) and Cassan (2012). 12 On this issue, also see Buickerood (1985: 183). 13 In the present paper.

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References Abbreviations ATDescartes, R. (1996) Oeuvres de Descartes. Adam, C. and Tannery, P. (eds.) 2nd edn. Paris: Vrin. Cited by volume and page number. CSMDescartes, R. (1985) The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 1. Translated by Cottingham, J., Stoothoff, R., and Murdoch, D. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CSMDescartes, R. (1984) The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 2. Translated by Cottingham, J., Stoothoff, R., and Murdoch, D. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CSMDescartes, R. (1991) The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 3. Translated by Cottingham, J., Stoothoff, R., Murdoch, D. and Kenny, A. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Other References Ariew, R. (2006) ‘Descartes, les premiers Cartésiens et la logique’, Revue de métaphysique et de morale, 1, pp. 55–71. Ariew, R. (2014) Descartes and the First Cartesians. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ariew, R. (2021) ‘The Nature of Cartesian Logic’, Perspectives on Science, 29 (3), pp. 275–291. Aristotle (1994) Ethique à Nicomaque, Tricot, J. (ed.) Paris: Vrin. Ashworth, E. (1974) Language and Logic in the Post-Medieval Period. Dordrecht, Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Company. Ashworth, E. (1988) ‘Logic and Language: Traditional Logic’, in Schmitt, C., Skinner, Q., Kessler, E. and Kraye, J. (eds.) The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 139–172. Baillet, A. (1691) Vie de Monsieur Descartes, vol. 2. Reprint, Paris: Ed des Malassis, 2012. Blanché, R. (1970) La logique et son histoire d’Aristote à Russell. Paris: Colin. Blumenberg, H. (1999) La Légitimité des temps modernes. Translated by Sagnol, M., Schlegel, J.L., Trierweiler, D., and Dautrey, M., Paris: Gallimard. Bochenski, J. (1956) Formale Logik. Freiburg and Munich: Verlage Karl Alber. Buickerood, J. (1985) ‘The Natural History of the Understanding. Locke and the Rise of Facultative Logic in the Eighteenth Century’, History and Philosophy of Science, 6 (2), pp. 157–180. Cassan, E. (2012) ‘The Status of Bacon in Gassendi’s Syntagma Philosophicum History of Logic”, Society and Politics, 6 (11), pp. 80–89. Cassan, E. (2015a) Les Chemins cartésiens du jugement. Paris: Champion. Cassan, E. (2015b) ‘Descartes et la Logique’, in Kambouchner, D., Cassan, E. and de Buzon, F. (eds.) Lectures de Descartes. Paris: Ellipses, pp. 97–119. Cassan, E. (2021) ‘Logic and Methodology in the Early Modern Period’, Perspectives on Science, 29 (3). Cassirer, E. (2004) Le Problème de la connaissance dans la philosophie et la science des temps modernes, vol. 1. Translated by Fréreux, R. Paris: Cerf. Chomsky, N. (1966) Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought. New York: Harper & Row. Corneanu, S. and Vermeir, K. (2022) ‘The Art of Thinking’, in Jalobeanu, D. and Miller, D. (eds.) The Cambridge History of the Philosophy of the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coste, P. (1691) Discours sur la philosophie où l’on voit en abrégé l’histoire de cette science, in Régis, P-S, Cours entier de philosophie, ou système général selon les principes de M. Descartes, contenant la logique, la métaphysique, la physique et la morale. Dernière édition, enrichie d’un très grand nombre de figures, et augmentée d’un Discours sur la philosophie ancienne et moderne, où l’on fait en abrégé l’histoire de cette science, vols. 1–3, Amsterdam: aux dépens des Huguetan, 1691, fac. Repr New York, 1971. Davidson, E. (1974) Language and Logic in the Post-Medieval Period. Dordrecht, Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Company. Descartes, R. (1976) Discours de la Méthode. Texte et Commentaire. Gilson, E. (ed.) Paris: Vrin. Descartes, R. (1985) The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 1. Translated by Cottingham, J., Stoothoff, R., and Murdoch, D. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Descartes, R. (1984) The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 2. Translated by Cottingham, J., Stoothoff, R., and Murdoch, D. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Forming the Habit of Thinking Well Descartes, R. (1991) The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 3. Translated by Cottingham, J., Stoothoff, R., Murdoch, D. and Kenny, A., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Descartes, R. (1996) Oeuvres de Descartes. Adam, C. and Tannery, P. (eds.) 2nd edn. Paris: Vrin. Easton, P. (ed.) (1997) Logic and the Workings of the Mind: The Logic of Ideas and Faculty Psychology in EarlyModern Philosophy. Atascadero: Ridgeview Publishing. Gassendi, P. (1658) Syntagma Philosophicum (Petri Gassendi Opera Omnia in Sex Tomos Divisa Tomus Primus. Lugduni: sumptibus Laurentii Anisson, & Ioan Bapt. Devenet. Gaukroger, S. (1989) Cartesian Logic: An Essay on Descartes’ Conception of Inference. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Husserl, E. (1970) Philosophie Première. I. Translated by Kelkel, A., Paris: PUF. Kambouchner, D. (1995) L’Homme des passions. Commentaires sur Descartes, vol. 2. Paris: Albin Michel. Kneale, W. and Kneale, M. (1962) The Development of Logic. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Laporte, J. (1945) Le Rationalisme de Descartes. Reprint, Paris: PUF, 1988 LoLordo, A. (2007) Pierre Gassendi and the Birth of Early-Modern Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Howell, W. (1961) Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500–1700. New York: Russell& Russell Inc. Montaigne, M. (1965) Les Essais. Villey, P. (ed.). Reprint, Paris: PUF, 2004. Moreau, D. (2015) ‘L’idée de la philosophie’, in Kambouchner, D., Cassan, E. and de Buzon, F. Lectures de Descartes. Paris: Ellipses, pp. 19–39. Nuchelmans, G. (1983) Judgment and Proposition from Descartes to Kant. Amsterdam, Oxford, New-York: North-Holland Publishing Company. Nuchelmans, G. (1998) “Logic in the Seventeenth Century: Preliminary Remarks and the Constituents of the Proposition”, “Proposition and Judgment”, “Deductive Reasoning.”, in Garber, D. and Ayers, M. (eds.) The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 103–146. Pécharman, M. (2016) ‘From Lockean Logic to Cartesian(ised) Logic: The Case of Locke’s Essay and Its Contemporary Controversial Reception, in Bullard, P. and Tadié, A. (eds.) Ancients and Moderns In Europe: Comparative Perspectives, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, pp. 73–95. Petrescu, L. (2018) ‘Scholastic Logic and Cartesian Logic’, Perspectives on Science, 26, pp. 533–547. Prantl, K. (1855–1870) Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande, vol. 4. Leipzig: Hirzel, Leipzig, Reprint, Hildesheim, Zürich, New-York: Olms. 1997. Rapin, R. (1676) Réflexions sur la philosophie ancienne et moderne et sur l’usage qu’on doit en faire pour la religion. Paris: Claude Barbin. Risse, W. (1965) Bibliographia Logica, I. 1472–1800. Hildesheim: Olms. Risse, W. (1970) Die Logik der Neuzeit, vols. 1–2. Stutgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Frommann Verlag. Rochot, B. (1955) ‘Gassendi et la “Logique” de Descartes’, Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger, 145, pp. 300–308. Rodis-Lewis, G. (1998) La Morale de Descartes. Paris: PUF. Ryle, G. (1949) La notion d’esprit. Translated by Stern-Gillet. Reprint, S. Paris: Payot, 1978. Wotton, W. (1694) Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning. Reprint, London: Peter Buck, 1697.

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6 HABIT IN HARTLEY’S RECONCILING PROJECT: BETWEEN CHRISTIAN MORALITY AND THE USUAL COURSE OF NATURE Catherine Dromelet

David Hartley is mostly known for being the founder of the associationist school of psychology. He joined the dominant cognitive enterprise of the age to combine scientific progress with Christian faith.1 Although he was a member of the Anglican Church, his commitment to any specific religious doctrine remains unclear (Allen, 1999: 33). In his attempt to account for the workings of the mind, Hartley was explicitly inspired by Newton’s natural philosophy and Locke’s doctrine of association. However, his outlook on personal identity involving the concept of ‘elementary bodies’ recalls Leibniz’s theory of monads. Beside his philosophical interests, he was dedicated to the study of medicine and practised as a physician until his death.2 The Observations on Man, his Mind, his Duty, and his Expectations, his main philosophical work published in 1749, is characterized by taking up the challenge of reconciling physical necessity with Christian morality.3 The immediate reception of the Observations on Man was not particularly enthusiastic. Even Joseph Priestley, who published his own abridged edition of it in 1775, claimed that its failure was due to its unintelligibility (Priestley, 1775: iii). Some 19th and 20th century scholars preferred to believe that the 18th century was just not ready for the excellence of Hartley’s magnum opus (Allen, 1999: 1–2). But generally speaking, philosophers dismissed Hartley rather than paying any serious attention to him: his work did not receive appropriate critical attention in England until the beginning of the 19th century (Murphy & Klüver, 1951: 32, n. 4). Comprehending the whys and wherefores of his thought remains difficult today, but the concept of habit is so central in his work that it may provide a fruitful perspective to address several of his most fundamental contributions. In the Observations, association is a synonym for habit and custom (OM 1.1: 5–6; ibid. 1.2.1.23: 116). Furthermore, habit and custom designate repetition and adaptation in psychophysiological and social contexts (ibid. 1.1.2.9: 61; ibid. 1.2.4.63: 221; ibid. 1.3.1.80: 282). Finally, and more commonly, custom can also refer to any specific collective practice, while habit is typically a behavioural trait. Apart from the discussions by Richard C. Allen (1999), Glassman and Buckingham (2007), and Aaron B. Wilson (2016)4, there has been no thorough 76

DOI: 10.4324/9781315186436-9

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study dedicated to Hartley’s account of habit. Yet, the distinctiveness of his view merits close attention since it does not fit well with the traditional dichotomy between dualism and materialism, and the materialist aspect of his thought does not match smoothly with either vitalism or mechanism. The critiques following the publication of the Observations on Man mainly revolved around the issue between materialism and dualism. Since the second half of the 18th century, and due to Thomas Reid and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in particular, Hartley’s account of the human mind had been perceived as a threat to the notion of free will, because it claimed that all mental and behavioural phenomena are ultimately explainable in terms of mechanical associations and vibrations. Moreover, Reid objected to Hartley’s reductionist theories on the grounds that they cannot actually explain the diversity of mental states (Reid, 1785: 84–85). Although Priestley proclaims that mechanical associations do entail necessity (Priestley, 1775: xxiii–xxiv), Hartley explicitly endorses the independence of mental phenomena from their physical implementation, thereby supporting the cause of free will like the metaphysical libertarians. In all likelihood, the inaccurate accusation of materialism at the time reflects the fact that the betterknown edition of Hartley’s Observations was the one republished by Priestley, who famously assumed that mental operations are of the same nature as neural ones (Warren, 1921: 24). Defending Hartley in his abridged edition, Priestley argues that it is indeed possible to account for a great variety of mental states on the basis of simple laws, just as a complex language can exist on the basis of a finite set of letters (Priestley, 1775: xxv). Hartley’s thought thus seems to juggle dualist and materialist stances. As a result, his account of matter reveals affinities with mechanism and vitalism: Hartley is a mechanist as far as his doctrines of vibrations and associations are concerned. However, he gets closer to vitalist views on matter when he talks about brain particles in terms of “molecules” attracting and repulsing each other (OM 1.1.1.5: 20; ibid. 1.1.2.9: 62). Furthermore, he repeatedly describes the medullary substance (i.e. the brain, spinal marrow, and nerves) as a material substance possessing “active powers”, which foster the spread and persistence of vibratory motion (Ibid. 1.1.1.5: 13, 21, 22). In this setting, the present chapter aims to show why all these interpretations can be substantiated. Hartley can indeed be interpreted as a materialist: His account of vibrations can be read as an identity theory, because – as we can see in the first and better-known book of his Observations – the distinction between ideas and miniature vibrations is not sharp enough. However, Hartley cannot be fully committed to an identity theory because his Christian allegiance, which features mostly in the second part of his Observations, implies ontological dualism. As a consequence, if his concept of providence is emphasized, Hartley can be read as holding parallelist views on the relation of mind and matter. Yet, at the same time, his belief in interactionism prevents him from being a fully-fledged parallelist.5 This tension introduces an element of instability in Hartley’s system, which opens up the possibility of conflicting interpretations of his work depending on where one is inclined to put more emphasis. In fact, each one of these views represents a rather one-sided view focusing on this or that aspect of Hartley’s philosophy. Focusing on the concept of habit, I intend to propose a synoptic approach to replace Hartley’s seemingly fragmented intellectual portrait. The first two sections of this paper are dedicated to the role of habit, both in the mechanical framework of Hartley’s theory of neural vibrations and in the psychological account of mental associations stemming from it. I will bring out the sentimental and behavioural consequences drawn by Hartley from the theory of association with respect to morality and its religious foundation. The third section focuses on the manipulation of mental habits through words and images in the course of moral education. On the basis of Hartley’s vibrationist account of signs and on his belief in the improvement of 77

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human nature, I will show how Christian education is conceived as an attempt to act upon people’s imagination by transferring associations toward higher objects of desire, thereby altering the way people perceive the world around them. Finally, in the fourth section, I will highlight the limits of Christian education when it comes to behaviour: while discussing the problem of free will, I will outline how Hartley’s materialist account of the mind combined with his theory of habit forces him towards a revisionist understanding of free will.

6.1 Habit in Neural Vibrations In order to understand the novelty of Hartley’s doctrines of neural vibrations and psychological associations in the context of the middle of the 18th century, we need to recall that Hartley built his physiological considerations on a notion of nerves that is fairly different from the longstanding and widespread view at the time. In the first part of his Observations, he discusses the nature of sensations and ideas, in connection with Newton’s theory of vibrations and the capillary conception of nerves. The dominant conception of nerves at Hartley’s time had been introduced by Hermann Boerhaave. Boerhaave has been widely read as the man who combined mechanism with chemistry in the study of medicine.6 His physiology presented the human body as a system of fluids circulating in channels running through the gross matter of the organism. The health of this biological machine could be determined by considering factors such as the pressure of its various fluids (Orland, 2012). Hartley refers to Boerhaave’s stance as “the common doctrine concerning the powers of the nervous system”, with which he disagrees: he refuses to accept that the brain is a gland producing cerebral fluids and that nerves are tubes (OM 1.1.1.5: 17, 19). So, after rejecting Boerhaave’s idea of tubular nerves in which the animal spirits would flow, and accepting the doctrine of vibrations outlined by Newton, Hartley conceives nerves as solid fibres composed of infinitesimal vibrating particles. As in Newton’s Queries in the Opticks, these vibrations enable the transmission of impulses trough the neural chains. These vibrations are Motions backwards and forwards of the small Particles; of the same kind with the Oscillations of Pendulums; and the Tremblings of the Particles of sounding Bodies. They must be conceived to be exceedingly short and small, so as not to have the least Efficacy to disturb or move the whole Bodies of the Nerves or Brain. For that Nerves themselves should vibrate like musical Strings is highly absurd; nor was it ever asserted by Sir Isaac Newton, or any of those who have embraced his Notion of the Performance of Sensation and Motion, by means of Vibrations. (Ibid. 1.1.1.4: 11–12) What Hartley calls the medullary substance (i.e. brain and nerves) is conceived as a “texture of vessels so small and regular, as that it may have no vacuity or interval in it, sufficient to interrupt or disturb the vibrations of the aether, and concomitant ones of the medullary particles”. There are no fluids or animal spirits circulating in these vessels and the whole sphere of nervous phenomena (namely, sensations and ideas) is thereby reduced to vibrations of matter. But the stuff of which nerves are made has a special status for it is so subtle: Hartley calls it “the component Molecules of the Brain, the Molecules of the Molecules” (Ibid.1.1.2.9: 62). Hartley’s theory of vibrations is not widely known. The main reason seems to be that Priestley’s, 1775 edition of the Observations, which was instrumental in making Hartley’s work better known, actually emphasizes his doctrine of associations much more than that of 78

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vibrations.7 However, Priestley sees Hartley’s vibrationism as the best doctrine for understanding how ideas and sensations are conveyed to the mind. Vibrationism is a fairly minimalistic theory of sensation, but it also represents a first important illustration of the power of habit in Hartley. He identifies two types of vibrational states of the neural particles. State N stands for “natural” and the states A, B, C etc. for “preternatural” (the prefix ‘preter’ being derived from the Latin adverb praeter meaning ‘beyond’).8 When an impulse arrives from the outside, the fibre’s vibration goes from state N to state A, for instance, and then returns to state N. But if the impulse is repeated, the time for the particles to go back to their initial state gets longer after each repetition. The “subtle structure” of the medullary substance enables the retention of a state that is “frequently impressed” (Ibid.). Ultimately, after a certain amount of repetitions and due to the heat of the medullary substance, the vibratory motion definitely adopts the state A. With this hypothesis, Hartley suggests the existence of a state analogous to a kind of first nature: state N is the natural way in which the medullary substance vibrates and the preternatural states that he mentions suggest the idea of a second nature. Preternatural states are therefore acquired through repeated experience, until the fibre contracts the “disposition” or habit to vibrate in an altered way (Ibid.). The succession of various impulses has an impact on the brain that changes its vibratory structure: neural motion, being facilitated by habit, accounts for a phenomenon of association.

6.2 The Impact of Mental Habits on Moral Behaviour At the beginning of the preface to his Observations, Hartley proclaims his intention to follow John Gay’s idea, formulated in his Dissertation on the Fundamental Principles of Virtue, to ground moral feelings of pleasure and pain in the association of ideas. About Eighteen Years ago I was informed, that the Rev. Mr. Gay, then living, asserted the Possibility of deducing all our intellectual Pleasures and Pains from Association. This put me upon considering the Power of Association. […] | From inquiring into the Power of Association I was led to examine both its Consequences, in respect of Morality and Religion, and its physical Cause. (Ibid.1, preface, p. v) Taking up Gay’s insight about the possibility to explain mental pleasures and pains in terms of associations, Hartley attempts to connect it to his theory of vibrations so as to provide a causal explanation of associations and their moral consequences. Resorting to notions of repetition and plasticity, Hartley shows how neural vibrations create habits in the brain and give rise to complex ideas. He holds that when a sensory impulse A is felt in an organ of the body, the vibration is transmitted to a specific area of the brain (OM 1.1.2.9: 60). When another sensory impulse B is felt in another organ, the new vibration is transmitted to another area of the brain. And when the synchronicity or the succession of these two impulses A and B is repeated enough times, the two distinct areas of the brain are associated by a pattern facilitating the transmission of vibrations from the one to the other. Ultimately, when the impulse A occurs again, the corresponding area in the brain vibrates and is instantly followed by the area corresponding to the impulse B, even though this latter did not occur this time. This pattern is what Hartley calls an association, or, more generally, a habit (Ibid. 1.1: 5–6). Neural habits or associations are involved in most of the operations of human nature. Not only do they ensure the function of our bodily organs, they also constitute our emotional states (Ibid. 1.3.3.89: 368) and direct our behavioural responses to the environment. For instance, Hartley holds that a 79

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pregnant woman’s fluctuations of appetite as well as her related mood swings can be accounted for in terms of vibrations and association (Ibid. 1.2.2.43: 164–166). Reasoning also depends on such a process. For Hartley (just as for Locke), a child begins life without any association, i.e. with a mind like a blank slate. Progressively, the vibrational inputs generated by the external world in the sense organs settle into vibrational patterns. These latter connect simple ideas of sensation with one another, creating complex objects of thought.9 They end up building a whole architecture of mental schemes and systems such as morals, philosophy, and religion (Murphy & Klüver, 1951: 34). In this respect, education is a crucial stimulant for the development of associations or mental habits, channelling pleasure and pain to this or that determined behaviour. Hartley insists on the importance of religious education because it associates virtuous habits to happiness. [T]he principal Duty of [Parents] is the giving a right Education, or the imprinting such Associations upon the Minds of Children, as may conduct them safe through the Labyrinths of this World to a happy Futurity. Religion therefore here again appears to be the one only necessary Thing. […] [A] Parent must be led to the inculcating Virtue in every View. (OM 2.3.6.70: 302) Hartley states early on in his Observations that habit and association are identical on a psychophysiological level: they both have a decisive impact on our opinions and emotions (Ibid.1.1: 5–6). Despite his allegiance to “Mr. Locke” regarding the theory of association, Hartley actually takes things in a different direction. Locke acknowledges several types of links between ideas; customary association is just one of them. Also, for Locke, customary associations can be dangerous for the mind, because they are neither natural nor logical, and, if they are erroneous, they are very hard to get rid of. People oftentimes cherish beliefs that they do not want (or cannot) submit to rational critique. This is why Locke cautiously distinguishes between connections and associations, in his Essay concerning Human Understanding. Connections can be demonstrated for they are natural and logical, whereas associations are suddenly generated by chance or progressively settled by custom in a totally a-rational way (Locke, 1975 2.33.5: 395). In other words, Locke gives the associations of ideas a bad reputation. By means of examples, he shows how negative they can be for the understanding and it is no coincidence that he discusses the topic in the same chapter that contains his considerations on madness. By contrast, Hartley does not conceive of any other type of link between ideas than the vibration-based, customary associations. As a consequence, any kind of knowledge acquired from experience or education is enabled by habit and custom – a view that is similar to Hume’s account of beliefs featuring custom and habit.10 However, Hartley often deplores the power of corrupted human customs, which prevent people from fulfilling God’s will and developing virtuous habits. This brings him closer to Locke, apart from the fact that Hartley opposes corrupted customs primarily to Christian law, rather than to reason.

6.3 Artificial Associations in Moral Education In the second part of his Observations, defending the case of natural and revealed religion as well as Christian law, Hartley distinguishes two ways to access theological truths. On the one hand, his morality is extracted from the lives and teachings of historical characters featuring in the Scriptures. On the other hand, he suggests that people may actually become naturally sensitive to God’s love, in the privacy of their inner feelings (namely, vibrations and associations). Interestingly enough, this natural phenomenon only happens to very pious people; “They 80

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know and feel, as it were, that God is infinitely good” (OM 2.3.7.72: 324). The rest of humankind has to develop their moral sensitivity by means of artificial associations. But despite this possibility to educate our moral feelings, behaviour remains hard to change: simply by looking at each other, Hartley writes, people can realize that their capacity to turn vicious habits into virtuous ones is extremely difficult. He suggests, that we cannot indeed reform human lives from vice to virtue without God: The Efficacy which the Christian Doctrine then had in reforming the Lives of many Thousands, is here to be considered as a principal Branch of this Argument, it being evidently the most difficult of all Things to convert Men from vicious Habits to virtuous ones, as every one may judge from what he feels in himself, as well as from what he sees in others; and whatever does this, cannot, as it seems to me, but come from God. (Ibid. 2.2.44: 190) Yet, does positive change in behavioural habits effectively derive directly from God? As we will show hereafter, as well as in the next section, several factors need to be considered: the power of language, the subtle nature of neural particles, and the question of free will. Through a careful reading of the second part of the Observations, as well as of the Prayers and Religious Meditations (which Hartley wrote between 1733 and 1734 for his own private use), one can notice two things. First, there is a religious rhetoric shining through these two works (especially in the Prayers, addressed directly to God). Secondly, they are very different compared to the medical first part of the Observations that exhibits a much more neutral tone. Hartley acknowledges that our ideas and inner feelings spring up in the mind due to external impulses, including words and images. Given this, Hartley’s use of language in the religious and moral parts of his works should not be overlooked. Words are not only conventions on which all sciences are based; they also act upon our ideas and emotions at a vibrational level thanks to habit (Ibid.1.2.5.69: 234; ibid. 1.4.1.94: 431). Theological verbal expressions and their associated images are the means through which natural psychological associations are modified, so as to match the precepts of Christian morality. Hartley explains that “the pleasures of imagination” help people improve morally. These pleasures include dreaming about the goodness of God, the delights of virtue, and (interestingly enough) the glorious future state of Christians that will follow the destruction of the world by fire. They [the Pleasures of Imagination] are to Men in the early Part of their adult Age, what Playthings are to Children; they teach them a Love for Regularity, Exactness, Truth, Simplicity; they lead them to the Knowledge of many important Truths relating to themselves, the external World, and its Author; they habituate to invent, and reason by Analogy and Induction; and when the social, moral, and religious Affections begin to be generated in us, we may make a much quicker Progress towards the Perfection of our Natures by having a due Stock, and no more than a due Stock, of Knowledge in natural and artificial Things, of a Relish for natural and artificial beauty. (Ibid. 2.3.3.55: 244) As can be seen, the inculcation of specific pleasures of the imagination, compatible with the idea of happiness conveyed by the Scriptures, is a process involving repetition – a key feature of meditation and education – and practice; it culminates in the acquisition of virtuous habits (Ibid. 2.3.2.52: 225–226). Meanwhile, sensations of pleasure depend on their neuro-vibratory cause: 81

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We may account for the different Kinds and Degrees of Pleasure and Pain, from the Four Differences of Vibrations […], viz. those of Degree, Kind, Place, and Line of Direction, and their various Combinations with each other. (Ibid.1.1.1.6: 39–40) So, considering people’s natural aversion to death, how does meditation and reading the Scriptures produce, for instance, a disposition to feel delight in imagining the end of the world? Hartley has an explanation for this. After the external cause of a sensation is removed, the preternatural vibrations remain in the neural particles under the form of miniature vibrations, which he also called “vibratiuncles”. Sensory vibrations create traces and associations, which leave a disposition in the brain to keep memory of these sensations under the form of miniature vibrations. Bodily sensations thereby become intellectual sensations. Vibratiuncles (or miniature pains and pleasures) are then “transferred upon Words and other Symbols”, and these familiar words and symbols are in their turn associated to one another (Ibid. 1.2.1.33: 143). Repetition strengthens the bond between words and miniature vibrations, to the point that they can trigger each other. The use of language puts words in relation so that they promote the activation of miniature vibrations. This way, words contribute to the creation of new associations from within, as opposed to associations created exclusively on the basis of external causes of vibration. As a result, when language is settled and wired to bodily and intellectual sensations, intellectual experiences can arise – for example, while reading the Scriptures – and restructure the vibratory motion of the brain while being actually detached from the empirical world. This creation of artificial associations typically happens throughout education. Ideally, it should foster associations leading to render the individual sensitive to the higher pleasures and pains of sympathy, theopathy, and the moral sense. But in order to ensure the progress of knowledge and the acquisition of habits enabling people to experience pleasure while walking on the path of righteousness, language needs to be trusted and improved (Oberg, 1976: 449–452). And in fact, Hartley thinks that our first parents’ language was initially established in the paradise between them and their creator, who also initiated them to the “practice of inventing” and “the habit of learning” (OM 2.2.27: 141). From what it seems, on the assumption that Christianity is the only religion in position to keep people away from psychological misery, Hartley does not ground his morality on the natural history of associations, but rather on the Scriptures, which he refers to as an authority. His Prayers and Religious Meditations as well as the second part of the Observations showcase language’s power of manipulation. For that matter, the reader may easily suspect that these Prayers and Meditations may have contributed to a process of self-conviction as a psychological strategy of the author himself, in order to enhance his faith in a providential God and avoid falling into the pessimistic determinism that his account of corrupted human customs otherwise suggests.

6.4 The Subtlety of Hartley’s Materialist Determinism Despite the substantial materialist developments in his account of the human mind, it is possible to read Hartley as an undercover dualist resorting to mechanism merely to provide a plausible causal explanation for the relation between the mind and the natural world. Yet this view is not really helpful because it leaves a gap in the explanation when it comes to morality, and in his Observations, Hartley aims at accounting, inter alia, for the moral consequences of associations (Ibid.1, preface: v). In all likelihood, vibrations and brain patterns are uncontrollable because many aspects of our life, including early education and socialization, are largely out of our hands. These patterns still settle in a stable way, as reflected in Hartley’s materialist determinism, 82

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and it is common that the brain of an individual gets wired over time in a way that does not enable him/her to adopt any specifically Christian set of moral values. So necessity – either external or internal – is undeniably present in Hartley’s Observations and this is problematic with respect to moral improvement. On that matter, in the 1775 edition of Hartley’s philosophical work, Priestley purposely separated out a few sections from the second part of the Observations and added them to the end of the first part, only to put more emphasis on the necessity deriving from Hartley’s anatomical determinism (Hatch, 1975: 548). Priestley even added a further section of his own, called “On the Practical Application of the Doctrine of Necessity”, which readers frequently mistake as Hartley’s own because Priestley did not suggest otherwise (Ibid.). In the second Introductory Essay to the edition, Priestley actually discusses John Gay’s theory of association that initially inspired Hartley, stressing an important consequence unforeseen by Gay: necessity. Of course, necessity is not something that Hartley is comfortable with at all: it undermines free will – a core condition for moral agency. The idea is that, since all mental and bodily operations are reducible to habits and mechanical vibrations, there is no room for selfdetermination. Nevertheless, it does not prevent Hartley from acknowledging a certain type of free will that would be merely practical. For an individual, this simply consists in doing what he/she wills. Priestley agrees here with Hartley and Hume on the fact that practical free will is the crucial condition for people to be considered free agents (Ibid. p. 549). By all accounts, people remain otherwise subjected to necessity, as they are part of a broader set of causal chains.11 However it is not accurate to talk of ‘subjection’ here, because Hartley’s theory of matter undermines the classical dichotomy between activity and passivity usually supported by the doctrine of mechanism: even though Hartley’s vibrationism embeds him into the mechanist tradition, he actually follows the vitalist Georg Ernst Stahl when locating the seat of the soul in the brain, a vibrating matter (OM 1.1.1.5, cor. 3: 31; Allen, 1999: 107). Now, an important feature of the particles vibrating constantly in the medullary substance – “the Organ of Organs” possessing a “subtle structure” – is that they behave according to “subtle Laws” (OM 1.1.1.9: 62). And for Hartley “subtle matter” is the first level of particles in position to receive motion from the ultimate cause – God (Ibid. 2.1.6, p. 32). Obviously, despite being a psychological need for Hartley, God here is just a conceptual solution preventing the infinite inquiry on causes. As a matter of fact, when discussing an alternative conclusion, namely that matter would be endowed with higher properties such as motion, Hartley holds that it is “the same in effect as the first [solution], though, on account of the Imperfection of Language, it seems to be different” (Ibid. p. 33). So, either Hartley holds both dualist and vitalist stances as valid when accounting for the motion of matter, or he is taking advantage of a so-called imperfection of language in an attempt to yet again smuggle providence into his deterministic system. However, in any case, the concept of free will remains significantly damaged. While there may be no strict determinism in subtle matter, the only influence it can receive comes from God or nature – neither of which can be the basis for human individual freedom. Even if we hold that God, the soul, and our ideas are immaterial, all the psychological, physiological, and motor processes that Hartley observes are still accounted for in materialist terms. Besides, taking those causal mechanisms seriously makes even the idea of ‘idea’ superfluous, since it is only as vibrations that ideas have a causal power. Habit, custom, and repetition thus represent the only constellation of concepts in position to explain why vibrations and vibratiuncles can compose a system of associations giving rise to high-level processes such as moral and abstract reasoning. Despite this, Hartley maintains that ideas have a special mental status, which earned him a reputation as a dualist (Thébert, 2014: 419). While it would be indeed problematic to think of ideas as corpuscular entities, their immateriality is equally challenging to any science of the 83

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mind. However, as Glassman and Buckingham (2007) see it, Hartley’s doctrine of vibrations can be presented in a specific context shedding a different light on the notion of immateriality when it comes to ideas. At the end of the 17th century, the knowledge of electricity was still emerging and some scientists such as Boyle used to think of electricity as a form of matter (Glassman & Buckingham, 2007: 182). In the 1740s, Hartley was aware of the most recent findings about electricity, as evidenced in the way he referred, in his Observations, to the electric shock experiment conducted by Musschenbroek and reported in 1746 by the Abbé Nollet (Ibid: 183). Pre-Newtonian authors already acknowledged the relation between vibrations and electricity and Hartley is one of the first thinkers to give a neuro-vibratory basis to the long existing phenomenon of the association of ideas (Brazier, 1984: 172). For Hartley, the medullary substance of the brain is the material substrate of the mind. It allows neural transduction by conveying vibrations of different types, varying in degree, kind, place, and line of direction. The motion of particles can therefore change in multiple ways. According to Glassman and Buckingham, Hartley admits that the brain witnesses “multiple means of coding” (2007: 184). So in order to make sense of ideas’ immateriality, it can be supposed that the qualitative content of the human mind, as Hartley intends it, is the data of neuro-vibratory motion. Under the form of ideas and sensations, this motion keeps creating and activating a net of associations in the medullary substance, resulting in targeted reflection, action, communication, etc. When reaching the brain, the miniature vibrations induced by external inputs structure both mental processes and willed movements (Mischel, 1966: 125). And the nerves are lines of communication connecting all body parts. As a consequence, it is not tempting to describe Hartley exclusively as a dualist or as a pure materialist, even though his own language can lead us to this or that conclusion. Despite his ‘part-time dualism’ and his concept of a providential God getting him closer to parallelism, Hartley believes strongly in interactionism and does not support epiphenomenalism. His Newtonian account of the nerves cannot explain the power of ideas over the body, presumably because neural vibrations pertain more to electricity than to mechanics. However, assuming that ideas are the immaterial data (degree, kind, place, and line of direction) of miniature vibrations in the brain, it can be argued that they do have causal power over the body and the external world, but exclusively as miniature vibrations and not as its immaterial data. And so, Hartley is perfectly comfortable with the claim that “A man may speak, handle, love, fear, etc. entirely by mechanism” (OM 1, conclusion: 508), as long as it is explainable by his doctrines. Internal feelings and ideas are initially a matter of external impulses, vibrations and associations, which is why free will is in fact just another word for causation. According to this psychical atomism, since human life and thought follow a determined path, the ideas of virtue and self-improvement appear groundless for they do not really require any free agency and thereby are also deprived of merit. But Hartley uses the notions of freedom, liberty, or free will in their popular meaning: they consist in people desiring, regardless of the real, microscopic causes of their appetites. People’s education provides them with the inner feeling of having free will because it is indispensable for the implementation of a reward and punishment system. For Hartley, free will was conferred to humankind either by God or by the usual course of nature (Ibid. 2.1.14: 53). But in fact, it is mainly due to his religious commitment that Hartley wants to maintain human freedom (Ibid.: 53–55). [S]ince Religion commands us to love God and our Neighbour, it presupposes that we have the Power of generating these Affections in ourselves, by introducing the 84

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proper generating Causes, and making the proper Associations […]. Since Religion requires of us to perform beneficent Actions, […] it presupposes, either that we have a Power of doing so, or at least a Power of generating such Dispositions of Mind as will enable us so to do. (Ibid.: 53–55) Yet, the feeling of having a free will is not at all incompatible with necessity. Indeed, from the point of view of an advocate of natural law, the universe contains no randomness. Absolute freedom – or the “Power of doing different Things, the previous Circumstances remaining the same” (Ibid. 2.1.15: 56) –, besides being impossible, is also not required: “We cannot suppose Religion to be at Variance with common Observation, and the Frame of our Natures.” (Ibid.). So after seemingly rescuing free will from determinism, Hartley puts it back in: [A]ll which Religion does require and presuppose, is, first, a sufficient Desire, Hope, Fear, Self-interest, or other such like Motive, and then sufficient voluntary Powers, whereby to regulate our Affections and Actions agreeably to the Will of God. […] [T] he voluntary Powers are all generated according to the Law of Association, which Law operates in a mechanical, necessary Way, and admits of no Variations, while the Circumstances remain the same (Ibid.: 56–57) Echoing what has been said at the beginning of this section, it is worth highlighting the fact that for Hartley morality has to do with subtle matter and its subtle laws. It shows how difficult it is for him to explain the moral improvement of society purely in terms of mechanical associations. Hartley needs to rely on the Scriptures in order to maintain a moral North Star in the middle of a materialist status quo. In this light, he conceives moral progress as an evolution from selfinterest to self-annihilation, and the fusing with the “mystical Body of Christ” (Ibid. 2.3.5.67: 280–282). Humans cannot find real satisfaction in sensory pleasures or in the knowledge of the natural world. True happiness consists in self-annihilation and it comes with the acquisition of virtuous habits, moral sense, and the love of God (Ibid.). Education and consistency in believing are indispensable to reach this vibrational state enabled by habit. Therefore, Hartley’s reconciling project between the usual course of nature and Christian morality is fundamentally an institutional one: it relies on moral education, which consists in a transfer of associations from bodily pleasures to spiritual ones (Ibid. 1.4.3.96: 465).12

6.5 Conclusion When reading the second part of the Observations, it is hard to believe that Hartley was actually criticized for promoting atheism. Indeed, Reid interprets Hartley as a materialist who was misled from his observations to his conjectures. He accuses him of having opened the door to atheism and necessitarianism because of his materialist principle. However, it is not materialism as such that worries Reid, but rather the fact that Hartley even raises the question of the relationship between brain and mind (Thébert, 2014: 430). Reid thinks that the conditions and the efficient causes of perception should indeed be clearly distinguished, (Reid, 1785: 93–94). In 1836, John Mackintosh identifies and condemns in his turn an incoherence between Hartley’s observations and conclusions: he considers that the failure of the Observations resides in the strong presence of physiological speculations, which he deems absolutely unnecessary to understand consciousness (Allen, 1999: 11). So, being criticized for confusing the being which thinks with the thing that is thought of, Hartley’s system is read as an account of the body while his intention was precisely to provide a theory of the mind. 85

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By all accounts, Hartley’s methodological commitments are compromised by his religious commitment, which is why his philosophy is difficult to classify. The labels of ‘mechanism’, ‘vitalism’, ‘dualism’, ‘materialism’, ‘determinism’, and ‘providentialism’ merrily overlap when attempting to qualify his thought. Following his own experimental methodology, he develops an associationist psychology based on close medical observations as the best explanation of mental phenomena, resulting in turn in a naturalization of the mind. In this enterprise, habit plays a central role: it is present all the way from perceptions to actions and it is crucial in the doctrines of vibrations and association. What is at issue in Hartley’s enterprise is the relationship between the natural behaviour of matter and the moral demands of religion. In this framework, habit is operating at all levels. Firstly, it enables the acquisition of experience by turning natural neural vibrations into preternatural ones. Secondly, it allows for the creation of neural, muscular, and organic associations, giving the organism the opportunity to be healthy and to develop its faculties. Finally, it makes it possible for an individual to be educated, to learn social codes, and to desire the ‘right’ things. However, since human beings’ physiological constitution is characterised by necessity and habits form and dissolve mechanically, people can only form beliefs based on experience and education. These experimental findings do not fit squarely with Hartley’s religious commitments, most importantly because physiological and social necessities do not seem to leave much room for free will. The problem is not only that these mechanistic theories of the mind do not fit with the Christian belief that God created humankind free, but also that the lack of free will seems to undermine the possibility for moral agency. For this reason, Hartley has to manoeuvre in a way so as to reconcile his naturalistic image of mental functioning with the religiously motivated image of human nature. The result of this manoeuvring, is a subtle materialist determinism where the power of habit mostly rules over human lives. On their part, the subtle particles of the brain are being given the benefit of the doubt as for their capacity to escape the power of habit and to be touched by grace. In other words, in order for Hartley to maintain free will, he turns it into an internal necessity, which is actually a determinism guarded by providence. The natural refinement of people’s mental higher functions is in itself not sufficient for them to experience real happiness in the knowledge of God. So Christian education, which has to deal with an already-existing set of mental and behavioural habits, is there to fill the gap by means of words and images.13

Notes 1 For a recent overview, see Gaukroger (2010). 2 For more details about Hartley’s life and works, see Allen (1999). 3 Thébert (2014) highlights Hartley’s intention to create a match between mechanism and Christian morality. 4 See in particular chapter 4, 113–155. 5 For a parallelist reading of Hartley, see Smith (1987: 124–126). 6 For a balanced recent reading of Boerhaave’s stance, see e.g. Zammito (2018: 40–47). 7 Priestley rearranged Hartley’s Observations, discarding the section dealing with vibrationism. Even though Priestley did not disagree with this doctrine, it was already considered out-dated (Wolfe, 2020: 42, n. 19). Priestley basically subscribes to Hartley’s account of the human mind, but not to the way it is embedded in a more extensive system bringing together physiological and moral matters. Accordingly, he also cut out the second part of the Observations, keeping only a few sections on the deterministic consequences of associationism, which he accompanied with a concluding section of his own (Hatch, 1975: 548). 8 “Preternatural”, which is a word we find in Bacon as well, designates something that is irregular, extraordinary, rare, wonderful, or monstrous, but still natural (Bacon, 1825–1834: 287–288). For

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9 10

11 12 13

Hobbes, “preternatural” describes an extraordinary cause, which might prevent the weakening of motions in the imagination that would otherwise usually happens, when after a long while of continuous perceptions the organs are slacked and the animal spirits need to rest in the cavities of the heart and the brain. This cause is also still natural, though. It is a rare state of being of certain body parts that behave in an unusual way due to a health condition such as abnormal heat or some other disease (Hobbes, 1839: 397). For Hartley, intellectual ideas are compounded of ideas of sensation. This way, ideas of sensation are simple while intellectual ideas are complex (OM 1 Introduction, p. ii). Simple ideas combine into a complex one by affecting each other in a process of “mental chemistry” (Fodor, 1981: 300). It is unclear whether Hartley read Hume or not. Besides, they differ strikingly in their conception of custom. Hartley considers secular customs as overall negative because they corrupt people’s tastes and appetites (OM 2.3.1.52: 225), whereas for Hume, custom is what enables people to adjust their passions to given situations (Hume, 2007: 192; T 2.1.6.9). However, the same cannot be said of mental habits for the Scottish philosopher: some associations of ideas relying on custom and experience can have a destructive effect on the human mind if they are not reflected on (T 1.3.13.12). On the negative influence of custom on human understanding in Hume, see also T 1.3.9.17. Taking the same example as Locke’s Essay (2.33.10), Hume claims that custom-based beliefs inculcated during early age can be harmful for mental health (T 1.4.4.1). On Hume’s account, this is what makes them a suitable target of scientific inquiry, and also a condition of their moral evaluability. See Demeter (2012). Such reconciling projects were put forward frequently in Hartley’s time. For an overview, see Harris (2005). I would like to thank Tamás Demeter for his helpful advice and criticism on this paper. I am also grateful to the Lendület Morals and Science Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences for their support. Finally, my thanks go to Ray Driscoll, who proofread both this paper and an earlier version of it.

References Allen, R.C. (1999) David Hartley on Human Nature. Albany: State University of New York Press. Bacon, F. (1825–1834) Novum Organum, in Montagu, B. (ed.) The Works of Francis Bacon, 16 vols. London: William Pickering. Vol. 9. Brazier, A.B.B. (1984) A History of Neurophysiology in the 17th and 18th Centuries. New York: Raven Press. Demeter, T. (2012) ‘Liberty, Necessity and the Foundations of Hume’s Science of Man’, History of the Human Sciences, 1 (25), pp. 15–31. Fodor, J.A. (1981) Representations: Philosophical Essays on the Foundations of Cognitive Science. Sussex: The Harvester Press. Gaukroger, S. (2010) The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1680-1760. Oxford: Clarendon. Glassman, R.B. and Buckingham, H. (2007) ‘David Hartley’s Neural Vibrations and Psychological Association’, in Whitaker, H., Smith, C.U.M. and Finger, S. (eds.) Brain, Mind and Medicine: Essays in the Eighteenth-Century Neuroscience. New York: Springer. Harris, J.A. (2005) Of Liberty and Necessity: The Free Will Debate in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon. Hartley, D. (1749) Observations on Man: His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations, 2 vols. London: Richardson. Hartley, D. 1814, Prayers, and Religious Meditations, Cruttwell, R. (ed.) Bath: St. James’s-Street. Hatch, R.B. (1975) ‘Jospeh Priestley: An Addition to Hartley’s Observations’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 36 (3), pp. 548–550. Hobbes, T. (1839) Elements of Philosophy, in Sir Molesworth, W. (ed.) Id., The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. London: John Bohn. Vol. 1. Hume, D. (2007) A Treatise of Human Nature. Norton, D.F. and Norton, M.J. (eds.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Locke, J. (1975) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, P. H. Nidditch (ed.) Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mischel, T. (1966) ‘“Emotion” and “Motivation” in the Development of English Psychology: D. Hartley, James Mill, A. Bain’, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 2 (2), pp. 123–144.

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Catherine Dromelet Murphy, G. and Klüver, H. (1951) A Historical Introduction to Modern Psychology. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co. Oberg, B.B. (1976) ‘David Hartley and the Association of Ideas’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 37 (3), pp. 441–454. Orland, B. (2012) ‘The Fluid Mechanics of Nutrition: Herman Boerhaave’s Synthesis of Seventeenthcentury Circulation Physiology’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 43, pp. 357–369. Priestley, J. (1775) Hartley’s Theory of the Human Mind, on the Principle of the Association of Ideas, with Essays relating to the Subject of it. London: J. Johnson. Reid, T. (1785) Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man. Edinburgh: John Bell. Smith, C.U.M. (1987) ‘David Hartley’s Newtonian Neuropsychology’, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 23, pp. 123–136. Thébert, A. (2014) ‘David Hartley: Vibrations, Associations, Actions’, Dix-huitième siècle, 1 (46), pp. 417–438. doi: 10.3917/dhs.0460417 Thomson, A. (2001) ‘Mechanistic Materialism vs Vitalistic Materialism?’, in Saad, M. (ed.) Mécanisme et vitalisme, special issue of La lettre de la Maison Française d’ Oxford, 14, pp. 21–36. Warren, H.C. (1921) A History of the Association Psychology. New York: Charles Scribners & Sons. Wilson, A.B. (2016) Peirce’s Empiricism: Its Roots and its Originality. Maryland: Lexington Books, Lanhan. Wolfe, C.T. (2020) ‘From the Logic of Ideas to Active-matter Materialism: Priestley’s Lockean Problem and Early Neurophilosophy’, Intellectual History Review, 1 (30), pp. 31–47. Zammito, J. (2018) The Gestation of German Biology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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7 HABIT AND WILL IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH PHILOSOPHY John P. Wright

Perhaps, one of the greatest paradoxes of habit is based on the fact that while thoughts and actions that result from repetition in some cases appear voluntary and free, in others they are involuntary and determined. Today, when most people talk of habits in ordinary conversation they often mean involuntary behaviours such as those which one finds oneself performing in spite of oneself—something like picking one’s nose. ‘A habit’ commonly connotes a bad habit—often an addiction. Habits are compulsive and involuntary forms of behaviour. But are not acquired skills also habits? What can be more voluntary than a skill like playing a musical instrument, dancing or driving a car—all of which depend on repeated actions? Indeed, it might be argued that in order to do what we intend to do, in order to exercise our wills, we must first have developed a skill through repeated action. At the same time, even skills when fully developed can apparently be performed mindlessly and without any act of will on the part of the agent. But how can habit be the source of both involuntary and voluntary actions? In this chapter I trace the role of the will in British philosophers who wrote on custom and habit in the 18th century. I begin with the seminal discussion of John Locke who, in defining habit, makes a sharp distinction between voluntary and involuntary habits; I discuss the question of which of the habits identified in Locke’s philosophy fall under each category. I then turn to Joseph Butler’s development of what came to be known as the double law of habit. While Butler begins his discussion with a Locke-like distinction between voluntary and involuntary habits, he ends up arguing that voluntary moral habits have both an active and passive component. George Turnbull, who paraphrases Butler’s discussion, explicitly argues that habit is a necessary condition of free and voluntary action. David Hume also takes up Butler’s double law and, I argue, develops it in his conception of “calm passions”—including those which are the basis of our moral sentiments. While Hume allows for voluntary action, even in the Lockian sense, actions which become unconscious through habit are performed mechanically and involuntarily. Physiologist William Porterfield explicitly argues that all habits are voluntary, even when they become unconscious. Quite the opposite view is adopted by Thomas Reid who returns to Locke’s distinction between voluntary and involuntary habits, arguing that what are properly called habits are the latter. Finally, I consider the synthesis of the views of Porterfield and Reid offered by Dugald Stewart who makes skills the model for all habits, and argues that even after they fully mastered and performed without attention, they are still voluntary. DOI: 10.4324/9781315186436-10

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7.1 Voluntary and Involuntary Habit in Locke’s Philosophy In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke initially defines habit as a “power or ability in Man, of doing any thing, when it has been acquired by frequent doing the same thing” (Locke, 1975: II.xxii.10, 293). He illustrates habit in this sense with the example of courage or “Boldness”, which he describes as “the Power to speak or do what we intend, before others, without fear or disorder.” This example makes it clear that Locke thought that the power of habit makes it possible to perform voluntarily actions—to do, as he says, “what we intend.” Nevertheless, immediately after giving this apparently unambiguous definition and illustration of habit as the source of a voluntary power or ability, he states that “when it [that is, habit] is forward, and ready upon every occasion, to break out into Action, we call it Disposition.”1 Here, he gives “Testiness” or “a disposition or aptness to be angry” as an example. There is no indication of a voluntary action in this case, and as Clare Carlisle has pointed out in an apt metaphor, the kind of habit Locke here describes is like a “coiled spring”, ready to be suddenly released with the least stimulus, or rather provocation (Carlisle, 2014: 8). In this case, what we may call Locke’s testiness, the action resulting from frequent repetition is involuntary. Boldness is a capacity which a person can call upon when required; testiness, on the other hand, has “its own momentum” which is manifested in an action—or rather behaviour—which is not voluntary. Before further considering own Locke’s own illustrations of voluntary and involuntary habits it is of some importance to comment on his terminology. For his choice of the term ‘disposition’ to denote only involuntary habits can be confusing. For, both kinds of habits he defines are dispositions in the sense of the word commonly used by philosophers today. The “power or ability” of the bold or courageous person is as much a disposition in our sense of the term as dispositional testiness. The difference lies in the way each habit is activated. In the first case, it is activated by an act of will, a voluntary act; in the second it is brought into action without any such prior thought—perhaps, merely by an irritating remark of another person, or a spontaneous reaction to a stimulus in our environment. In his chapter ‘Of Power’ Locke states that an action is voluntary just in case it “is consequent to” an “order or command of the mind;” an action is involuntary if it “is performed without such a thought of the mind” (Locke, 1975: II.xxi.5, 236).2 The kind of thought which makes an action voluntary is described by Locke in quasi-military terms. He seems to think of us as giving commands or orders to ourselves in the case of voluntary actions: “We find in Our Selves a Power to begin or forbear, continue or end … actions of our minds and motions of our Bodies, barely by a thought or preference of the mind, ordering, or as it were commanding the doing or not doing such or such a particular action.” What he calls ‘the Will’ is the power or ability to perform voluntary actions—those preceded by such an order or command. Toward the beginning of his discussion “Of Power” Locke divides power in general into two kinds—active and passive power. His subsequent discussion is notoriously complex, but at the end of the chapter he suggests that the only active power that exists is that of a substance or agent which can “begin motion in it self, or in another substance when at rest” or “bring into view Ideas out of sight, at one’s own choice” (Locke, 1975: II.xxi.72, 286). An action is the result of an active power when it comes about “because of my own choice, by a power within myself, [whereby] I put my self in Motion.” While he does not use the word ‘voluntary’ in this discussion, it is reasonable to infer that the true exercise of an active power is a voluntary action whereby one chooses to continue or change the motion of one’s body, or attend to or not attend to a certain idea.3 Without such choice an action would be involuntary. The clearest examples of involuntary habits in Locke’s writings are to be found in his discussion “Of the Association of Ideas,” which he added to the fourth edition of the Essay in 90

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1700. Here he writes of “Intellectual Habits” which are the result of childhood indoctrination, or later trauma (Locke, 1975: II.xxxiii.17, 400; cf. II.xxxiii.6, 396). These are habitual beliefs which result from an association of ideas which have no “natural Correspondence and Connexion one with another” (1975: II.xxxiii.5, 395). Many of Locke’s examples are due to the brainwashing of children—which leads to involuntary irrational beliefs when they grow up. He appeals to a standard example of children who are taught to associate darkness with belief in evil spirits, and so are afraid of the dark throughout their lives.4 But Locke’s concerns were not merely with individual psychology. He regards such involuntary associations of ideas as having dangerous social and political implications.5 His examples include contrary religious and political beliefs which led to civil unrest in his own day. He writes that independent Ideas, of no alliance to one another, are by Education, Custom, and the constant din of their Party, so coupled in … [men’s] Minds, that … they can no more separate them in their Thoughts …. This gives Sence to Jargon, Demonstration to Absurdities, and Consistency to Nonsense …. (1975: II.xxxiii.18, 400–1) He regards such associations as the foundation of the “most dangerous” errors in the world in so far as “it hinders Men from seeing and examining”—that is, inquiring into the truth and recognizing it when evidence is presented to them. It results in patterns of inference such as those who infer from the proposition the “leaders of my party are good men” to the conclusion that “their tenets are true” (Locke, 1963: 216). It is hard not to hear echoes of Locke’s concerns as we contend with widespread absurd beliefs spread by social media in our own day. Locke writes that “Men of Sincerity” are lead blindfold from common Sence … [when] independent Ideas, of no alliance to one another, are by Education, Custom, and the constant din of their Party, so coupled in their Minds, that … they can no more separate them in their Thoughts, than if they were but one Idea, and they operate as if they were so. (1975: II.xxxiii.18, 400–1) Significantly, he holds that many of those under the influence of habits of association do not “impose wilfully” on themselves, and so cannot be held responsible for their irrational beliefs. His account of the involuntary nature of such intellectual habits of belief is striking, as is the impossibility, or at least the difficulty of convincing people through evidence of their falsity. While Locke makes it a principle not to speculate on the physical causes of mental processes at the beginning of his Essay (1975: I.i,1, 43–4),6 he makes a significant exception in his account of association of ideas. Here, he presents a mechanical explanation couched in terms of Cartesian psychophysiology: Custom settles habits of Thinking in the Understanding, as well as of Determining in the Will, and of Motions in the Body; all which seems to be but Trains of Motion in the Animal Spirits, which once set a going continue on in the steps they have been used to, which by often treading are worn into a smooth path, and the Motion in it becomes easy and as it were Natural. (Locke, 1975: II.xxxiii.6, 396) Just as walkers create a path through an overgrown landscape by frequent treading, so the “Animal Spirits” or nervous fluids create a pathway in the substance of the brain through repeated action or experience. While Locke is certainly not completely wedded to this mechanical account of 91

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association of ideas, he does write that this account “may help us a little to conceive of Intellectual Habits.” It suggests that repeated connections of experienced ideas cause internal changes in the brain which make it difficult for the person to form alternative beliefs. There are other discussions in his Essay where Locke is less clear whether the habits he is discussing are voluntary or involuntary. Consider, for example, his influential discussion of perception in Chapter 9 of Book 2 where he argues that as a result of “an habitual custom” we come to believe that we immediately sense visual objects as three dimensional—though we are actually making an inference that they are so based their varying sensations of colour and shadow. When we set before our Eyes a round Globe, of any uniform colour … ’tis certain that the Idea thereby imprinted in our Mind, is of a flat Circle variously shadow’d, with several degrees of Light and Brightness coming to our Eyes. But we having by use been accustomed to perceive, what kind of appearance convex Bodies are wont to make in us; what alterations are made in the reflections of Light … the Judgement presently, by an habitual custom, alters the Appearances into their Causes … [framing] to it self the perception of a convex Figure, and an uniform Colour. (1975: II.ix.8, 145) Fundamentally, we come to associate the flat visual projection of the globe with the tactual properties we experience through touch—a point that becomes clearer when Berkeley elaborates on Locke’s theory of visual judgment in his New Theory of Vision of 1709 (Berkeley, 1948: especially §§132–6.). Locke himself explicitly attributes the judgment to an association of ideas in his posthumously published Of the Conduct of the Understanding (Locke, 1963: especially 278). Just as in other cases of association of ideas, he argues that custom and habit cause a confusion of ideas resulting in our false belief that we immediately see three dimensions. Arguably, this belief is as involuntary as any of Locke’s other examples of association of ideas. In this case, Locke gives a psychological explanation of the fact that custom and habit makes us lose awareness of the actions of the mind—and, arguably, they thereby become involuntary. He writes that “habits, especially such as are begun very early, come, at last to produce actions in us, which often escape our observation” (Locke, 1975: II.ix.10,147). He states that we should not be surprised that we draw the inference “with so little notice” when we consider “how very quick the actions of the Mind are performed” compared with those of the body. “A settled habit,” he writes, “is performed so constantly, and so quick, that we take that for … Sensation, which is an Idea formed by our Judgment.” He then goes on to give two other examples where we are not aware of our actions because of the speed with which they are performed, namely the shutting of our eyelids throughout the day “without perceiving that that we are at all in the dark” and that of a person with an idiosyncratic speech pattern, who adds an unnoticed “By-word” to his sentences. Does not the fact that all these habitual actions are performed with little or no awareness suggest that they are involuntary, for Locke? Certainly, there are cases where Locke holds that repeated practice makes actions voluntary. In his discussion of the will in Essay II, xxi he argues that simply through repeated performance, through what he calls “contrary habits,” we can overcome what has been unpleasant and make it pleasant (Locke, 1975: II.xxi.69, 280-81). If one knows that a food is good for one’s health one can, through effort, develop a desire for it. He writes that “the relish of the mind … may be alter’d; and ’tis a mistake to think, that Men cannot change the displeasingness, or indifferency, that is in actions, into pleasure and desire, if they will do but what is in their power.” But it is not only our tastes in food that may be altered through habit: “That this is so in Virtue too, is 92

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very certain … The pleasure of the action it self is best acquir’d, or increased, by use and practice.” Repeated performance can help us overcome bad habits that we acquired through bad education and we can develop “a relish to that which is necessary, or conducive to our Happiness.” It is solely by repeated performance that we can come to perform actions which will contribute to our long-term self-interest—and overcome those habits which are harmful to us. The proper development of voluntary habits is a central problem which Locke sought to solve in his Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Virtue, for Locke, consists in the ability to curb one’s desires, and the development of a habit or custom of suspending them while one determines if they lead to one’s long-term self-interest. The Principle of all Vertue and Excellency lies in a power of denying our selves the satisfaction of our own Desires, where Reason does not authorize them. This Power is to be got and improved by Custom, made easy and familiar by an early Practice … Children should be used to submit their Desires, and go without their Longings, even from their very Cradles. (Locke, 1989: 107–8, §38)7 The task of the parent or educator is to develop this power of suspending desires without destroying the child’s spiritual energy. Parents need to “keep up a Child’s Spirit” while, at the same time, drawing “him to things that are uneasy to him” (Locke, 1989: 112, §46). Finding the right balance is “the true Secret of Education.” Locke opposes the use of severe punishments in refusing children their desires. Habits of self-restraint are to be acquired through the child’s natural desire for approval and avoidance of disapproval from his or her parents: “Esteem and Disgrace, are of all others, the most powerful incentives to the Mind” (Locke, 1989: 116, §56). The parent’s task is to develop the child’s voluntary habit of self-restraint through custom and habit.8 Locke’s discussion of the education of the will suggests that there is no absolute point at which actions become voluntary. In spite of his talk of voluntary actions involving “a command of the mind” at Essay II.xxi.5, the development of the ability to suspend one’s desires in order to weigh them through reason is a gradual process which becomes possible through maturation. Certainly, as Locke stresses, there is a point where parents no longer have any jusrisdiction over the will of their child, and he will be responsible for his own behaviour. And even if good “habits … [are] woven into the very Principles of his Nature” (Locke, 1989: 110, §42), given the frailty of human nature, involuntary bad habits such as those which result from wrong associations of ideas will sometimes intervene. Such a process is never complete and involuntary habits—those actions which result without thought or reflection—will inevitably occur.

7.2 Joseph Butler and George Turnbull on the Will and the Double Law of Habit At first sight, Locke’s distinction between habits as voluntary aptitudes and as involuntary dispositions seems to correspond to the distinction between “passive Habits” and “active Habits” discussed in Joseph Butler’s Analogy of Religion, which was written and published in the 1730s (Butler, 1736: 82). Passive habits include habits of perception such as those in which we “substitute Judgment in the Room of Sensation imperceptibly to ourselves.” Butler specifically mentions our “involuntary Readiness, in correcting the Impressions of our Sight, concerning Magnitude and Distance”—showing the influence of Berkeley, as well as Locke.9 Such involuntary habits occur in his list of passive habits, as do “Associations of Ideas” more generally. 93

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Butler’s initial list of “active Habits” includes not only “all [regular] bodily Activities or Motions, whether graceful or unbecoming, which are owing to Use,” but also “Obedience and Submission to Authority ….” He appears to be referring to our rule-following behaviour in obeying civil laws. Active habits require constant practice. They include qualities of the understanding: “Habits of Attention, Industry, Self-Government are in the same manner acquired by Exercise.” These active habits appear to be voluntary acts, insofar as they involve selfconscious thought. Butler’s account of the distinction between active and passive habits becomes more focused as he turns to a discussion of moral virtues. Like Aristotle, he holds that virtue is the result of habit. Rather than just thinking about virtues, we need to actively practice them: “Going over the theory of Virtue in ones Thoughts, talking well, and drawing fine Pictures of it; this is so far from necessarily or certainly conducing to form an Habit of it … that it may harden the Mind in a contrary Course” (Butler, 1736: 83). This claim that just thinking about virtuous actions over and over in one’s mind would lead one to be indifferent to morality is striking. Butler holds that to become virtuous one must actively engage in virtuous actions. Butler augments the Aristotelian theory of virtue by arguing that at the same time as moral character is developed through repeated virtuous actions, the passions originally connected with such actions grow weaker. Here is Butler’s distinction of what later became known as the double law of habit:10 Active Habits may be gradually forming and strengthening, by a Course of acting upon such and such Motives and Excitements, whilst these Motives and Excitements themselves, by proportional Degrees, growing less sensible, i.e. are continually less and less sensibly felt; even as the Active Habits strengthen. (Butler, 1736: 83-4) For example, danger originally causes fear and a response of either flight or fight; however, as one repeatedly confronts danger, the fear grows less and less, and one is able to act courageously. Similarly, a person who seeks to aid persons living in poverty may first be overwhelmed by pity, death and “the various Miseries of [human] Life;” however, as she repeatedly engages in relieving others distress she “cannot but be less affected” while “Benevolence considered, not as a Passion, but as a practical Principle of Action will strengthen,” and she “will acquire a greater Aptitude to actively assist” those who are suffering. Butler writes that as “active Principles … are wrought more thoroughly into the Temper and Character” of a benevolent person through repetition, so she becomes “more effectual in influencing … Practice.” Butler’s stress on the person’s own activity in the development of moral character helps to explain why the habit that is gradually developed is both intentional and voluntary. He implies that passions interfere with virtuous action, and as they grow less with repeated activity, one’s ability to rationally size up a situation and act appropriately and virtuously grows greater. In his earlier “Sermon upon Humane Nature” where Butler argued that there is generally no opposition between actions out of self interest and virtuous actions, he explicitly identifies the latter as voluntary: “When Virtue is become habitual, when the Temper of it is acquired, what was before Confinement ceases to be so, by becoming Choice and Delight” (Butler, 1726). It is only after we have built up our character through repeated action that our behaviour becomes a matter of choice. Before one has actively practiced any activity, including those done out of self interest, one’s actions were confined. It appears that, for Butler, free and voluntary action becomes possible after repeated practice. 94

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This is stressed by a philosopher who explicitly adopted Butler’s double law of habit, namely Scottish philosopher George Turnbull. Turnbull wrote that “it is really in consequence of the law of habits, that we are capable of liberty, or are free agents” (Turnbull, 1740: I, 106).11 In a chapter on habit and the association of ideas in his Principles of Moral Philosophy published in 1740, the same year as Book 3 of Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature, Turnbull took up themes from both Locke and Butler. Like Locke, Turnbull held that freedom consists in our ability to suspend our desires, in order to deliberate to find the best course of action.12 He stresses that this ability depends on our acquiring “the deliberative temper or habit: that is, the habitual power of enquiring and judging before we choose or act” (Turnbull, 1740: 104–5). He regards “the chief business of education to form early this deliberative habit and temper in young minds.” This habit of deliberation is only obtained by “practicing ourselves in choosing and acting after the deliberative judicious manner.” We gain self-mastery through habit; that is, by repeatedly practicing the suspension of our desires and deliberating about the consequences of our actions before we act. Turnbull paraphrases Butler’s discussion of the double law of habit in stressing the advantages of repeated practice in developing a virtuous character: “As practical habits are formed and strengthened by repeated acts; so passive impressions are found to grow weaker by being repeated on us” (Turnbull, 1740: 103). He cites Butler’s examples of the development of the virtues of courage and benevolence, noting further that “it is the same with all other affections which may be worked by exercise into active principles, and being settled and established as such in the mind, constitute a habitual character or temper that exerts itself calmly and regularly” (Turnbull, 1740: 104). For Turnbull as well as Butler, the calming of the passions through repeated actions, allows us to perform virtuous actions voluntarily.

7.3 David Hume on Habit and the Will In a section of Book II of his Treatise of Human Nature in which he discusses the effects of custom and habit on our passions, Hume also endorses Butler’s double law of habit. He writes “custom encreases all active habits, but diminishes passive, according to the observation of a late eminent philosopher” (Hume, 2007: 2.3.5.5, 424).13 It is the second part of Butler’s principle that is particularly relevant to Hume’s theory of the passions and morality—the claim that our passions are made calm through custom and habit.14 There is reason to think that calm passions for Hume involve what he would count as voluntary actions. Hume argues that philosophers who regard virtue as a combat between reason and passions have mistaken calm passions for reason. He argues that reason, the faculty concerned with the discovery of truth and falsity, is impotent and unable to direct our will or actions. What is mistaken reason by the philosophers he opposes is “certain calm desires and tendencies, which, tho’ they be real passions, produce little emotion in the mind, and are more known by their effects than by the immediate feeling or sensation” (Hume, 2007: 2.3.3.8, 417). The two faculties—reason and strong calm passion—are confused because they both operate “without producing any sensible emotion” (Hume, 2007: 2.3.3.8, 417). Some of these strong calm passions are instinctual like “love of life” which can contend with violent passions, such as one’s anger at an armed enemy who insulted one. But others are originally violent and only become calm through custom and habit. Referring to such a passion, Hume writes that “as repeated custom and its own force have made every thing yield to it, it directs the actions and conduct without that opposition and emotion, which so naturally attend every momentary gust of passion” (Hume, 2007: 2.3.4.1, 41920).15 Such strong calm passions, including long term self-interest or moral sentiments, can through “strength of mind” overcome violent passions (Hume, 2007: 2.3.3.10, 418).16 95

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However, there are difficulties in interpreting the concepts of will and volition in Hume’s philosophy.17 In Book 2 of the Treatise, he defines the will as “nothing but the internal impression we feel... when we knowingly give rise to any new motion of our body, or new perception of our mind” (Hume, 2007: 2.3.1.2, 399). But there is an ambiguity in the definition: on the one hand, the will is an ‘impression,’ which suggests that it is passive no less than our sensations and passions; on the other, we are said to ‘knowingly give rise’ to new motions of our bodies and perceptions of our minds which suggests action, even voluntary action. Are we passive or active in relation to the will? If active, does this mean that when we exercise the will we are acting voluntarily? While he rejects free will (the “liberty of indifference”) and argues that the will is necessitated by our motives, character and circumstances, Hume still allows that there are voluntary actions. He writes that “it is not a just consequence, that what is voluntary is free;” (Hume, 2007: 3.3.4.3, 609)18 or in other words, it does not follow from the fact that the will is not free that actions are not voluntary. Moral qualities “or at least, the actions, which flow from them” are voluntary because they “may be chang’d by the motives of reward or punishment, praise and blame” (Hume, 2007: 3.3.4.4, 609). It seems that, for Hume, so long as a person’s dispositions and actions can be altered through hope of pleasure or fear of pain, her actions are voluntary. In Part 7 of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, at the same time as he argues that we have no knowledge of the power which our wills give rise to either the motions of our bodies or new ideas in our minds, he assumes that we have this power. He writes that “the motion of our body follows upon the command of our will. Of this we are every moment conscious” (Hume, 2000: §7.10 ff).19 Here, his expression “the command of the will” takes us back to Locke’s characterization of voluntary action. Like Locke, he regards voluntary action as involving a conscious action of the mind which causes a bodily motion. However, both in his epistemology and his moral philosophy Hume argues that custom and habit conceal the actions of our minds—presumably, including those of the will.20 He writes that “custom... where it is strongest... not only covers our natural ignorance and conceals itself, and seems not to take place, merely because it is found in the highest degree” (Hume, 2000: 4.8). The remark is made in connection with his claim that inductive inference is brought about through repeated experience, and not through a voluntary operation of reason. He makes similar remark in his moral philosophy when he seeks to explain why we fail to realize that our moral judgments are based on utility. He writes that “the views the most familiar to us are apt, for that very reason, to escape us.” (Hume, 1998: 3.47). Here, it is clear that Hume is not merely claiming that what is customary makes us lose sight of the operations of the will, but that the judgments of the mind are no longer voluntary. For he goes on to write that “what we have very frequently performed from certain motives, we are apt to continue mechanically.” Our voluntary rational judgment of the harm caused by such activities as stealing is replaced through habit by a purely mechanical judgment of the vicious nature of such actions—an involuntary judgment just like those we make when in judging the distance, shape and size of visual objects.21

7.4 William Porterfield on the Pervasiveness of the Will Edinburgh physiologist William Porterfield rejected the claim that customary actions are mechanical and involuntary, even when we are no longer conscious of performing them. His theory of habit was developed in a two-part paper entitled “An Essay concerning the Motions of our Eyes” first published in collections of the Edinburgh Medical Society in 1735 and 1737–and in a subsequent book entitled A Treatise on the Eye, published in 1759. 96

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In his first part of his paper Porterfield deals at length with the question of how we judge the distance of objects through sight (Porterfield, 1737: III, 187). He argues that the most reliable way of judging distance is by our knowledge the angle made by the axis of each of our eyes when they focus together on an object in front of us: the smaller the angle made at the convergence of the lines from each eye at the object, the more distant the object. The judgment is made on the basis of our feeling or sensation of the motion of each eye as it focuses inward on the object (Porterfield, 1737: III, 189). According to Porterfield, the voluntary decision to move focus our eyes on a single point is made in our infancy when we discover its usefulness in determining the distance of objects in front of us. He writes that human infants “for some Time after Birth, can look different Ways with their Eyes” and continue to do so until “discovering the Advantage of directing them the same Way, they come to move them always uniformly” (Porterfield, 1737: III, 261). Henceforth, the action becomes fixed in our behaviour through custom and habit. Porterfield wrote that “the true Cause of [the] Uniformity in the Motions of our Eyes to me seems to wholly depend on Custom and Habit. For it is not to be doubted but these Motions are voluntary, and depending upon our Mind, which, being a wise Agent, wills them to move uniformly” (Porterfield, 1737: III, 257). For Porterfield, our using both eyes together is voluntary, even after it has become fully habitual. In the second part of “An Essay on the Motion of our Eyes” Porterfield considers the objection that the various motions of the eye which he ascribes to the mind cannot be voluntary, since we have no consciousness of performing them. He specifically addresses the action of closing of one’s eyelids when a friend thrusts a hand toward one’s face, and one knows they will not hurt you: If a Body be hastily moved towards our Eyes, they will shut without our being conscious thereof: Neither is it in our Power to do otherwise, because we have accustomed ourselves to do so on the like Occasions; for such is the Power of Custom and Habit, that many Actions which are no doubt voluntary, and procede from our Mind, are in certain Circumstances rendered so necessary, as to appear altogether mechanical and independent on our Wills. (Porterfield, 1738: IV, 213–14, my emphasis)22 Porterfield held that this action is voluntary and only appears mechanical and necessary because of custom and habit. For him there are actually two conflicting voluntary intentions in the mind itself, one of which is conscious and the other unconscious. In defence of the claim that there is no mechanical necessity when we close our eyelids, he cites a report of Roman gladiators who “being of uncommon Fortitude and Courage” could stop themselves from blinking—and of Socrates who could “stand for whole Day like a Statue, without the least Motion, not so much as of his Eyes or Eye-lids” (Porterfield, 1738: IV, 215–16). Porterfield defends the claim that we perform habitual voluntary acts unconsciously. He disputes Locke’s claim that “all Thoughts and Operations of the Mind must necessarily be attended with Consciousness; from whence it may be argued, that the Mind is not concerned with these Motions, because it is altogether insensible of its influence” (Porterfield, 1738: IV, 216). While he says that he does not want to involve himself in the “metaphysical Question” of whether the mind can operate unconsciously, he claims to show in “a few of many Instances that might have been brought, that there are Motions unquestionably voluntary and depending on the Mind, which by Custom and Habit have become so easy as to be performed without our Knowledge or Attention ….” (Porterfield, 1738: IV, 217). Porterfield argues that when custom and habit make the actions easier, we are able to attend to other matters. He supports this claim 97

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with a familiar example: When children first learn to walk, “the whole Mind is employed in conducting the Motions necessary for their Progression,” so that if they cease to attend to the activity they will soon fall down (Porterfield, 1738: IV, 226–7). However, when these motions come to be performed through custom and habit “they need but little Attention, and allow the Mind to employ its most serious and anxious Thoughts about other Matters.” Porterfield considers actions resulting from custom and habit to be freely chosen, even after one is not conscious of putting forth any effort in performing them—and it appears impossible to prevent them. He calls the apparent necessity of such actions a “moral Necessity” and our apparent inability to do otherwise a “moral Impossibility” (Porterfield, 1759: II, 154). According to Porterfield, actions done from custom and habit, involve the mind’s adopting a rule to do what is necessary in order to achieve a certain goal. He wrote in Part I of his essay that the motions of the body that are performed from habit arise from the fact that “the Mind has imposed on itself … [a] Law founded upon [their] Utility and Advantage …” (Porterfield, 1737: III, 257–8). In his book, Porterfield drew a direct parallel between the development of these physical abilities with the actions of a morally virtuous person. To deny freedom to anyone whose actions are done under the influence of custom and habit is like denying the freedom to an honest person who, having formed a “fixt and determined Resolution of acting always agreeably to what he sees fit and right”, finds it impossible to “do a dishonest Thing” (Porterfield, 1759: II, 155). But this moral impossibility is merely a conditional impossibility: if an honest person told a lie, it would be “absurd” or “mischievous.” That is to say it is “morally impossible for [the mind of the person] to chuse to act so foolishly and unreasonably; and so much contrary to that Necessity that has been fixed and established by Habit and Custom.” Having imposed on oneself the law not to lie, one is still following one’s own choice when truth telling has become spontaneous and is performed habitually without attention. For Porterfield what is generally thought of as instinct is really custom and habit. He extended his account of habit to the internal motions of the body—those on which life itself immediately depends. In Part I of his essay he suggested that the mind might govern the vital and natural motions of the body (Porterfield, 1737: III, 260), a possibility he elaborates on at length in Part II of his essay and in his book. He suggests that when a baby is born, its mind is totally involved “in regulating and governing the internal Motions, which are yet difficult, by reason it has not yet been much accustomed to them” (Porterfield, 1738: IV, 225–6). But when the mind does become accustomed to performing vital actions such as the beating of the heart and natural actions such as the digestion of food, it is progressively able to attend to “external Objects.” Thus, the baby comes to appear “less and less sleepy and unactive.” In fact, while she continues to perform these actions voluntarily through habit, she is now able to direct her attention away from them, and attend to those sensations and actions required to survive in the outside world. Porterfield effectively denied all distinction between involuntary and voluntary habits, arguing they are all of the latter kind.

7.5 Thomas Reid: Mechanical Habits and Habits of Art Thomas Reid, in sharp contrast to Porterfield, classifies both habits and instincts as involuntary principles of action.23 In his Active Powers of Man (1788), Reid writes that “habit differs from instinct, not in its nature, but in its origin; the latter being natural, the former acquired” (2010: 88). Both are what he calls “mechanical principles” of action. They “operate without will or intention.” They do not follow from an act of the will.; nor are they are not performed to achieve some goal. Yet they both are, according to Reid’s classifications, properly called “principles of action” because they “give an inclination and impulse to do the action.” Indeed, Reid writes that 98

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what we have been accustomed to do, we acquire, not only a facility [to do], but a proneness to do on like occasions; so that it requires a particular will and effort to forebear it, but to do it, requires very often no will at all. We are carried by habit as by a stream in swimming, if we make no resistance (2010: 89). Reid gives, as examples, habits acquired by imitation when one is young. Such mechanical habits “have no small share in forming the manners and character of most men.” Reid does acknowledge that habit is commonly defined by philosophers as “A facility of doing a thing, acquired by having done a thing frequently (2010: 88).” Habit in this sense is not an independent principle of action. Unlike a mechanical habit, it does not, in itself, give one an inclination to perform actions. It merely makes actions which are otherwise motivated— presumably by will or appetite—easier to perform. Reid calls such habits “habits of art,” and states that “ARISTOTLE makes wisdom, prudence, good sense, science and art, as well as all the moral virtues and vices, to be habits” in this sense. But habit in this sense is not an independent principle of action; in this case actions are merely “strengthened and confirmed” by repeated performance. As in Locke’s example of boldness, Reid’s “habits of art” merely give us a “facility” to do what is otherwise intended through an act of will. They make the action easier to perform. Habits of art are voluntary actions made easier by repetition. Reid’s mechanical habits are involuntary not only in the sense that they are performed without reason or judgment, but also without desires, affections and passions—what Reid calls “animal principles of action” (2010: 92–3). However, they would be voluntary if all that is meant is that the agent could have done otherwise. As we have seen, Reid writes that “we are carried by habit as by a stream in swimming, if we make no resistance”—allowing that such resistance is possible (2010: 89). At the same time, he makes clear that the resistance which may prevent such habitual actions is not affected simply by “a general resolution” to give up the habit—but rather, “particular attention is necessary, on every occasion, to resist its impulse” (2010: 88). To illustrate such habits, he notes how children pick up “awkward habits” through imitation of others “before they can judge what is proper and becoming.” These habits cannot be undone by general resolutions. Rather, to break a bad habit acquired by imitation in childhood, one requires attention to resist its impulse in every instance “until it be undone by the habit of opposing it.” Certainly, Reid recognizes that there are good mechanical habits generated in childhood through imitation. In his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, Reid writes that a person is often led by “a kind of instinct, which it is difficult to resist, into the modes of speaking, thinking, and acting, which he has been accustomed to see in his early years” (2002: 343). But whether mechanical habits caused by imitation are good or bad, they still have “no small share in forming the manners and character of most men” (2010: 89). Reid appears to have recovered Locke’s distinction between voluntary habits and involuntary dispostions. His mechanical habits appear to be involuntary, just like Lockian habitual dispositions. It surely can be said of Reid’s mechanical habits no less than Locke’s dispositions that they are “forward, and ready upon every occasion, to break into action” (1975: II.xxii.10, 293). At least, this is true of those habits, both good and bad, which we pick up as children simply through imitation. However, Reid’s distinction in his Active Powers between habits as mechanical principles of action and as “habits of art” is, perhaps, not as clear as we would wish. Habits of art are formed voluntarily, and are only “strengthened and confirmed by repeated acts” (2010: 89). But Reid’s own example of a habit of art is language, which we learn by imitation when we are young, and which is only perform with facility once it is mastered. He writes of “a good speaker” who 99

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selects her words to articulate certain sentiments “without any expence of time or thought” (2010: 90). But doesn’t the fact that the speaker acts without thought make her habits of using language as mechanical, as the “awkward habits” which children pick up in childhood? Reid gives a more plausible example of a voluntary habit in his Intellectual Powers where he writes of the “wonderful” habits which “the human mind is capable of acquiring … through training and exercise,” including the varying roles “a well bred man” can play in different social situations as the result of repeated performance” (2002: 344-5). He writes that this skill is similar to those of “a player on an instrument, [and]… got in the same way … by much practice, and the power of habit.” These “habits of art” unlike the habits we adopt through mere imitation in childhood appear to be voluntary. Among habits of art Reid also includes Aristotelian virtues, though like his contemporary Immanuel Kant, he denies that good natural temperaments—including those formed by habit—are true virtues. Reid writes that while “the affection of benevolence is a propensity to do good, from natural constitution or habit”, the “virtue of benevolence” is “a fixed purpose or resolution to do good from … a conviction that it is right, and is our duty” (2010: 67, my emphasis). Like Kant, Reid holds that genuine virtuous acts must be done from the motive of duty, not from habit. The distance of Reid’s theory from Aristotelian virtue theory is stressed when he writes that even if good temperaments “often lead to voluntary actions”, they are in themselves “really involuntary,” Reid concludes this discussion of morality in his Active Powers of man by arguing that even those virtues acquired voluntarily through duty become involuntary when they become habitual.

7.6 Dugald Stewart: Habits Are Voluntary and Not Mechanical In his Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind (1792), Dugald Stewart argued that even though we cease to be aware of the operation of our wills when skills become fully habitual, these actions are still voluntary. He rejects the view of “some philosophers of great eminence … [who] have called into question the existence of such volitions, and have represented our habitual actions as involuntary and mechanical” (1854: 125). For Stewart, the fact that we cannot recollect such volitions, does not mean that they are involuntary. For example, the fact that we cannot afterwards remember making a perceptual judgement when objects are ‘seen’ at a distance, does not mean that, at the time, we are not voluntarily making such a judgment. He agrees with Porterfield that the mind operates voluntarily, for example, when we cannot help blinking as a friend thrusts his fist in our face. Even though it is difficult, or even impossible to “check our habitual actions by a contrary volition” that does not mean the habitual actions are mechanical and involuntary. The contrary volition to keep our eyes open “is merely a general intention or resolution” to keep our eyes open and “is banished from the mind, as soon as the occasion presents itself”—that is, when we voluntarily blink. Stewart takes issue with Reid’s and the English associationist David Hartley’s views regarding the mechanical nature of habits. Hartley had argued that, through habit and repetition, actions are transformed from “voluntary Actions into automatic ones” (Hartley, 1749: 108-9). He used the example of person who, with a “perfectly voluntary Command over his Fingers,” learns to play the harpsichord. At first, he moves his fingers from key to key “looking at the Notes, and exerting an express Act of Volition in every Motion.” However, by repetition, “the Acts of Volition” in the associated sequence of ideas grow “less and less express all the Time, till at last they become evanescent and imperceptible.” The associated ideas, and the vibrations in the brain to which they correspond, are then automatically linked without the idea of the will, so that while playing, an “expert Performer” can “carry on a quite different Train of Thoughts 100

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in his Mind, or even hold a Conversation with another.” According to Hartley, when thoroughly habitual, skills like that of playing a musical instrument can be performed entirely mechanically, without any will, as well as without consciousness. He writes with sufficient practice the action comes to be performed without any “Intervention of the Idea, or State of Mind, called Will.”24 In answer to Hartley, Stewart argues that it is “more philosophical to suppose, that those actions which are originally voluntary, always continue so” after they are perfected by habit—even when the performer can no longer remember each individual act of will required for its performance after it is carried out (Stewart, 1854: 127). The skilful musician is still in total control of her playing, though her mind may be engaged in other matters. The key to Stewart’s explanation of the phenomenon hinges on two psychological principles. First, Locke’s principle that we fail to notice habitual acts of mind because of the speed with which they are performed.25 Secondly, a distinction between consciousness and attention, which Stewart attributes to Reid (Stewart, 1854: 134).26 While the skilled musician is conscious of a voluntary action at the moment she plays an individual note, with practice and repetition she no longer needs to attend to it. Without attention, according to Stewart, one does remember one’s past act of volition. Stewart’s most compelling illustration of his claim that the will is still involved in a perfected skilled action is that of a juggler/acrobat who can spin a number of objects “upon different parts of his body, and at the same time balance himself on a small cord or wire” (Stewart, 1854: 132—3). Stewart holds that when a skill such as that of the juggler/acrobat is perfected through practice, the performer ceases to remember the acts of will by which each movement is accomplished because of the rapidity with which they pass through the mind. It is not, as Hartley had argued, because the act of the will is dropped from the associated ideas. Rather, according to Stewart, the will is still part of the associated sequence of ideas, but it is passed over so quickly that the skilled practitioner no longer remembers it—after moving on to her next voluntary action. Unlike Porterfield, Dugald Stewart does not hold that there are unconscious thoughts, much less unconscious acts of will which result from custom and habit (Stewart, 1854: 134–5). But he does believe that there are voluntary acts which we do not attend to and which, therefore, are forgotten the moment after they are performed. Accordingly, it seems reasonable to conclude that apparently involuntary dispositions, such as Locke’s testiness, are actually voluntary. If Stewart is correct, the habitual act of will which is the source of such actions takes place so quickly that we fail to recollect it afterwards.

7.7 Conclusion Where does this leave us with regard to the paradox of habit with which we began our discussion? If habitual performances cause unconscious volitions as Porterfield claimed, or at least forgotten ones as Stewart claimed, is it not reasonable to conclude that habits such as those exemplified by Locke’s testiness are themselves really voluntary actions? We can even retain his notion of an act of will as involving a “command of the mind” in the case of such habits—only allowing that such commands become unconscious or forgotten through repeated performance. After all, we do hold people responsible for bad habits, and the actions which result from them. And if the mark of what is voluntary is, as Hume maintained, the ability to regulate a person’s dispositions and the resulting actions “by the motives of reward and punishment, praise and blame” then surely even such apparently involuntary actions are really voluntary. The supposed paradox of habit is really no paradox at all. 101

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Notes 1 In his Categories, Aristotle divided quality into the categories of habitus and dispositio. All dispositions for Aristotle are not habits, but all habits are dispositions. It seems that Locke has reversed Aristotle’s distinction: whereas, for Aristotle, habits are a subset of dispositions, for Locke, dispositions are a subset of habits. Further, for Aristotle, habits are more difficult to displace; whereas, for Locke, this is clearly the case for dispositions. 2 It would take me beyond the concerns of this paper to consider the meaning of being “consequent” in Locke’s definition of voluntary action. Both E.J. Lowe (1986) as well as Gideon Yaffe (2000: 99ff) interpret this as causal consequence, as opposed to merely temporal consequence: An action is consequent to the will, if it is caused by an order or command of the mind. John Yolton (1970: 142) rejects this view of volitions as causes of actions and stresses that for Locke it is the moral agent rather than the volition which causes an action. 3 In the first edition of the Essay, Locke wrote that “the Will or Preference, is determined by something without itself” (1975: II.xxi.29, 248n.), but he eliminated that passage in the second edition and adds the passage I have cited. Chappel (2000: esp. n.2) argues that that Locke continues to hold his original view. 4 The example goes back to Lucretius. Locke writes: “Let but a foolish Maid inculcate [these ideas together] often on the Mind of a Child … possibly he shall never be able to separate them again so long as he lives, but Darkness shall ever afterwards bring with it those frightful Ideas” (1975: II.xxxiii.16, 397–8). 5 “Some such wrong and unnatural Combinations of Ideas will be found to establish the Irreconcilable opposition between different Sects of Philosophy and Religion” (1975: II.xxxiii.18, 400). 6 While not denying relevance of such physical accounts of mental processes, he forgoes them in pursuit of what he calls the “the Historical, plain Method”—basically adopting what we today would consider a psychological approach. 7 See also Locke (1989: 90, §10). In his Essay, Locke writes that the power to suspend “any desire, before the will be determin’d to action” is “the source of all liberty” (1975: II.xxi.47, 263; cf. II.xxi,52, 267). 8 For further discussion of these points, see Weinberg (2016: 209—212). 9 Berkeley’s central concern in his Essay Towards a New theory of Vision was in the perception of “distance, magnitude, and situation of objects”, Section 1. 10 See Ravaisson (2008: 36–7, 49, et passim). 11 Turnbull’s book was based on lectures which he had given at the University of Aberdeen in the 1720s when Thomas Reid was a student. Like Hume, Turnbull sought to apply the experimental methods used in natural philosophy to moral subjects. On his title page, he cites Newton’s claim in Book III of the Optics that “if NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, in all its Parts by pursuing this Method, be perfected, the Bounds of MORAL PHILOSOPHY will also be enlarged”. See his title page. Turnbull and Hume had had the same teacher of natural philosophy at Edinburgh University, namely Robert Steuart. See Stewart (2022: 25). 12 Compare (Locke, 1975: II.xxi.52, 266–8). 13 On the evidence that Butler is the “late eminent philosopher” to whom Hume refers, see Wright (1994). 14 For a recent discussion of Hume on calm passions, see Ratcliffe (2018), especially chapter 6. 15 This is my emphasis. 16 On Hume’s notion of “strength of mind”, see McIntyre (2006). 17 The difficulties are addressed in Stalley (1986), and Wood (2014). 18 In this section, Hume is discussing the question whether “natural abilities” should be included among moral virtues even though, unlike the virtues recognized by his contemporaries, they are not voluntary. 19 Hume also gives a parallel account of the power which our wills have in causing our ideas at §7.16 ff. 20 See Garfield (2019). 21 Hume explicitly draws a parallel between our habitual judgements of the size of visual objects and our development of a common moral point of view at (Hume, 2007: 3.3.3.2, 603). 22 This was a standard example used by mechanists to illustrate automatic mechanical responses in the body—for example, René Descartes (1996: XI, 338—9); Boerhaave (1752—56: I, §4.1). 23 Reid clearly knew Porterfield’s writing, though he did not explicitly take issue with his theory of unconscious voluntary habits. He critiques Porterfield’s theory of vision in his Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1764).

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Eighteenth-Century British Philosophy 24 At least, this is the view which his associationist psychology favours. Hartley does however go on to qualify this claim by saying that “at least … \there is no perceptible Intervention [of the will], none of which we are conscious”. 25 i.e. Essay II.ix.10,147 discussed in Section 7.1. 26 Stewart cites Reid (2002: 59): “Attention is a voluntary act; it requires an active exertion to begin and continue it; and it may continue as long as we will; but consciousness is involuntary and of no continuance, changing with every thought”. According to Stewart, Reid held that these two acts of mind were confused by Locke.

References Berkeley, G. (1948) An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision, vol1, in Luce, A.A. and Jessp, T.E. (eds.) The Works of George Berkely, 9 vols. London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, §pp. 132–136. Boerhaave, H. (1742–46) Dr. Boerhaave’s Academical Lectures on the Theory of Physic, being … a Translation of his Institutes and Explanatory Comment, 5 vols. London: W. Innys. Butler, J. (1726) Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel. London: James and John Knapton. Butler, J. (1736) Analogy of Religion. London: John and Paul Knapton. Carlisle, C. (2014) On Habit. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Chappel, V. (2000) ‘Locke on the Suspension of Desire’, in Fuller, G., Stecker, R. and Wright, J.P. (eds.) John Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding in Focus. London: Routledge, pp. 236–248. Descartes, R. (1996) Passions de l’homme, Art. 1, in Adam, C. and Tannery, P. (eds.) Oeuvres de Descartes, 12 vols. Paris: Vrin. Garfield, J.L. (2019) The Concealed Influence of Custom: Hume’s Treatise from the Inside Out. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hartley, D. (1749) Observations on Man. London: S. Richardson. Hume, D. (1998) An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals: A Critical Edition. Beauchamp, T.L. (ed.) Oxford: Clarendon. Hume, D. (2000) An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Beauchamp, T.L. (ed.) Oxford: Clarendon. Hume, D. (2007) A Treatise of Human Nature. Norton, D.F. and Norton, M.J. (eds.) Oxford: Clarendon. Locke, J. (1963) The Conduct of the Understanding, vol.3, in The Works of John Locke, 10 vols. Scientia Verlag Aalen: Darmstadt, 1963. Locke, J. (1975) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, vol. 2. Nidditch, P.H. (ed.) Oxford: Clarendon Press. Locke, J. (1989) Some Thoughts concerning Education, in Yolton, J.W. and Yolton, J. (eds.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lowe, E.J. (1986) ‘Necessity and the Will in Locke’s Theory of Action’, History of Philosophical Quarterly, 3(2), pp. 149–163. McIntyre, J. (2006) ‘Strength of Mind: Problems and Prospects for a Humean Account’, Synthese, 152, pp. 393—401. Porterfield, W. (1737-8) ‘An Essay concerning the Motions of our Eyes’, in Medical Essays and Observations: Revised and Published by a Society in Edinburgh, 4 vols. Porterfield, W. (1759) A Treatise on the Eye, and the Manner and Phaenomena of Vision, 2 vols. London: A. Miller. Ratcliffe, E. (2018) Hume, Passion, and Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ravaisson, F. (2008) Of Habit. Translated by Carlisle, C. and Sinclair, M., London: Routledge. Reid, T. (2002) The Intellectual Powers of Man. Brookes, D.R. (ed.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Reid, T. (2010) Essays on the Active Powers of Man. Haakonssen, K. and Harris, J. (eds.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Stalley, R.F. (1986) ‘The Will in Hume’s Treatise’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 24 (1), pp. 41–53. Stewart, D. (1854) Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol.2, in Sir Hamilton, W. (ed.) The Collected Works of Dugald Stewart. Edinburgh, 1854. Reprint, Bristol: Thommes Press, 1994. Stewart, M. (2022) Hume’s Philosophy in Historical Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Turnbull, G. (1740) The Principles of Moral Philosophy: An Enquiry into the Wise and Good Government of the Moral World. London: John Noon. Weinberg, S. (2016) Consciousness in Locke. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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John P. Wright Wood, J.M. (2014) ‘Hume and the Metaphysics of Agency’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 52 (1), pp. 87–112. Wright, J.P. (1994) ‘Butler and Hume on Habit and Moral Character’, in Stewart, M.A. and Wright, J.P. (eds.) Hume and Hume’s Connexions. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 105–118. Yaffe, G. (2000) Liberty Worth the Name: Locke on Free Agency. Oxford: Princeton University Press, pp. 99ff. Yolton, J. (1970) Locke and the Compass of Human Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 142.

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8 KANT’S ACCOUNT OF INTELLECTUAL HABIT AND MORAL EDUCATION Carl Hildebrand

Contrary to what has often been thought, Kant has a lot to say about character in the ordinary sense in which the Aristotelian virtues and vices are features of character. His Lectures on Pedagogy (the Pedagogy) and Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (the Anthropology) evince that he is attentive to the formation of such character and its moral importance. The Pedagogy provides an account of how beings that are not fully rational (children) may over time be brought to understand the moral law and enabled to act on it. Kant maintains that this preparation for moral action requires the use and cultivation of non-rational dispositions. In this way, he stresses the importance of bringing up children with virtues of a broadly Aristotelian kind – what Aristotle would call virtues of character. Kant seems to think that bringing up children in something like these virtues of character will prepare them to acquire a sense of duty in due course, much in the way Aristotle thinks they are prepared to acquire practical wisdom (phronēsis) and with it, complete virtue.1 Similar themes may be found in the Anthropology. Kant says in the Groundwork that a metaphysics of morals “needs anthropology for its application to human beings” (Kant, 2006a: 4:412). By this he means that knowledge of empirical human beings – their inclinations, behavior, and psychology – is necessary to enable people to consistently act on the basis of the moral law. He is saying two things here. First, he is saying that people need to understand what in their own nature both aids and hinders moral action. In what follows, I will focus on this point with respect to the development of children, though there are obvious implications for how adults can develop themselves if they have not been fully developed as children.2 Secondly, he is saying that human beings need to understand the characteristics, habits, and desires of other human beings in order to know how to act morally toward them. This second point may be understood as a form of social cognition and it is beyond the scope of this essay. With these objectives in mind, the Anthropology details the character of human beings from a number of perspectives. Alongside the Pedagogy, it helps us to achieve a more complete understanding of Kant’s conception of character and its role in moral formation and action. I will focus on both of these texts in this essay. I will first examine Kant’s account of discipline, physical education, shame, and the inclinations to honor, to argue that he believes these inclinations are important for moral formation and to explain how he believes this to be true. His general idea is to give the child the propensity to do the right thing whenever possible with the belief that when she has acquired the habit of doing the right thing, she will come to DOI: 10.4324/9781315186436-11

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see through the exercise of practical reason that the moral law unites all these right actions under a common principle. Once she sees this, she will be able to act on the moral law for the first time. She will also be able to see in many cases what the moral law requires of her, because she was trained to respond to certain cases in a certain way, so her moral perception will have been developed (though, of course, not without need for further reflection and experience). With this trajectory in mind, I will then examine what Kant refers to as the grounding of character in both the Pedagogy and Anthropology, seek to establish what it means for Kant, and argue that the proper formation of one’s inclinations is highly desirable for it.3 Finally, in light of this I will reconstruct Kant’s account of habit (Angewohnheit) and moral aptitude (Fertigkeit) in an attempt to clarify his understanding of these features of human nature. This will support my argument that Kant believes the cultivation of something like Aristotelian virtues is crucial to preparing an individual for moral action and in due course will help them to acquire a sense of duty similar to practical wisdom, or phronēsis. It will therefore provide evidence that, contrary to what for example Bernard Williams has argued, Kant does not view the emotions as predominantly capricious products of natural causation that are experienced only passively (2006: 226). It will also raise the question of whether, given the importance it places on the formation of inclinations, such a notion of moral character can be reconciled to the Kantian account of autonomy, which appears to present moral decisions as a clear choice between equally weighted motivations, with inclinations on the one hand and the moral law on the other. In conclusion, I will make some observations about this final point and suggest an understanding of Kantian autonomy that can be reconciled to this notion of moral character.

8.1 The Moral Education of Children The organization of the published lectures on pedagogy makes it difficult to understand the general structure of Kant’s theory of education. However, their organization should not be taken to reflect a particular theory or understanding on Kant’s part, since they are a product of Theodor Rink’s editorial arrangement of the material.4 Kant’s central contention is that the educator must train the child to become disciplined, cultivated in skillfulness, prudent, and well-formed in preparation for morality (he enumerates each of these points for emphasis) (Kant, 2007: 9:499-50). This appears to set a purpose or end for education, a set of skills and dispositions to be acquired in ascending order of value, beginning with discipline and ending with morality. In education, discipline – “a taming of savagery” – must be implemented before skillfulness in “the carrying out of whatever purpose” can be cultivated (Kant, 2007: 9:499). Then, prudence, or familiarity with human society and culture, must be acquired before it is possible to act on the basis of morality (Kant, 2007: 9:450). Kant refers to this final stage as moralization and it is central to the highest goal of education (Kant, 2007: 9:450). The progressive acquisition of these skills and dispositions will provide the most helpful conditions to enable the child to become a free moral agent. However, this remains something only the child can bring herself to become. It is not something that can be forced upon her for the obvious reason that this would contradict her being free to choose morality and hence, her being a free moral agent. In addition, the moral law is something the child must discover for herself, since it is an a priori principle of (practical) reason and must somehow be grasped by an individual, if that individual is to be said to understand it.5 This requires the educator to attain an appropriate balance between cultivating a child’s freedom and constraining it, since restraint and redirection of desire is required to act on the basis of the moral law. Kant describes this as the most difficult challenge in education: 106

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How do I cultivate freedom under constraint? I shall accustom my pupil to tolerate a constraint of his freedom, and I shall at the same time lead him to make good use of his freedom. Without this everything is a mere mechanism, and the pupil who is released from education does not know how to use his freedom. (Kant, 2007: 9:453) Kant accepts this challenge and suggests a number of ways desire and thought might be restrained and redirected in the child, while encouraging the child’s freedom. The most basic way he suggests this be done is through discipline and what he calls physical education. Discipline is the first stage in the four-part process of education outlined above; it “prevents animality from doing damage to humanity” and tames what Kant calls “savagery” (Kant, 2007: 9:449). “Savagery is independence from laws”; “[t]hrough discipline the human being is submitted to the laws of humanity and is first made to feel their constraint” (Kant, 2007: 9:442). This is consistent with what he says in Religion Within the Bounds of Reason (the Religion), when he describes the vices of animal nature as vices of savagery, which generally entail “wild lawlessness (in relation to other human beings)”.6 At early stages, discipline does not directly involve the cognitive faculties of the child – since these will be limited in power – and is instead an obvious paternalistic intervention on the part of the child’s educators. It is warranted because it prevents this lawlessness from damaging the child’s capacity to grow towards morality and to think and act on the basis of laws generally, a precondition for action that has moral worth. Discipline shapes the child’s habits and general disposition so that she will be prepared to grasp the principle of morality and act upon it when the time comes, because it better enables her to see what moral action looks like. Physical education is a broader concept than discipline and represents one part of a distinction Kant sometimes makes between two general types of education: Physical education is the part of education which the human being has in common with animals, or maintenance. Practical or moral education is the education by which the human being is to be formed so that he can live as a freely acting being.7 Physical education is passive, since it involves obedience to a parent or teacher according to what they deem best for the child, whereas he describes practical education as education towards personality and the establishment of “a freely acting being who can support itself and be a member of society”.8 This distinction is somewhat misleading, however, since both are meant to raise the child up to be an independent agent capable of acting on the basis of the moral law; both also involve the agency of someone else, such as a parent or teacher, who actively sets up the environment for the child; and throughout both, the child is meant to acquire certain habits and propensities, then reflect on and assimilate them to a moral disposition. So, there is not a clear boundary between these two types of education. Although what Kant describes as physical education tends to deal more with bodily habit and less with the cognitive aspects of the human being, both types of education are moral. It is in this way that he understands physical education as an initial, perhaps limited, and yet very important stage of education that prepares the child for knowledge of the moral law and action on the basis of it. Though physical education in Kant’s sense is not limited to activity that involves physical exercise, as we might be tempted to think, it does include it. Kant discusses a number of games and sports that children do and should play, including, for example, gymnastics. He explains that they teach skillfulness and commitment, since for the sake of them the child will “deny himself other needs, and thus learn little by little to do without other things as well” (Kant, 2007: 9:468). 107

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These games must have “intention and final purpose” so that the child becomes habituated to control her needs and inclinations for the sake of attaining a goal (Kant, 2007: 9:468). Morality requires that one be able to control one’s inclinations and subordinate them to the moral law; if the child is able to do this when it is required of her in games, she will more likely be able to do this when it is required of her for the sake of morality. Physical education also includes the training of one’s mental powers or cognitive faculties.9 For example, Kant instructs that memory be cultivated early in a child’s education by remembering the names in stories, reading and writing, and the acquisition of languages other than one’s native tongue (Kant, 2007: 9:474). Though these examples do not constitute moral education in the more specific sense in which Kant uses the term here, their most important purpose is moral formation. Kant also discusses emotions associated with an individual’s standing amongst their community, focusing in particular on “the inclinations to be honored and loved”, which are “aids to morality” and “are to be preserved as far as possible” (Kant, 2007: 9:482). In the Anthropology, he says, “love of honor is the constant companion of virtue”, suggesting that this inclination is to remain in the mature moral agent (Kant, 2006: 7:257). With this in mind, he encourages the educator to make careful use of shame as a tool for guiding these positive inclinations. He points to several features of the use of shame in education. One is the condition that it only be introduced in the years of adolescence, because “it can only occur when the concept of honor has already taken root” (Kant, 2007: 9:484). Since shame is the feeling of one’s lowered esteem in the eyes of others, it requires that one is capable of a healthy understanding of the esteem of others in the first place. Kant here assumes that the eyes of these others are worth attending to and that the community of which the adolescent is a part is a good one, with norms that are not contrary to morality. He says elsewhere in the Pedagogy that a young child has “nothing to be ashamed of and should not feel ashamed” (Kant, 2007: 9:465). He believes that to be responsible for doing something wrong requires that there be a reason supporting the judgment that the action is wrong and that the agent in question have a capacity to understand that reason. Children below a certain age would not have this capacity to a degree sufficient for full responsibility, hence his requirement that they not be made to feel ashamed.10 A further reason in support of this is that, without the requisite capacity to understand the reason for shame, the child may become embarrassed and hide from others as a result of experiencing the gestures and attitudes that accompany shame. This transitions into Kant’s further, cautionary point concerning shame – that it can have a destructive effect on a child’s personality, including both her personality in the ordinary sense and in Kant’s special, moral sense of the word. If educators cause a pupil to feel shame often, Kant believes the child will not “dare to ask for anything”; rather this child “conceals its disposition and always appears different from what it is, instead of being allowed to say everything frankly” (Kant, 2007: 9:465). The acquisition of moral personality, in one sense, happens gradually: it requires that a pupil grasp and articulate reasons for action until she attains a proficiency in acting independently on the basis of reasons.11 Because reasons for action are not externally observable, this learning process requires the child to share her reasons with her teacher honestly and openly; otherwise progress toward mature moral agency will not be made.12 In this way, Kant believes that people require help from one another to reach their capacity as human beings.13 In summary, shame only makes sense in connection with the inclinations to be honored and loved by others in one’s community; careful and limited use of shame in education provides a way to structure and direct these inclinations. The goal toward which these inclinations are to be directed is what Kant calls moralization, the formation of a disposition to act on the basis of the moral law. This being the case, shame must remain open to the guidance of reason and may only be employed in ways that enable the development of a child’s rationality and autonomy. 108

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Pleasure and not its absence, is also a feature of the moral life on the Kantian picture and is to be cultivated in the child. In the Pedagogy, he tells us that the “upright” person “is one who takes pleasure in willing” (Kant, 2007: 9:486). He goes on to say that children must learn to have inner aversion replace the external aversion to human beings or to divine punishment, to have self-estimation and inner worth replace the opinions of human beings, to have the inner value of actions and deeds replace words and emotions, understanding replace feeling, and joy and piety with good humor replace morose, timid, and gloomy devotion.14 The child is to be placed on a trajectory that will eventually enable her to take pleasure in a life structured by and committed to morality. Since an understanding of the moral law is necessary to this type of pleasure, to enjoy this the child must be able to act on the basis of the moral law. This is not something the child can be made to do because it is something that she can only do for herself; nevertheless, it will be beneficial if she is trained up to have emotions that incline her to take pleasure in action that conforms to morality. At an early stage, these sorts of desires and emotions will not yet have moral content, but they will be more likely than others to be replaced by desires and emotions that do. Finally, pleasure and friendship are integral features of Kant’s conception of the good life, contrary to the tradition of interpretation of Kant familiar in Schiller’s oft-mentioned joke (as quoted in Simmons, 1989: 85). There seem to be two points here: one is that Kant places an emphasis on enjoying oneself when that is compatible with duty and the other is that there is pleasure to be gained from doing one’s duty.15 With regard to the first, he advises that the child build friendships and prepare herself “for the sweetest enjoyment of life” (Kant, 2007: 9:484-5). With the second point in mind, he says that children “must be openhearted too, and as cheerful as the sun in their expressions. The cheerful heart alone is capable of rejoicing in the good” (Kant, 2007: 9:485). He adds that a “religion which makes the human heart gloomy is false” for the child must do her duty “with a cheerful heart and not out of constraint” (Kant, 2007: 9:485). Cheerfulness – that the child takes pleasure in willing the good – appears to be a sign that she is en route to acquiring moral personality.16 Kant also discusses cheerfulness in the Metaphysics of Morals, stating “what is not done with pleasure but merely as compulsory service has no inner worth for one who attends to his duty in this way” (Kant, 1996c: 6:484).

8.2 Grounding Character So far, I have argued that Kant’s account of the moral education of children takes seriously the formation of non-rational dispositions: he seems to think that bringing up children with virtues of a broadly Aristotelian kind will best prepare them to understand and act upon the moral law. This is a kind of character formation in the ordinary sense. Yet Kant explicitly describes the ‘grounding of character’ as something different from this. In what follows, I will explain what he means by the grounding of character and how it fits with the account of character formation described above. Kant refers to the grounding of character in both the Pedagogy and Anthropology; the idea has a slightly different meaning in each case.17 In the Pedagogy, he says: The first effort in moral education is the grounding of character. Character [Charakter] consists in the aptitude [Fertigkeit] of acting according to maxims. In the beginning these are school maxims and later maxims of humanity. In the beginning the child 109

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obeys laws. Maxims too are laws, but subjective ones; they originate from the human being’s own understanding. (Kant, 2007: 9:481) Here he is claiming that character consists in the ability to act on the basis of maxims, and it appears that these maxims do not have to be moral. Acting from maxims could mean acting on a kind of policy that is meant to apply in certain similar cases, rather than simply reacting to circumstance in a way that one does not think of as applying to other cases. What is important at this stage is that the child secure this ability and develop it into a kind of cognitive skill. This cognitive skill, or aptitude, is a cultivated proficiency in thinking and acting on the basis of rational maxims. Kant goes on to say, “if one wishes to form a character in children, it is very important to draw their attention to a certain plan in all things” (Kant, 2007: 9:481). Elsewhere, he says that rules “must be found in everything that is to cultivate the understanding” (Kant, 2007: 9:474-5). The acquisition of this aptitude requires practice and therefore has to be gradual.18 The point of having these rules and drawing the child’s attention to them is to provide an environment ideally suited to the development of her rational faculties and facility in acting on the basis of maxims. But how does an awareness of rules encourage this development? The rules Kant has in mind are those that admit of some form of rational justification, even if that rationality is at times only instrumental and comes in the form of a hypothetical imperative, since he regards hypothetical imperatives as belonging to practical reason.19 This is likely because hypothetical imperatives involve some assessment from the point of view of an agent about how best to achieve a given end. A given practice that is based on rules, along with the ends it will entail, will initially be set by the parent or educator; however, the justification for this practice will be within the rational grasp of the child once she reaches a requisite stage of cognitive maturity. An example of such a rule-based practice might include something as simple as speaking to others in a certain manner and tone of voice, because it demonstrates respect. This introduces the child to a certain end (showing respect for others); once they grasp this end, it will be possible for them to reflect on the various circumstances it might be relevant in, as well as other ways it might be achieved. This happens much in the way that a child may learn mathematics by rote, before grasping the basic mathematical principles involved and going on to develop new proofs. As mentioned above, other features of education (for example, games and what Kant calls physical education) provide the opportunity for the child to develop the sort of strength and resolution required to overcome immediate inclinations in order to achieve certain ends. These are skills necessary for and transferable to morality. This is consistent with Kant’s description of character in the Anthropology as a kind of resoluteness and ability to consistently act on the basis of principles, whether good or otherwise. But simply to have a character signifies that property of the will by which the subject binds himself to definite practical principles that he has prescribed to himself irrevocably by his own reason. Although these principles may sometimes indeed be false and incorrect, nevertheless the formal element of the will in general, to act accordingly to firm principles (not to fly off hither and yon, like a swarm of gnats) has something precious and admirable in it. (Kant, 2006: 7:292) Here, Kant is indeed praising the ability to simply stick to one’s principles, whether they are good or bad. He goes on to commend Sulla’s “firm maxims” and “strength of soul”, despite the 110

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fact that he “arouses disgust” through the violence of his maxims (Kant, 2006: 7:293). This praise is qualified, however. He attributes to Sulla “strength of soul” not “goodness of soul”, and claims that both must be found together to constitute “greatness of soul” (Kant, 2006: 7:293). He goes on to say that “character requires maxims that proceed from reason and morally-practical principles” (Kant, 2006: 7:293). Here he is not entirely consistent in his usage of the term ‘character’ (in German, Charakter). Nevertheless, it is not difficult to make sense of what he means against the backdrop of themes he consistently emphasizes throughout his practical philosophy. As in the Pedagogy, the goal of education is the formation of a disposition toward morality, or rational, free, and moral agency. Resoluteness is important and praiseworthy because it is a necessary condition for this, since morality requires an agent to understand and articulate maxims, and then restrain and redirect her desires in order to act on them. Kant seems to have something like this in mind when he describes the grounding of character the second time, in the Anthropology. One may also assume that the grounding of character is like a kind of rebirth, a certain solemnity of making a vow to oneself […]. Education, examples, and teaching generally cannot bring about this firmness and persistence in principles gradually, but only, as it were, by an explosion [….]; the grounding of character, however, is absolute unity of inner principle of conduct as such. (Kant, 2006: 7:294) In the context of this paragraph, the grounding of character entails a decisive commitment to the moral law and self-perfection. Unlike the account in the Pedagogy, it has a distinctly moral flavor. In this way, it closely resembles the phenomenon Kant describes in the Religion as the change of heart, and it amounts to the same thing. This change of heart, or acquiring of a fundamental predisposition to the good, involves an ability to know and accurately judge the moral worth of maxims. Kant says in the Religion, that “[t]his predisposition to the good is cultivated in no better way than by just adducing the example of good people […] and by allowing our apprentices in morality to judge the impurity of certain maxims on the basis of the incentives actually behind their actions. And so the predisposition gradually becomes an attitude of mind”.20 This is how Kant approaches the education of children in the moral catechism of the Doctrine of the Method of Ethics, toward the end of the Metaphysics of Morals. Here, the “teacher elicits from the pupil’s reason, by questioning, what he wants to teach him” (Kant, 1996c: 6:480). By asking a series of careful questions and suggesting possible answers, the teacher encourages the pupil to see what her duty is and that dutiful action is what makes one worthy of happiness. Similar to the way in which encouraging people to think clearly may help them to see how conclusions follows from premises, the teacher makes the child aware of and attentive to an innate “rule and instruction” that lies in “reason alone” (Kant, 1996c: 6:481). The child is meant to see that practical reason demands purity of maxims and that the moral law is the principle on which all pure (moral) maxims are based.21 This complements the way that good habituation is meant to prepare the child for the change of heart, as argued above, and it encourages the child to stick to the correct, moral principles. She is encouraged to develop selfcontrol and take pleasure in willing the right sort of things, making it more probable that she will in time undergo the change of heart and choose to act on the moral law. Similarly, the method of the moral catechism brings her to understand the demands of practical reason and to separate maxims of morality from maxims of self-love. If she understands the nature of morality, it will be more probable that she will in time undergo the change of heart and choose to act on the moral law, since moral understanding is a necessary condition for moral action. 111

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Of course, as Kant says, no amount of education can ultimately bring about this change; it is a commitment made on the part of the agent herself. The purpose of education is to place an individual in an ideal position to make this commitment by encouraging her to think, control her feelings, understand maxims, and act consistently on the basis of maxims. This is to be done through discipline and physical education, the careful use of shame and the inclinations to honor, and the cultivation of pleasure in willing, among other things. These things facilitate the grounding of character in the second, moral sense: the better an individual can think, control her feelings, understand maxims, and act on the basis of them, the more likely she will be to first, grasp the moral law, and then make the decision to act on it.

8.3 The Moral Value of Habit It is helpful to reflect on what Kant says about habit and moral aptitude in light of this account of moral education and the grounding of character. He typically uses one of three terms to refer to the idea of habit at various points in his practical philosophy: Angewohnheit, Fertigkeit, and Denkungsart. In what follows, I focus on the first two terms and offer a reconstruction of his account of habit and moral aptitude in an attempt to clarify his picture of these features of moral psychology.22 In the Metaphysics of Morals, he contrasts habit with moral aptitude, stipulating that only the latter may count as virtuous. An aptitude [Fertigkeit] (habitus) is a facility in acting and a subjective perfection of choice. – But not every such facility is a free aptitude (habitus libertatis); for if it is a habit [Angewohnheit] (assuetudo), that is, a uniformity in action that has become a necessity through frequent repetition, it is not one that proceeds from freedom, and therefore not a moral aptitude [moralische Fertigkeit]. [….] Only such an aptitude can be counted as virtue. (Kant, 1996c: 6:407) The reason why he says here that only aptitude, and not habit, can count as virtuous is that only aptitude involves choice on the part of the agent. Here habit is identified as an unthinking pattern of action resulting from frequent repetition of that action. He believes that habits of this kind typically restrict one’s freedom: in the Anthropology he says, “habit [Angewohnheit] deprives even good actions of their moral worth because it impairs the freedom of the mind” (Kant, 2006: 7:149). In the Pedagogy, he even says that children should not be allowed to develop any habits. The more habits [Angewohnheiten] one has, the less he is free and independent. It is the same with the human being as with all the other animals: they always retain a certain propensity for that to which they were accustomed early. The child must therefore be prevented from getting accustomed to anything; he must not be allowed to develop any habits. (Kant, 2007: 9:463) This would seem to suggest that Kant is opposed to the development of even virtuous habits understood in the broadly Aristotelian sense. However, he is likely thinking that the more propensities one has that lead one to behave in ways that one has not consciously considered, the less one is in control of one’s behavior. It is also important to consider that what reads as 112

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‘habit’ in English is a translation of the German ‘Angewohnheit’, which connotes a sense of artificiality, as in a mannerism or unthinking routine. Neither the English nor the German typically express one’s inner character as a free and conscious moral agent, and these features are central to Kant’s understanding of moral agency. I call this unthinking habit: it is Kant’s first conception of habit and it is not conducive to the formation of moral character. However, this does not mean that all habits or Angewohnheiten are bad. As I have argued above, discipline and physical education of the child are about a kind of habit formation and are highly desirable according to Kant. Furthermore, the parent is to encourage the healthy development of certain dispositions in the child, such as the inclination to honor and a tendency to take pleasure in willing the right things. These will be a product of the choice of an external agent, the child’s parent or teacher, and as such do not entail a conscious choice on the part of the child to shape herself in a certain way. So, we could not praise a child who does what is good merely as a result of this education. Nevertheless, the purpose of this education is to prepare the child to think and act independently and eventually morally, by preventing inclinations damaging to this from cropping up, as well as by encouraging the development of her mental faculties and self-control. Since self-control and a certain mental acuity are necessary for moral agency, insofar as certain habits encourage these things, they are of positive moral value for Kant. I call this external moral habit: it is Kant’s second conception of habit and it is conducive to the formation of moral character. However, it is not sufficient for attributions of moral worth, since the child does not yet understand the moral law or choose it as the ground of her actions. Kant has a third conception of habit (here using the term ‘habit’ broadly), which I call mere aptitude, since it involves a cultivated facility in acting on the basis of maxims given to an agent by herself, though those maxims are not yet moral. ‘Aptitude’ is an untroubled translation of the German ‘Fertigkeit’ and implies a skill or proficiency, a typically positive capability often consciously acquired. This should be considered a form of habit because it is acquired through time and training, much like habits in the standard, Aristotelian sense. However, unlike habit in the standard sense which in the first instance shapes the direction of one’s desires, the Kantian sense of (mere) aptitude shapes the direction of one’s thoughts. It is a distinctly intellectual account of habit and a natural precondition for an account of moral character which requires an agent to think and act according to moral maxims. In addition to the above passage from the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant uses the term ‘aptitude’ in the earlier cited passage on the grounding of character from the Pedagogy, where he says the first effort in moral education is the grounding of character: “[c]haracter consists in the aptitude [Fertigkeit] of acting according to maxims. In the beginning these are school maxims and later maxims of humanity” (Kant, 2007: 9:481).23 Here aptitude is necessary for the acquisition of character even in the basic, not yet moral sense. Character cannot be attained through a process of unthinking habituation: it lies in the ability to think and act according to maxims. Mere aptitude is a proficiency in thinking and acting on the basis of maxims in general, namely hypothetical imperatives and not necessarily the categorical imperative, or moral law. So, while mere aptitude is a necessary condition for moral aptitude, it does not have independent moral value. Moral aptitude (moralische Fertigkeit) is Kant’s fourth conception of habit and is necessary for moral character in the full sense. Kant defines moral aptitude as something that can be counted as virtuous because it proceeds from freedom (Kant, 1996c: 6:407). Here, he has in mind how moral maxims are grounded in the moral law and yet subjective because they are products of an agent’s autonomy in the sense described in the Groundwork.24 Moral aptitude is a cultivated proficiency in thinking and acting according to rational and moral maxims. It is different from both unthinking habit and external moral habit because it includes an active cognitive 113

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component on the part of the agent. It is different from mere aptitude because it is grounded in moral maxims. So, actions proceeding from moral aptitude qualify for ascriptions of moral worth. However, like mere aptitude it is acquired through time and training and entails a tendency to think (and act) in a certain way. Moral aptitude is a habit in the way of thought. It therefore provides a distinctly intellectual account of the concept of habit. These four conceptions of habit trace a path of steady increase in thoughtfulness, from a state of unthinking, to principles given to one by another (for example, one’s parent), to principles given to one by oneself, and finally to principles given by the moral law. It seems reasonable to assume that when a parent encourages the development of external moral habit, the intention would be that these dispositions remain in the child through to and likely throughout her adult years. Kant may have this in mind when he says in the Anthropology that “love of honor is the constant companion of virtue” (Kant, 2006: 7:257). So this habit formation should have a lasting impact that is conducive to moral action. Though this habit formation should have a lasting impact conducive to moral action, Kant does not spell out precisely how this might work, after the individual has attained the ability to think and act on the basis of moral maxims. One way it might work, which is consistent with his idea of moral worth, is that it would make it less difficult to act on the basis of the moral law and therefore more probable that an agent would consistently do so. Let us stipulate that Kant’s definition of moral worth requires, first, that an agent make a decision to act on the basis of the moral law and, second, that the moral law be a sufficient condition for the agent’s performance of that action. If this is the case, the agent would have to be willing and capable of acting on the basis of the moral law under even difficult circumstances. This would rule out actions that proceed from inclination from ascriptions of moral worth, including even habits that incline one to act in a way that conforms to morality, unless those actions are ultimately grounded in a moral maxim. However, if an agent could know in advance that cultivating certain inclinations and working to root out or diminish the force of others could make it more probable that she would choose to act on the moral law in future circumstances, it would be a good thing to do this. Even if this meant she were acting on inclination in these future circumstances and so not in a way that merits moral worth, it would, all things considered, be better if she were inclined to act in a way that is consistent with morality than in a way that is not (though, of course, thoughtful moral action remains the ideal). In this sense, there are two types of agent: here we would be dealing with an agent who may have undergone the change of heart, but not permanently, in contrast to an agent who has undergone a permanent change of heart. Since the latter (perhaps hypothetical) agent would always act on the correct, moral principle, she would not need to worry about taking these kinds of precautions. (Of course, it would seem unwise to assume that one could never be subject to such a lapse, or reversion of character.) This seems to fall under the duty of one’s own perfection when Kant says in the Metaphysics of Morals that “[n] atural perfection is the cultivation of any capacities whatever for furthering ends set forth by reason” (Kant, 1996c: 6:392). He says also to “cultivate your powers of mind and body so that they are fit to realize any ends you might encounter” (Kant, 1996c: 6:392). So it looks as though the habituation of one’s early life retains positive moral value in the life of the adult, even after an individual has grasped the moral law and become capable of acting on the basis of it. This is also in spite of the fact that action proceeding from inclination does not have moral worth.

8.4 Kantian Autonomy and the Influence of Inclinations I began by setting out to understand Kant’s account of the moral education of children and the grounding of character, primarily as discussed in the Pedagogy and Anthropology. I argued that in 114

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this account Kant places great importance on the formation of character and the development of a variety of non-cognitive habits in the pupil. The predominant purpose of developing these habits is to encourage the child to think and control her feelings, so that she may be best prepared to understand and choose to act on the moral law. The commitment to a life of self-perfection based on the moral law is understood by Kant as the change of heart or grounding of character; it requires an adeptness in understanding and acting on maxims, and in particular, self-control and resolve to carry through on one’s commitment. This selfperfection is partially constituted and supported by habit. In light of this, I revisited Kant’s comments on habit (Angewohnheit) and aptitude (Fertigkeit), offering a reconstruction of these concepts that I believe to be more consistent with dominant features of his work, particularly with what he says about moral education and the grounding of character. It turns out that Kant has a lot to say about moral character in the ordinary sense and places significant moral value on the role of habits and other non-rational features of human nature in his moral psychology. This should be considered alongside the idea one at times gets from Kant that in the context of moral decision making, the agent is always or at least regularly making a choice between inclination and the moral law as though they were equally weighted motives. For example, in the Religion he says: “whatever his previous behavior may have been, whatever the natural causes influencing him, whether they are inside or outside them, his action is yet free and not determined through any of these causes; hence the action can and must always be judged as an original exercise of his power of choice” (Kant, 1998: 6:41). I would like to suggest that this idea does not accurately capture what Kant has in mind in passages like this. Given the evidence I have presented above, it seems clear that the training of one’s inclinations has positive moral value for Kant. In light of this, I suggest that he understands the moral law as available to the agent as a possible motive constant throughout all circumstances, whereas the strength of various inclinations as possible motives will vary depending on the experience of the agent. On Kant’s account, the agent will be free to act on either the moral law or inclination in any circumstance and is held responsible accordingly. However, the strength of these possible motives relative to one another will differ. The agent may exercise further self-mastery (autonomy) here in advance by modifying the strength of various inclinations that lead away from or toward action that conforms to the moral law. This means that the project of character formation, which entails the cultivation of one’s inclinations to conform with moral ends, is possible on the Kantian picture. Though it may not directly increase the strength of the moral law as a possible motive, it can adjust the strength of contrary inclinations. And as I have argued, this can make moral decisions and hence the moral life less difficult (and more pleasant) for the agent. It can also make it more likely that an agent’s future action will conform to morality, which is still a (comparatively) good thing even when it means that action does not come with an ascription of moral worth. Some inclinations or feelings may also serve an epistemic function and enable the moral law to be manifest to an agent more clearly in the context of decision. These are some of the reasons why Kant sees the cultivation of one’s faculties as a duty (Kant, 1996c: 6:391-2). There is more to be said about how this account of habit can be integrated with the account of moral worth from the Groundwork. My present aim has been to show that this surprisingly sophisticated account is present in Kant. If it can be integrated with the rest of his practical philosophy (which I believe it can), it may go a long way in demonstrating that his broader moral psychology is much more compelling than has otherwise been thought. 115

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Notes 1 Regarding Aristotle, I have in mind his idea that full virtue requires phronēsis in addition to virtue of character, and that virtue of character requires a good education. The latter point is discussed, for example, in the Nicomachean Ethics (the Ethics) 2.1, where he emphasizes the importance of acquiring the right sort of habits from youth (Aristotle, 1999: 1103b22–25). See also Ethics 10.9, where he says, “someone who is to be good must be finely brought up and habituated” (Aristotle, 1999: pp. 1180a15–16). The former point is discussed in Ethics 6.13 where he says, “each of us seems to possess his type of character to some extent by nature; for in fact we are just, brave, prone to temperance, or have another feature, immediately from birth. But still we look for some further condition to be full goodness, and we expect to possess these features in another way. For these natural states belong to children and to beasts as well, but without understanding they are evidently harmful” (Aristotle, 1999: 1144b4–10). He then says of phronēsis, “we cannot be fully good without phronēsis, or posses phronēsis without virtue of character” (Aristotle, 1999: 1144b32). Of course, there remain important differences between Aristotle’s and Kant’s conceptions of virtue and character. On Kant’s side, this difference most notably involves the relation between inclination and moral worth, since he allows that moral worth can be attributed to someone with inclinations that do not harmonize with morality, as in the case of the philanthropist of Groundwork I, who acts strictly from duty without any inclination to do the good (Kant, 1996a: 4:398 – all references to Kant’s work cite the volume and page numbers of the German Academy of Sciences edition of his collected work, Kant’s gesammelte Schriften). Though this is a departure from Aristotle, since Aristotle would say this person lacks complete moral character, it is not necessarily a departure from common sense, since many of us may share Kant’s intuition that moral worth can be attributed to dutiful action in the absence of favourable inclinations. 2 When Kant discusses the grounding of character in the Anthropology, he says there are few people who have attempted to ground their character (something that happens in a moment of choice, the making of a solemn “vow to oneself”) before the age of 30; so, the formation of one’s character is clearly something that can continue into adulthood (Kant, 2006: 7:294). 3 For the grounding of character, see both (Kant, 2006: 7:294) and (Kant, 2007: 9:481). 4 Rink was a student of Kant and assembled these lectures on Kant’s behalf (Louden, 2007: 434). 5 For the moral law as an a priori principle or “fact” of reason, see (Kant, 1996b: 5:31). 6 See Kant (1998: 6:26). Humanity’s vices he calls vices of culture and they involve the drive of human beings to gain ascendency over one another (Kant, 1998: 6:27). The disposition to personality has no vice, since it refers to the ideal moral disposition itself (Kant, 1998: 6:27-8). 7 (Kant, 2007: 9:455); slight alteration of the translation on my part. 8 (Kant, 2007: 9:475 and 9:455). This progression from physical to practical education parallels the dispositions of the human being that he outlines in the Religion (animality, humanity, and personality, as above) (Kant, 1998: 6:26). 9 “Culture consists particularly in the exercise of one’s mental powers. Therefore, parents must give their children opportunity for such exercise” (Kant, 2007: 9:466). 10 Kant says at one point that shame is something given to the person by nature “so that he betrays himself as soon as he lies” (Kant, 2007: 9:478). As is well known, Kant is preoccupied with lying as a fundamental wrong. So, we might expect he would say something like this, which, taken explicitly, would restrict the use of shame to cases of lying. Nevertheless, it would be difficult to believe that he thought no serious violation of other rules could be subject to shame. Further, concerning knowledge of the moral law, shame would seem appropriate at certain points before the child grasps the moral law: e.g., if she were to violate the rule “do not steal from other children” while understanding that it is a rule, though not that it proceeds from the moral law. Additionally, the love of honour has broader application than lying, and shame is closely associated with honour, so it would seem shame could be more broadly applied as well. 11 There is a tension here. On one hand, the cognitive facility that must be in place to support moral personality may be acquired gradually. Yet, on the other hand, there may be a point in time at which moral personality is acquired and before which the agent did not have it (cf. the change of heart in (Kant, 1998: 6:46-7) or the explosion and resolution expressed in (Kant, 2006: 7:294). 12 I here set aside the problem of the unknowability of maxims and assume the pupil may at least approximate knowledge of her reasons for action to an effective degree. 13 “Animals fulfill their vocation automatically and unknowingly. The human being must first seek to reach his, but this cannot happen if he does not even have a concept of his vocation. It is also

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14

15

16

17 18 19 20

21 22

23 24

completely impossible for the individual to reach the vocation [Bestimmung]” (Kant, 2007: 9:445). Destiny, purpose, and assignment are more literal translations of the German Bestimmung, translated by Louden as “vocation”, which I also take here to imply “capacity”. (Kant, 2007: 9:493). The sort of pleasure he has in mind here might be better understood by looking to what he says in the Metaphysics of Morals: “[p]leasure that must precede one’s observance of the law in order for one to act in conformity with the law is pathological and one’s conduct follows the order of nature; but pleasure that must be preceded by the law in order to be felt is in the moral order” (Kant, 1996c: 6:378). The idea of moral pleasure here is itself a development of the earlier idea of moral feeling from the Groundwork (Kant, 1996a: 4:460). The first point is also supported by the fact that Kant allows for the enjoyment of things indifferent to morality (e.g. enjoying either wine or beer with dinner, according to one’s taste); he says that to act as though all such actions were relevant to morality would be “fantastically virtuous” and “turn the government of virtue into tyranny” (Kant, 1996c: 6:409). Robert Louden points out that the sense of cheerfulness Kant is invoking here is “a strong one, and it is clearly more than emotional window-dressing”. He adds that cheerfulness has a transcendental dimension because it results from the awareness of one’s freedom having been restored from a state of dependence on natural impulse (2000: 52). He also covers it in Part One of the Religion, where it is described in terms of a moral commitment, or “change of heart” (see Kant, 1998: 6:44-52 in particular). In one sense, though admittedly not in another, see note 11. Before introducing hypothetical and categorical imperatives as the two forms a practical rule may take, he says a “practical rule is always a product of reason because it prescribes action as a means to an effect, which is its purpose” (Kant, 1996b: 5:20). (Kant, 1998: 6:48). Kant says this in the Religion, immediately after saying that “a human being’s moral education must begin, not with an improvement of mores, but with the transformation of his attitude of mind and the establishment of a character […]” (Kant, 1998: 6:48). This might appear to be at odds with the idea that this disposition can be cultivated; however, he concludes this sentence by saying: “[…] although it is customary to proceed otherwise and to fight vices individually, while leaving their universal root undisturbed” (Kant, 1998: 6:48). The point here seems to be that education should be directed towards establishing this character, and this is something a teacher can prepare her pupil for by helping the pupil understand what a pure maxim looks like and in doing so, what kind of maxim constitutes good character. See: “Fragment of a moral catechism” (Kant, 1996c: 6:480-484). I consider Denkungsart as a kind of aptitude and do not go into further detail, since in short, the two are very similar. Denkungsart is typically translated as “way of thinking”, “manner of thinking”, “habit in the way of thinking”, or something similar. It is by itself morally neutral and can have good and bad manifestations. The most significant difference, perhaps, between Fertigkeit and Denkungsart is that the former denotes a kind of skill or facility and hence itself already implies a term of praise, whereas Denkungsart tends to be neutral in this respect. The passage from the Metaphysics of Morals that I am referring to is found in Kant (1996c: 6:407). “Autonomy of the will is the property of the will by which it is a law to itself (independently of any property of the objects of volition). This principle of autonomy is, therefore: to choose only in such a way that the maxims of your choice are included as universal law in the same volition” (Kant, 1996a: 4:440).

References Aristotle (1999) Nicomachean Ethics 2nd Edition. Translated by Irwin, T. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co. Kant, I. (1996a) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Translated by Gregor, M., in Gregor, M. (ed.) Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. (1996b) The Critique of Practical Reason. Translated by Gregor, M., in Gregor, M. (ed.) Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. (1996c) The Metaphysics of Morals. Translated by Gregor, M., in Gregor, M. (ed.) Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Carl Hildebrand Kant, I. (1998) Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. Translated by Wood, A. and di Giovanni, G. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. (2006) Anthropology from A Pragmatic Point of View. Translate by Louden, R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. (2007) Lectures on Pedagogy. Translated by Louden, R., in Louden, R. (ed.) Anthropology, History, and Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Louden, R. (2007) ‘Introduction to Kant’s Lectures on Pedagogy’, in Louden, M. and Zöller, G. (eds.) Anthropology, History, and Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Louden, R. (2000) Kant’s Impure Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Simmons, K. (1989) ‘Kant on Moral Worth’, History of Philosophy Quarterly, 6 (1), pp. 85–100. Williams, B. (1973) Problems of the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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PART III

Habit and Modern Philosophy

9 THE DISPOSITIONAL ACCOUNT OF HABITS AND EXPLANATION OF MORAL ACTION IN F.H. BRADLEY Dina Babushkina

9.1 In Support of the Habit Hypothesis It is tempting to interpret F.H. Bradley1 as suggesting that one’s moral goal in life is the development of a strong character. This interpretation would draw a picture of an idealised (perhaps, old) man who had achieved practical wisdom and inspires admiration. He would be in full control of one’s desires, have a profound understanding of life and would be able to advise in situations of difficult moral choice. On this view, moral life is about self-mastery, taming one’s natural self, subjecting one’s desires and inclination to the considerations of the good. Having a moral self, in turn, is a matter of having a good character, or, in the other words, a process of the development of good habits and getting rid of bad ones. The Aristotelian overtones are obvious. Bradley was very familiar with Aristotle’s ethics as it was a part of the philosophy curriculum at Oxford2. The influence of the ancient Greek philosopher on Bradley’s ethics is undeniable. It is, however, a matter of debate how and to what extent Bradley used his ideas. I will further refer to the interpretation of the moral self in Ethical Studies [hereafter – ES] in terms of character and habits as the habit hypothesis. It is especially tempting to interpret Bradley this way given the fact that it is in the spirit of the moral philosophy of many British Idealists to explicitly assign a key moral role to character and habits3. In the case of Bradley’s works, the references to character and habit are not plentiful (especially compared to the extent to which he discusses such concepts of will, desire, self, and ideal). However, he undeniably makes a number of claims in his ES4 that seem to hint towards the interpretation of his concept of moral self in terms of character and habits. The moral character is discussed on several occasions where the unity of the moral self is seemingly connected to one’s having a certain character and the unification of the self with a process of habitualization. I will briefly review this evidence now. One of the first things the reader learns from ES is the importance of habits for our selfimage, or self-perception. Having introduced the idea of “common consciousness” of a “plain” (Bradley, 1962: 9), “unphilosophical mind”5 (Bradley, 1962: 35), Bradley suggests that we seem to interpret our own moral personhood in terms of certain ways of doing things, certain habitual actions and certain principles of action that we accept. For me as an agent, habits constitute my identity; they reflect what I have made myself to be: DOI: 10.4324/9781315186436-13

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A formed man, if healthy, feels himself to be what he is; he is ‘made’; he has certain principles, certain habits, certain ways. He has, in a word, a certain self. (Bradley, 1962: 16) Bradley reaffirms this later in the book, for example, saying that: “The character shows itself in every trifling detail of life; we can not go in to amuse ourselves while we leave it outside the door with our dog; it is ourself, and our moral self” (Bradley, 1962: 217). Next we learn that there is such a thing as “the habituated self” (e.g. Bradley, 1962: 53–55, 234), which is divided into something we commonly refer to as good and bad selves. The good and bad selves are also a part of our self-image, the result of categorizing our own behaviour with reference to what is considered to be good. The good self is a concept that refers to the repetitive automatic identification of the will with good, i.e. choosing what is good, while the bad self refers to the identification with (i.e. preferring) the opposite to what is good. In plain words, a habituated self—good or bad—consist of habits, resulting from preceding repetitive actions (Bradley, 1962: 303–305): The existence of two selves in a man, a better self which takes pleasure in the good, and a worse self which makes for the bad, is a fact which is too plain to be denied. […] I feel at times identified with the good, as though all my self were in it;6 there are certain good habits and pursuits … which are natural to me, and in which I feel at home. And then again there are certain bad habits and pursuits … in which perhaps I feel no less at home, in which also I feel myself to be myself; and I feel that, when I am good and when I am bad, I am not the same man but quite different, and the world to the one self seems quite another thing to what it does to the other. … In this strife I know that the good is the true self, it is certainly more myself than the other; and yet I can not say that the other is not myself, and when I enter the lists against it, it is at my own breast that I lay my lance in rest. (Bradley, 1962: 276-77) The good habituated self is also referred to by Bradley as “principled self”7 (e.g. Bradley, 1962: 54) or “systematized” self (Bradley, 1962: 53). The self is principled because the formation of good habits—which are, ultimately, actions directed towards the good— involves the application of a moral principle to prefer what is good despite the present desire for the opposite. The systematized self consists of the successful resolutions of experienced moral conflicts, i.e. of choices made on the considerations of the moral good. Opposite to it, “the bad self” consists of choices that the agent judges to be wrong and reasons for such choices. As long as these reasons figure in the agent’s deliberation, they constitute the possibility of action. The development of good habits, aims at the exclusion of these reasons from moral deliberation. In Bradley’s own words: Morality then is a process of realization, and it has two sides or elements which can not be separated; (1) the position of an ideal self, and the making of that actual in the will; (2) the negation, which is inherent in this, the making unreal (not by annihilation but transformation) of the for ever unsystematized natural material, and the bad self. (Bradley, 1962: 234) Habits are the means to systematize one’s self in the sense that they represent categories of right decisions for different types of moral choice. The psychological machinery of habitual moral 122

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decision making is different from non-habitual rational actions. In the latter case, when an agent is confronted with a choice, she is first deliberating on morally relevant reasons for each alternative. In the former case, she first checks whether the current dilemma is similar to any previously experienced situation. If it is, the present situation is brought under the same category and action is made based on the same reasons. The deliberation is required only when the present situation cannot be systematized, i.e. when the agent has not dealt with the same type of choice before and there is no ground for a habitual action. Bradley gives an example of an elderly man who is experiencing a sexual temptation for the first time but is trying to resist it (Bradley, 1962: 54). Since he has not experienced a conflict like this before, he has no relevant habit to rely upon for acting. As a result, his sexual desire has a motivational pull alongside the belief that abstaining is the right thing to do8. Doing what he considers to be right is a hard choice because he must first suppress the acute emotive state. This is why, according to Bradley “so far as the habituated self is both well systematized, and wide enough to cover possibilities, we are pretty safe” (Bradley, 1962: 53), however “the self we have habituated ourselves into is the only self to be counted on, and so none of us is quite safe (Bradley, 1962: 55). Another form of evidence for the importance of habits for the moral life of an individual comes from Bradley’s explanation of the development of a moral agent. We are not born with moral agency; it is developed via a complex process which includes habituation. The goal is to achieve such a psychological state when what is good appears as preferable by default while the belief in badness of an action comes to us as an immanent reason to avoid it. This process involves the internalization of moral ideals and concepts, the repetitive identification of one’s will with what is good and the repetitive denial to act upon one’s desire for what is opposite to good. Habituation lies at the heart of formation of good and bad selves. It consists in repeating a certain action or choice, reinforced by appraisal or punishment via the association with pleasure and pain: The self falls into bad habits the same way in which it falls into good ones. […] Apart from reflection, indulgence strengthens propensity, and, if repeated, forms habit; and, given the presence of positive conditions, and absence of checks, habit will pass into the class of act which produces it. It is a state of standing will … The self is made one with the bad by abiding habit and lasting idea. (Bradley, 1962: 295–296) Bradley equates the habituated self with one’s moral character. As such, the character is a set of choices and ways of acting, patterns of behavior that we identify with and feel one with9. Another important item of evidence in favour of the habit hypothesis is the fact that Bradley seems to equate the unification of the self (and becoming a person) and habitualization. For example, he says: The realization of the good in personal morality is the habituated will, the moral character of individuals. It is actual in the virtues of the heart, and those virtues are the habits which, embodying good acts of will, have become part of the man’s self, and which answer to the various sides of his station, or more generally to his various relations to the ideal. (Bradley, 1962: 234) Bradley suggests that the idea of habits is often thought to be an integral part to our image of a good person, i.e. someone to whom it is “natural to be good”. Such a person is thought to do 123

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what is right automatically, without reflection, without inner conflict. The thought of an action being morally good (or right) presents such a person with a sufficient reason for action. It is as natural for the moral person to see the good as internally motivating, as it is natural for some to see desires as internally motivating. “Second nature” (Bradley, 1962: 53, 218) is, of course, a metaphor. What Bradley, in fact, means is that moral character as a set of good habits results in automatic actions, that is to say, actions produced without immediate reflection or deliberation (Bradley, 1962: 217–218). This, however, does not turn moral actions into purely reflexive actions such as sneezing. All of this evidence points to the importance of habits to Bradley’s ethics. However, can we go as far as to claim that Bradley makes even stronger claim that moral self is reducible to the habituated self? Does Bradley indeed say that our moral goal is the development of a system of habits or a certain character? My answer is no. In what follows I will give my arguments against the habit hypothesis. I will show that admitting it represents a significant danger to Bradley’s moral theory, which I believe he avoids. I will reconstruct Bradley’s analysis of habit in terms of disposition and tendencies, upon which habits cannot be seen as properties of the self. I will suggest that the importance and significance of the concept of habit lies rather with action explanation than with the concept of the moral self.

9.2 Against the Habit Hypothesis There are several reasons to reject the habit hypothesis. The first hint can be found already at the very beginning of the first Essay “The Vulgar Notion of Responsibility…” where Bradley discusses self-sameness as a pre-condition for accountability and attribution of responsibility for an action. If one reduces the moral selfhood to a set (or system) of habits or a character, one must also accept that when habits change, a new personality is present. To have a different set of habits would amount to being a different person, at least from the moral point of view. However, Bradley claims that the change of character does not entail the change of the moral self. For him, to say that one’s character has changed is not the same as saying that one is a different person. The latter would constitute a ground for an exemption from blame and punishment, and this is hard to accept. Here is a quote from Bradley: We do say, ‘He is not the same man that he was,’ but always in another sense, to signify that the character or disposition of the person is altered. We never mean by it, ‘He is not the same person,’ strictly; and, if that were our meaning, then we (the non-theoretical) should also believe, as a consequence, that the present person could not rightly be made to answer for what (not his self, but) another self had done. If, when we say, ‘I did it,’ the I is not to be the one I, distinct from all other I’s; or if the one I, now here, is not the same I with the I whose act the deed was, then there can be no question whatever but that the ordinary notion of responsibility disappears. (Bradley, 1962: 5) Those advocating the habit hypothesis may argue that this quote signals an inconsistency in Bradley’s theory. It is possible that the apparent contradiction of his views eluded him. What is more likely, however, is that the habit hypothesis does not fit his overall view at all, and the error lies in the attempt to attribute this hypothesis to him in the first place. As I will show next, the error becomes obvious when we take a more analytic look at the concepts of character and habit themselves. 124

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9.3 Habits, Dispositions, and Tendencies Bradley defines character in terms of the habituated self and the habitual self in terms of habits. Habits are further analysed in terms of dispositions which, in turn, are explained via the concept of tendency. It is difficult to explain what, in Bradley’s view, are dispositions which are not also habits. They may be associations of ideas or physical conditions due to which a person is more likely to act in a certain way, but which have not resulted in a choice and repetitive action. For example, Bradley talks about “inborn disposition[s]” (Bradley, 1962: 171) or natural tendencies, by which he most likely means associations of ideas which do not result from a choice. Think of this hypothetical example that may help clarify Bradley’s point. We can imagine someone with a brain anomaly which, under certain conditions, is likely to cause violent behaviour. If this is known to us, we can say that the person has a disposition to be violent. However, despite the anomaly, this person has never done anything violent. Perhaps, the conditions were never right, or she is treated with a powerful drug that suppresses her emotions. Therefore, she is not in the habit of violent behaviour. To become a habit, what is merely a potential has to be realized in action. The difference between character and dispositions is more obvious. Dispositions can be said to form a character, when they are “not mere temper or inborn disposition, but the outcome of a series of acts of will” (Bradley, 1962: 217). For a disposition to pass as a character trait it must be a habit, that is to say, not a merely potential action but an occurring repetitive action, and this action must in some way result from agent’s free will. If a person—absent weakness of will—frequently reacts with violence on provocation, she is appropriately described as violent. Bradley sheds light on the concept of disposition in his “Definition of Will”. The talk of dispositions is placed in the context of the explanation of will as—in Bradley terms10—“a standing idea” that realises itself. This process, according to Bradley, underlines what he calls “ideo-motor action” (Bradley 1904, 19). Bradley’s goal is to explain the psychological mechanism by which a certain idea may result in an action without reference to the concepts of desire or conation, which from Bradley point of view, “even if usual in volition, cannot, if we respect the facts, be taken as essential and necessary” (Bradley 1904, 20). A belief has a motivational power when, as Bradley puts it, it is a “starting-point of some disposition” (Bradley, 1904: 22). Dispositions are, thus, crucial for the explanation of a deliberate action, such as a moral action. “The consequent passage of this special disposition into act is … the bridge which carries our idea over into reality” (Bradley, 1904: 22). A disposition is a standing tendency or an individual law. Given, that is, one of two connected elements, physical or psychical or again possessing both characters, a disposition is the tendency for the other element to appear in consequence (1904: 23). This definition is very important and needs explanation. The first thing to note is that disposition is a conditional11 of the form “if c, then x”12. To say that glass has a disposition to break is to say that it will break under certain conditions (for example, if a stone is thrown at it). To say that Sarah has a violent disposition is, for example, to say that she would react with violence, if provoked. Dispositional properties are potential properties that become occurrent under certain conditions. In this, Bradley agrees with philosophers like Goodman, who wrote that: “[T]o apply a dispositional predicate is to speak only of what can happen” (1983: 41). To say that class is breakable is not the same as to say that it is breaking. It may be breakable and never actually break. The same with Sarah: to say that she has a violent disposition is not the same as to say that she is being violent. 125

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Bradley further notes that dispositional properties are standing tendencies. They are tendencies because in the conditional “if c, then x”, x’s appearance under the conditions c is not a matter of necessity. We can say that x is often or almost always happens if c is present. We can say that our observations show that x regularly follows c. We can say that x persists (under c), but we cannot say that c entails x. It is not a matter of necessity that the glass will break, if I throw a stone at it. I think, however, that it is very likely, given that in most cases that I have witnessed, the glass indeed did break after the contact with a stone. However, we can think of possible scenarios in which it won’t: a stone may be too small, the glass maybe strong enough to withstand the contact etc. Likewise, it is not necessary that Sarah will react with violence if she is insulted. Those who know her may say that she most likely will, or that she always does. She does not have to. She may choose to let it go, walk away, or employ one of anger management techniques. Standing tendency—is a sort of statistical term, it means that there is a high probability that x will follow if c. Dispositions are formed via the mechanism of association13. More specifically, it is the principle of redintegration what explains why x tends to follow c. Redintegration is a term from cognitive psychology, and it is used to describe the situation when a whole representational unity is restored given the instance of a single part by means of the recollection of the missing elements that are associated with it. For redintegration to take place, there must be a bond between elements what merges them into one whole. This whole is then perceived as an individual unity in its own right. When an element of this unity is perceived, the imagination reproduces the remaining elements to recreate their unity. Say, I eat a cake and the idea of the cake gets associated with the satisfaction of eating it. The thought of a cake slice has formed a cognitive unity with being satisfied (see more Bradley, 1904: 23–25). Whenever I think about it, it is never just a thought of the cake. It is a thought of a “tasty cake” or “satisfying cake”. The second part of this unity, that is, the anticipated satisfaction, re-occurs and excites appetite. The more I act on this motivation, the stronger is my cake-eating habit. But this is so only for me. This may not be true for you. You may not have formed such an association and, thus, lack such a disposition. This is why it is an individual law14. It is clear enough that tendencies are not proper laws but rather regularities or heuristic rules. When attributing a disposition to a person, we are making an educated guess about the way she is likely to behave, given our knowledge of her previous actions15: “It is convenient—Bradley says—when facts are and have been such and such, to have a short way of saying what we infer that in the future they may be.” (Bradley, 1916: 313).

9.4 Fictions It is common to speak about habits as if a person owned them, as if they were actual properties of the self much the same way as shape and mass are properties of a body. From this it is easy to conclude that the moral self is in fact made by habits: a good person is the person of good habits, a brave person is a person who is in the habit of acting bravely, the healthy person is the one who has healthy habits, etc. Hence the belief that cultivating certain habits, i.e. growing strong in certain character traits results in the achievement of one’s moral goals. On a dispositional account of habit, the belief that habits are actual properties must rest on the assumption that dispositional properties are themselves real properties. From the ontological point of view, this claim is hard to support, since as Goodman says, dispositional qualities “strike us … as rather ethereal” (1983: 40). An alternative approach is to blur the difference between dispositional and categorical properties and to claim that all properties are essentially dispositional.16 Bradley’s dispositional account of habits points to a yet different ontology, at least as long as dispositional properties of a person and not of a thing are concerned. 126

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“A Defence of Phenomenalism in Psychology” sheds more light on this question. Here is a quote: [T]he dispositions are simply statements about the happening of events within the phenomenal series—assertions as to what will happen, or rather would happen, under certain conditions more or less unknown. They … are tendencies or individual laws. Certainly if phenomenalism professed to know the ultimate truth about these dispositions and in the end really to understand them, it would end in failure and would also be quite false to itself. But, on the other hand, professing entire ignorance and the completest indifference as to their real nature, it uses these tendencies as facts, and in this is follows the example of every limited science. The dispositions are not phenomena, but they are legitimate fictions used to explain the happening of phenomena. (Bradley, 1900: 29–30) What Bradley in effect says here is that, as far as psychological explanations are concerned, dispositional properties are not phenomena, they are instrumentally justified fictions. Saying this, Bradley denies the reality17 of dispositional properties. When we ascribe someone a property of being violent this does not imply that the person is, in fact, violent. Dispositions are appearances or phenomena; they are reducible to the facts about our cognitive abilities that construct how things appear to us from sense data and imagination. I will not attempt to reconstruct Bradley’s notoriously complicated metaphysics here, but it is important to note that dispositions are mind-dependent in the sense that they “have no being except in the world of thought” (Bradley, 1916: 383). As a result, saying that someone is courageous is the same as saying that this is how we perceive this person or how this person appears to us. Having a dispositional property, like being courageous or violent, is not a matter of any natural nor psychological fact. Dispositions are pragmatic concepts and are fully explained by their use: the appeal to dispositional properties plays a role in our explanation of a person’s actions. As a result, these properties are not possessed, in the strict sense, by a person but ascribed to her; they are a part of a third person narrative about her. “[W]e have no right to speak of dispositions at all, if we turn them into actual qualities of the soul”, concludes Bradley (1916: 313). Thus, “Sarah has a violent disposition” amounts to something like this “a property of being violent fits the best my observation of Sarah’s previous behaviour”. Thus, habits, as long as they are understood as dispositions, are fictions or constructs for the sake of action explanation: A disposition … in psychology is a mere way of stating that when some things have happened there will be a “tendency” for other things to happen—we may expect them to happen, that is, under favourable conditions—and, so far as these tendencies are reduced to rule, they are used properly to explain the occurrence of particular facts. (Bradley, 1900: 34) This forces us to re-think the semantics: “Sarah has the habit X” is metaphorical; it is more correct to say “I ascribe the X habit to Sarah” or “I project the habit X on Sarah”. Under this interpretation, “Sarah is in habit of shouting at her children when they disobey” should be understood something like this “I have seen Sarah frequently shouting at her children when they disobeyed, and this gives me a good reason to believe that she will do the same next time they are naughty”. Notice the shift from the first person or agent’s perspective (that is, from 127

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owing or possessing habits) to third person or observer’s perspective (attributing habits to someone else based on the observed history of her behaviour).

9.5 Moral Danger of Habits The habit hypothesis creates a number of problems for Bradley’s ethics. For one, if the habit hypothesis were true, one would expect Bradley to develop some sort of virtue theory, and to give a list of morally good habits that one ought to develop or character traits (virtues) that comprise a good person. No such theory or list can be found in ES. Moreover, if one accepts the habit hypothesis, one has to also accept what follows from it. Some of these consequences are problematic for a moral theorist like Bradley. Pushing the habit hypothesis too hard comes at a price. The alleged moral value of habituation lies in its systematization of a person’s cognitive and non-cognitive motivational factors in order to prevent the possibility of the choice of reasons other than the moral good. Whatever desires, beliefs, hopes, or aspirations a person may happen to have, habits are there to ensure the outcome of the will. The other side of habituation, however, is that the self may become rigid, inflexible, and there is the risk of having no room for moral growth and development. The risk is that habits will develop on the basis of biased and unjust decisions that may bring harm to others. If habituation is all we require from a moral agent, we leave no means for the revision of outdated or erroneous moral convictions. Even though this concern makes sense, it might not be strong enough to make a case against of habits. There is a chance that habits may change through rational deliberation, enlightenment, due to a powerful emotional experience, or, perhaps, by getting into a habit of critically reviewing one’s habits and beliefs. Another reason why habits can be seen as morally problematic is because they are automatic actions that require no immediate deliberation; they are, after all, unreflective repetitions of an act. This is problematic because habits start to look too much like reflexive actions like breathing or a nervous tic18. The way we speak about habits often has this connotation. Actions that are done out of habit are often contrasted with deliberate actions19. The trouble is that an agent is not commonly considered responsible for purely automatic actions like a tic. Equating moral self with a set of habits, and, as a result, moral action with a habitual action, runs a risk of stripping moral action of what, in the opinion of many, makes it a moral action—its ability to be a ground for attribution of responsibility and reactive attitudes such as blame, praise, respect, hate. Moreover, habits often result in an action before we are even able to catch ourselves acting, let alone deliberate about consequences and reasons. Thus, they seem to hinder any possibility of deliberate action, which is considered an important moral ability, i.e. the ability to see morally relevant considerations as reasons for action. Bradley himself, however, does not think that habits pose that kind of problem. Habits are automatic actions in the sense that once we can say that habit is formed (i.e. an association between a situation of choice and a course of action has been created), in every subsequent situation in the same circumstances, we do not have to deliberate because we can reapply the results of the deliberation we employed in the initial situation. We are responsible for allowing the formation of certain habits, i.e. for the choices that lead to the formation of the association between certain types of choices and action. In Bradley’s words, refection and conscious decision preceded the formation of a habit, and thus habitual action is just a repetition of what was once decided. Bradley writes: [a] mistake rests on the … misapprehension of the cardinal truth that what is natural can not be moral, nor what is moral natural. ‘What is natural does not reflect, and without reflection there is no morality. Hence, where we are natural because we do not 128

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reflect, there we can not be moral.’ So runs the perversion. But here it is forgotten that we have reflected; that acts which issue from moral reflection have qualified our will; that our character thus, not only in its content, but also in the form of its acquisition, is within the moral sphere; and that a character, whether good or bad, is a second nature. The man to whom it ‘comes natural’ to be good is commonly thought a good man, and the good self of the good man is present in and determines the detail of his life not less effectually because unconsciously. (Bradley, 1962: 218) Furthermore: If we act ‘without thinking’, are we responsible? … The act may come from presence or absence of habits of mind, for the creation, or non-creation, or non-suppression of which we certainly are responsible. Our self means thought, and the act is the outcome and issue of our self. Let us take an instance: a man of violent disposition, accustomed to handle weapons, is insulted at table by another man. A knife is in his hand, with which he at once stabs. Is be responsible? Yes; the deed came not merely from his disposition—a man is more than his disposition; it came from his character, the habits which his acts have formed. These acts have issued from the thinking self, and the thinking self is therefore responsible for the outcome of the habits. (Bradley, 1962: 8, n.1) In my view, the habit hypothesis poses a more serious problem for Bradley’s ethics. It entails a sort of moral shallowness. Since dispositions are appearances, ascribing someone a habit is merely a matter of expressing one’s opinion: “[I]t is arbitrary and inconsistent to predicate what you cannot say the soul is, but what you only judge about it. But everywhere, in dealing with phenomena, we can find no escape from inconsistency and arbitrariness” (Bradley, 1916: 313). Furthermore, given Bradley’s dispositional account of habits, character is the way our moral self appears to others. Ethics that requires the development of a character does not achieve the indented goal: morality stops being a matter of what you are (or what you do) but becomes a matter of the impression you create. To require a person to have only one moral goal of creating good habits and building an admirable character, amounts to saying that creating an appearance and maintaining a certain image in the eyes of others is the only thing required from a person in the name of morality. This shifts moral focus from actions and will (and all that constitute and explain them, incl. intentions, commitments, beliefs, and desires) to reputation (and all that constitute it, such as opinion of others and public image). Moral significance also shifts: influencing what others think of you becomes more morally important than acting on such reason as wellbeing and justice. Such a shift poses a serious moral danger. If all that one cares about is creating a proper impression, this signals a certain degree of poverty of moral aspiration and moral shallowness. There are times when we expect a moral person to be willing to take the risk of damaging her reputation, if that results in her doing what is right and just. And if someone who claims to care about justice knowingly prefers to do what is unjust in order to preserve her reputation, we justifiably feel that this reveals a hypocritical attitude. In the same manner, we expect a hero to be courageous not merely appear to be courageous. If he is uncovered, she is called a liar. If it were otherwise, it would have been morally permissible not to save a person from drowning if no one will ever know, or cheat if you cannot get caught. We surely do not want to equate caring about one’s impression on other and being a (morally) good person. This attitude strikes us as lacking depth of moral concern. This is so 129

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because one could act out of habit without genuinely caring about what one is doing. Take an example of a Janus who for many years regularly works out in the gym. If we do not know anything else, there is no way to tell whether he does so because he cares about sport and being healthy, or because he is merely used to it. Perhaps, his parents made him exercise when he was younger, and it has become his habit. He may in fact dislike physical exercise and keep on for no other reason than a lack of reflection upon his desires. In the same manner, we expect that a good mother would genuinely care for her children’s wellbeing. If it turns out that she has been providing for them only because she was afraid that others would consider her a bad mother, or because of a habit, while she has never felt any affection, her children would feel unwanted and even betrayed. They would be justified in thinking that they were wronged. It is because moral agency presupposes a genuine concern for what is right and good alongside the ability to make this concern an overriding motive for action, that I believe that overestimating the role of habits presents a danger not only to Bradley’s theory but to morality as such.

9.6 Habits and the Prediction of Actions A closer look at the development of the themes discussed in ES20 shows that it is mostly preoccupied with the question of self-realization, that is to say a life-long project of reaching the ideal vision of a person. Bradley sees the goal of moral life not in the development of a set of habits but rather in becoming one’s ideal self, i.e. actualizing an ideal image of oneself (self-realization).21 But this does not mean that any talk of habits and character should be discarded. Bradley acknowledges the moral relevance of the concept of habits without committing himself to saying that they have the central role and that they are all that there is to ethics. It is a challenge to explain how the talk about habits fits into this picture, but it can be done. I suggest that they are way one’s ideal personality is revealed to others22. Habits is a part of other’s discourse about my moral self, a way for others to reconstruct my the ideal that I am striving for. According to ES, habits play a role in action explanation. More specifically, the concepts of character or habituated self play a role in the reasonable predictions of actions. While other types of predictions (such as those that rest on the deterministic assumption) appear objectionable to the moral agent, the prediction based on the knowledge of character is allowed and even required. This is so because the reference to character or habits in the explanation of one’s action does not point to a cause outside agent’s will. In contrast, the explanations that refer to fate or causal chain of events independent of the agent, place the locus of agency outside the person herself. They deny her the freedom of choice and make her disown her actions. My suggestion is that since, for Bradley, habits are formed on the basis of actions resulting from a deliberate choice, the explanation of an action in terms of character is a type of motivational explanation23—it contains implicit reference to the psychological states of the agent, such as beliefs and desires, that resulted in the original act of choice. Ascribing someone a character trait is a way of theorising about this person’s moral self. More specifically, it is making an assumption about the way person’s moral beliefs reflect in her actions. It involves an assumption about the person’s commitment to a certain moral value and an estimate of the probability that this commitment will have a motivation role (figure as a reason), based on the observed history of the person’s behaviour in similar situations. The attribution of moral character traits is, in other words, a part of assessment of the person’s integrity, which is understood as correspondence between actions and beliefs. 130

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This morally significant sense of integrity (such as the sense of being the same person who believes that it is right to help others, and the one who provides food for the hungry) explains why, according to Bradley, we demand that those who are familiar with us (i.e. can reasonably be expected to generalize our previous actions) are certain about our moral choices. Here is what Bradley says: Let us suppose a man of good character, innocent of theoretical reflections. Our apostle of Freedom would assure him of his responsibility, and our plain man would welcome and emphasize the statement. Our apostle would inform him that the secret of man’s accountability was in his possession. He would be received with attention, though perhaps not belief. He might go on to say that a man was responsible, because he always had liberty of choice; and so far he might be followed. But, when he advanced, and began to explain that such freedom of choice must mean, that before a man acted, it was never certain how he would act, then, I think, he might get for an answer, ‘that depends on what sort of man he is’. Perhaps at this point he might appeal to his hearer’s consciousness, and put it to him, whether he was not aware that, on opportunities rising for the foulest crimes, he could not only do these acts if he would, but also that it was quite possible, in every case, that he should do them. Such a question, if asked, would be answered, I doubt not, by an indignant negative; and should a similar suggestion be made with respect to a friend or relation, the reply might not confine itself to words. What sayings in life are more common than,’ You might have known me better. I never could have done such a thing,’ or ‘It was impossible for me to act so, and you ought to have known that nothing could have made me’? (Bradley, 1962: 12–13) To elaborate on Bradley’s own example, imagine your old friend, the one you were close with for many years, close enough to know each others habits and ways, beliefs and values, suspects you of stealing his money. For the argument’s sake, let’s say you have always been true to each other, and the relationship has been one of trust and support. It is true, that you had an access to your friend’s wallet and perhaps you even had a motive because you have lately been short on money. Imagine your friend tells you something like this: “Let’s be honest, you needed money and you had an opportunity. How can I be sure that you have not done it? Anyone would be tempted in a situation like this”. Whether you will feel insulted and respond with indignation to such an assumption is hard to say, but it is certain that, given you have not committed the theft and are known for being honest, it will not be unreasonable for you to feel and react that way. What justifies the indignant response is the conviction that it is a matter of an integral personality to act upon one’s sincere moral beliefs. We expect that the one who knows us well enough will be able to infer our moral beliefs and values on the basis of our (habitual) actions. If knowing these, the person still fails to reasonably predict what we are most likely to do in situations of trivial moral choice, then he denies us the ability to act upon reasons we ourselves deem to be right. And this shows a lack of respect of and trust in our autonomous agency which constitutes the core of moral agency and the ground for attribution of responsibility alongside such reactive attitudes as praise, blame, and respect. We feel that our habitual actions reflect our choices and our choices speak about our values and moral beliefs. We feel that exhibiting patterns of behaviour signals our ability to be consistent, that is, to reliably act upon our beliefs. This is, after all, what moral perfection is about. It consists of striving for integrity, or in other words, in the ability to act upon one’s sincere belief that something is morally good: 131

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And the individual is morally perfect, not because, taken generally, he is the highest individuation, not because he is most full or most harmonious, but because his will is wholly one with his judgements of the best. (Bradley, 1999: 263) In closing, Bradley’s dispositional account of habit speaks against the attempt to attribute him the claim that the goal of moral life is in the development of an admirable character. The evidence shows that Bradley sees habits and character traits as ways in which others capture the unity of ourselves and our integrity. They are useful generalizations; and their usefulness lies in the prediction of an agent’s actions and the establishment of their motivational reasons.

Notes 1 Francis Herbert Bradley is a leading figure in British Idealism. Due to historic contingences, he is mostly famous for his works in metaphysics and logic. However, his unjustly under-researched ethical theory deserves equal attention. The core of Bradley’s ethics is the idea of self-realization, i.e. idea that one’s moral life consists in making real the ideal vision of one’s own self. Hence, the concept of the moral self plays the central role in Bradley’s ethics. It is a further problem to reconstruct Bradley’s account of the moral self and explain what it consist of. The arguments presented in this paper rest on the previous reconstructive work of Bradley ethics by the author, published in Babushkina (2014, 2016, 2018a, 2018b). 2 Cf. “Undergraduate Essays [1865-9]” in Bradley (1999). 3 Cf. e.g. Mackenzie (1901: 83–103). 4 For the role of character in action and the relation between character and the self, see also “Character and Freedom” in Notes toward Ethical Studies in Bradley (1999). 5 Bradley uses these terms to refer to the intuitive grasp of moral matters that seems to be common to all moral agents. 6 The empty spaces before the semi-colons are in the original text. 7 Bradley also uses an expression “a systematic principled character” (1962: 54). 8 Bradley apparently holds that moral beliefs can motivate on their own. Evidence can be found, e.g. in Bradley (1884) and (1904). For analysis, see Babushkina (2018b). 9 There is a certain ambiguity in the way Bradley uses the concept of character in moral context. To settle it for the purposes of this paper, I will reserve “character” for the combination of good and bad habits and “the moral character” for unity of the good will, which reveals itself in good habits. 10 It is hard to say exactly what Bradly means by a “standing idea”. My suggestion is that the term refers to a mental representation that persists in some way. It may be an idea that is continuously entertained. Or—what is most likely the case in this context—an idea that is well integrated in the web of associations and keeps coming back when the conditions are right. It is best understood in connection with the concept of redintegration (explained further in the text). 11 Cf. Bradley (1916: 383). 12 Cf. e.g. Carnap (1928), Ryle (1949), Quine (1960), Goodman (1983), Gundersen (2002), and Choi (2006, 2008). 13 “[I]n spite of the fame of his attack upon associationist psychology, Bradley was very much an associationist himself, and his objection was at bottom only to the confused notion that the association was between particular mental atoms rather than universals. This change once made, one could hardly expect to find a more rigid associationist than Bradley” (Sprigge, 1993: 531). 14 In a sense, Bradley’s account of dispositions comes close to Armstrong’s who says that dispositions are not real properties in their own right but an abbreviate way of saying that, given certain natural laws, we can infer that x would y. The main difference between Armstrong and Bradley is that Armstrong is talking about dispositional properties of things while is talking about dispositions in application to personality. This excludes any reference to natural laws. Bradley would probably agree with a more general statements that a person’s dispositions are an abbreviate way of saying that, given certain circumstances, we can infer that the person would do z.

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Habits and Moral Action in F.H. Bradley 15 See Mumford (1998) for alternatives models of dispositional explanation. 16 For more on different theories in metaphysics of dispositions see, e.g. Armstrong et al. (1996) and Jago (2016). Sinclair (2015) offers an interesting interpretation of the concepts of habit and tendency in Biran and Ravaisson. 17 Bradley mentions that dispositions and “acquired tendencies of the soul” are not “physical events” (1916: 309) or “physical facts” (1916: 312). 18 On the difference between reflexive actions vs. intentional actions, see Anscombe (1958). 19 Pollard (2003) offers an interesting alternative to Bradley’s way to reconcile habitual and rational actions. 20 Cf. Babushkina (2016). 21 See more on Bradley’s idea of moral self-realization Babushkina (2016, 2018a). 22 It is, in Hegelian terms, my being-for-others. 23 Cf. Pollard (2006) for alternative accounts of “habit explanation”.

References Anscombe, G.E.M. (1958) Intention. Oxford: Blackwell. Armstrong, D.M., Martin, C.B. and Place, U.T. (1996) Dispositions: A Debate. London: Routledge. Babushkina, D. (2014) ‘F.H. Bradley, Desire, and the Self’, Homo Oeconomicus, 31 (4), pp. 513–530. Babushkina, D. (2016) ‘F.H. Bradley’s Conception of the Moral Self: A New Reading’, in Mander, W.J. and Panagakou, S. (eds.) British Idealism and the Concept of the Self. Oxford: Palgrave-Macmillan, pp. 67–88. Babushkina, D. (2018a) ‘Grand Desires and F.H. Bradley’s Views on Moral Life’, Collingwood and British Idealism Studies, 24 (1), pp. 41–69. Babushkina, D. (2018b) ‘On Moral Beliefs, Emotions, and Motivational Wholes: F. H. Bradley’s Account of Moral Motivation’, History of Philosophy Quarterly, 35 (2), pp. 179–197. Bradley, F.H. (1999) Collected Works of F. H. Bradley, vol. 1. Bristol, GB: Thoemmes Press. Bradley, F.H. (1916) Appearance and Reality. London: George Allen & Unwin LTD. Bradley, F.H. (1900) ‘A Defence of Phenomenalism in Psychology’, Mind, 9 (33), pp. 26–45. Bradley, F.H. (1904) ‘The Definition of Will’, Mind, 13 (49), pp. 1–37. Bradley, F.H. (1884) ‘Can a Man Sin against Knowledge?’, Mind, 9 (34), pp. 286–290. Bradley, F.H. (1962) Ethical Studies. London: Oxford University Press. Carnap, R. (1928) The Logical Structure of the World. Berkeley: University of California Press. Choi, S. (2006) ‘The Simple vs. Reformed Conditional Analysis of Dispositions’, Synthese, 148, pp. 369–379. Choi, S. (2008) ‘Dispositional Properties and Counterfactual Conditionals’, Mind, 117, pp. 795–841. Goodman, N. (1983) Fact, Fiction and Forecast. Cambridge, Mass., London: Harvard University Press. Gundersen, L. (2002) ‘In Defence of the Conditional Account of Dispositions’, Synthese, 130, pp. 389–411. Jago, M. (ed.) (2016) Reality Making. UK: Oxford University Press. Mackenzie, J.S. (1901) A Manual of Ethics. London: W.B. Clive, University Tutorial Press. Mumford, S. (1998) Dispositions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Quine, W.V. (1960) Word and Object. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Ryle, G. (1949) The Concept of Mind. London: Penguin. Sinclair, M. (2015) ‘Is there a “Dispositional Modality”? Maine De Biran and Ravaisson on Agency and Inclination’, History of Philosophy Quarterly, 32 (2), pp. 161–179. Sprigge, T.L.S. (1993) James and Bradley: American Truth and British Reality. Chicago: Open Court. Pollard, B. (2006) ‘Explaining Actions with Habits’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 43, pp. 57–69. Pollard, B. (2003) ‘Can Virtuous Actions Be Both Habitual and Rational?’, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 6 (4), pp. 411–425.

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10 PHENOMENOLOGY AS VOCATION – A PROJECT INSTITUTED AND HABITUATED BY THE WILL Sara Heinämaa

10.1 Introduction: Phenomenology as Vocation In his last major publication, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (1936/1937, 1954), Edmund Husserl argues that philosophy in general and his own philosophical enterprise, transcendental phenomenology, in particular must be understood as scientific vocations, that is, as personal resolutions to dedicate one’s practical life to the goals of attaining evidence and truth and avoiding falsehood (Hua6, 101–102/99, 138–139/ 136–137, 372–373/362–363). More precisely, transcendental phenomenology is a scientific vocation, but one that differs in crucial respects from all other scientific vocations, those endorsed in the special sciences today as well as those that we know from our intellectual tradition. Whereas all other sciences operate within the horizon of the world, Husserl argues, phenomenology takes this common horizon as the subject matter of its transcendentally critical inquiries. It then proceeds to investigate the constitutive grounds of the sense of the world and everything worldly. In other words, phenomenology does not aim at producing or systematizing theoretical knowledge about the world but undertakes the radical epistemological task of delineating the ultimate foundations of all such possible knowledge (e.g. Hua1, 47–55/6–14; Hua3, 67–74/60–66; Hua6, 459–462/379–383; Hua8, 338–345, 479–482/ 599–603; cf. Heinämaa, 2022a). However, The Crisis also gives a curiously ambiguous characterization of the phenomenological vocation, which emphasizes its similarities with other vocations but, at the same time, problematizes this analogy. On the one hand, Husserl argues that we can practice phenomenological inquiries into the constitution of the world in the same manner as we conduct other scientific and philosophical projects. Moreover, all theoretical projects can in principle be practiced in a similar fashion as practically oriented professions, such as military service, silviculture, teaching and shoemaking, and intimate personal vocations, such as parenting and elderly care. On this account, the phenomenological-philosophical vocation finds its place among the various life tasks of human beings:

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[A]s normal human beings we are constantly (in a broadened sense) involved in many “vocations” (interested attitudes) at the same time: we are at once fathers, citizens, etc. Every such vocation has its time of actualizing activities. Accordingly, this newly established vocational interest [of the phenomenologist], whose subject matter is called “lifeworld”, finds its place among other life-interests or vocations and it has “its proper time” within the one personal time, the form of the various exercised vocational times (Hua6, 139/136; cf. 261–267/258–264; Hua27, 27–28; Hua29, 363). Thus understood, phenomenological philosophy would belong to our lives in the very same way as any other serious occupation (Hua6, 139–140/136–137, 327–328/281–282; cf. Hua9, 353; Hua13, 205–206; Hua34, 73–74).1 If this holds, then phenomenological research tasks could be performed in a periodic and serial manner, in line with other occupations (Hua6, 140/ 137, 327/281–282; Hua42, 390; Hua43, 74). Since we are able to divide our time between several vocational engagements and can fit them all into our lives, the integration of the reflective tasks of phenomenology in our lives only seems to require organizational skills and patience. The situation seems similar to the case of other scientific vocations. A person can be a successful bio-scientist, for example, and also operate as a loving parent and an enthusiastic environmentalist (cf. Donohoe, 2010, 130–131; Jacobs, 2013, 358; Heinämaa, 2020, 435–439). In a similar manner, a person can undertake the descriptive and analytical tasks of phenomenology and proceed successfully while also promoting some other important goals, political, religious, literary and/or artistic. This demands that she organizes the tasks and duties of her chosen vocations in a serial manner, so that she can focus on them when needed and take care of them alternately, in their proper times, manners and measures. The organization and division of time, strength and resources is not always easy, and sometimes we may fail, but in principle it allows us to combine several dedications and devotions in our finite human lives (Hua8, 348–350; cf. Donohoe, 2010).2 Husserl describes such organizational challenges by his methodological concept of the epoché of activity as follows: We establish in ourselves just one particular habitual direction of interest, with a certain vocational attitude, to which there belongs a particular “vocational time”. (…) [W]hen we actualize one of our habitual interests and are thus involved in our vocational activity (in the accomplishment of our work), we assume a posture of epoché toward our other life-interests, even though these still exist and are still ours. Everything has “its proper time”, and in shifting [between activities] we say something like: “Now it is time to go to the meeting, to the election,” and the like (Hua6, 139/136). On the other hand, Husserl also argues that phenomenology requires a fundamental abandonment of all worldly interests, theoretical as well as practical, positive scientific as well as critical (Hua6, 150–155/147–152; cf. Hua1, 60–61/20–21, 72–75/33–37; Hua3, 63–69/ 56–62; Hu3/1, 60–66). The performance of the phenomenological epoché and the phenomenological-transcendental reduction detach us from the world in a radical manner and open for us a completely new field of study – the field of pure phenomena and pure experiences (Hua1, 48ff./6ff.; Hua3, 73–74/66). One does not just suspend one’s belief in the truths of the positive or objective sciences – material-empirical and formal, positive and critical – but also suspends one’s faith in the presence of the experiential world, the one that supports all sciences equally (e.g. Hua3, 57–62/ 51–57; cf. Merleau-Ponty [1945] 1993, 108–109/92, 467–468/409, cf. 408/355, 419/365). 135

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This operation necessarily involves the general abeyance of all theoretical convictions that tie us to the world and worldly things, events and processes – possible as well as actual –, but it also requires that we subject all our practical interests, goals and values to a radically critical study within the newly won sphere of pure experiences and phenomena (Hua6, 153–154/150–151, 326–331/281–285; cf. Hua8, 154–155/354–356). On this basis, Husserl argues that the phenomenological epoché cannot be cancelled, and that the phenomenologist cannot return unaltered to the world-attitude that she has left behind (e.g. Hua34, 56). A return is possible but only with a completely new regard at all worldly things, events and processes (e.g. Hua8, 480–481/601–602; Hua13, 205; Hua 34, 74–75, 82–85, 101–105; Hua39, 214–215; cf. Jacobs, 2013; 2016). If this holds, then the phenomenological vocation cannot be pursued or practiced in a periodic manner. Rather than settling among our other occupations, it requires a comprehensive and irreversible transformation, one which leads us to completely new dimension of experiencing and leaves us there without instructions for a return (Hua6, 120–123/118–121). In The Crisis, we read: Perhaps it will even become manifest that the total phenomenological attitude and the epoché belonging to it are destined in essence to effect, at first, a complete personal transformation, comparable to a religious conversion, which then, however, over and above this, bears within itself the significance of the greatest existential transformation which is assigned as a task to mankind as such. (Hua6, 140/137; cf. Heinämaa, 2019) The idea here is not that one denies one’s worldly interests or turns away from the world to lead a life in isolation and solitude. The transcendental-phenomenological inquiry does not imply any form of escapism, asceticism or quietism. Rather, one continues living with all worldly givens, only now in a radically altered manner of relating to them. One cannot anymore take them simply as givens but necessarily has to regard also their various ways of being given. So, whereas we may be able to alternate between the tasks of the bio-scientist, the parent and the environmentalist (e.g. Hua42, 390, 465–467, cf. Donohoe, 2004, 157–160; 2010; Loidolt, 2012), we cannot similarly return from the transcendental-phenomenological attitude to the natural one, without a permanent change in our ways of cognizing, valuing and striving for worldly givens. Thus, there is a tension in Husserl’s characterization of phenomenology as a scientific and philosophical vocation. In light of what he writes in The Crisis, it seems that phenomenology must be understood as a dual vocation which, on the one hand, allows a periodic practice but, on the other hand, demands a permanent transformation. This article provides a novel account of Husserl’s idea of the phenomenological vocation which helps understand and alleviate this tension. I will do this by explicating Husserl’s concept of vocation as a temporally stable form of willing. This demands, first of all, a clarification of the phenomenological concepts of habituation and institution which both account – although in different ways – for the prolongation of intentional acts and for the persistence of their results. Another factor crucial to Husserl’s discussion of phenomenology as a philosophical vocation, is his understanding of the positional powers of volitional intentionality, that is, willing in the broad sense of the term. I will clarify these fundamental concepts separately, starting with the concepts of habituation and institution (sections 2 and 3) and proceeding toward the operations of the will (section 4). On the basis of my clarifications, I will then offer a new explanation of the dual character of phenomenological vocation, which on the one hand is organizable into periods of work and on the other hand demands a permanent change or conversion. I will argue that as 136

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long as we operate within the framework of the objective sciences, we can proceed in a periodic and serial manner in our philosophical investigations; but if we venture to question the validity grounds of the objective world, and manage to do so radically, then we have to cross a point of no return and abandon the periodical manner of investigating the world.

10.2 Habituation and Institution of Vocational Tasks Husserl defines all vocations by the concepts of task, that is, by determining goals and related types of realizing activities and practices (Hua29, 363; cf. Hua6, 138–139/136–137). This taskbased definition brings phenomenology, as all philosophy, under the categories of conative or practical intentionality and so the intentionality of willing in the broad sense of the term. The crucial role of the will in all vocations has wide-ranging implications for their temporality.3 Husserl uses two sets of concepts to clarify the temporality of vocations. On the one hand, he applies his concepts of practical intentionality which frame vocations as decisions about what ought to be and ought to be done and as commitments to realize such self-established obligations of being and doing. On the other hand, he uses his general concepts of habituation (Habitus, Habitualität) and institution (Stiftung) to account for the temporal structure of vocations and for the temporal intertwinement of personal and communal life in them.4 Each vocation establishes a certain temporal structure in a person’s life. Vocations are not momentary or short-term formations but have relatively strong permanence and long timespans.5 Their determining goals cannot be realized by the performance of any one action or set of actions but only by an open-ended series of mutually related actions in plural, all guided by a determining goal or set of goals. The novelist, for example, realizes particular artistic goals with her literary creations but at the same time also contributes, by the very same creations, to the general vocational goal of writing fiction. Similarly, each house that a dedicated architect is able to finish realizes a set of specific values and goals, but at the same time all these particular realizations contribute to the realization of the overarching vocational goal of aesthetically ambitious housebuilding and environmental design. The developer who merely works for income or profit and the amateur craftsman who merely practices an enjoyable hobby are thus distinguished from a person who has taken on the tasks of construction, not for this or that particular end, but in order to follow her architectonic vocation and promote architectonicaesthetic values in all her endeavors. The three individuals may perform similar acts, but their goal-directedness and horizons of acting, that is, practical manners of intending and being motivated, are crucially different. This does not mean that the vocational subject or agent would constantly, at each moment and hour, have her vocational goals in mind and incessantly strive to realize them at each moment. As the quotes above from The Crisis show, Husserl argues that vocations generally allow interruptions and breaks and organize themselves in periodic manners. Thus, the personal vocational time, that is, the time dedicated to the realization of vocational goals in a person’s life, is both continuous and periodically organized. As we already saw above, this applies to the philosophical vocation as to other vocations and professions: In any circumstances (…) the [philosophical] reorientation can only be a periodical one; it can have habitually enduring validity for one’s whole remaining life only in the form of an unconditional resolve of the will to take up, at periodic but internally unified points of time, the same attitude and, through this continuity that intentionally bridges the gaps, to sustain its new sort of interest as valid and as ongoing projects and to realize them through corresponding cultural structures (Hua6, 327–328/281–282). 137

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[T]he suspension of [this new philosophical attitude] in no way changes the interest which continues and remains valid within personal subjectivity – i.e. its habitual directedness towards goals which persist as its validities – and it is for this very reason that it can be actualized again and again, at different times, in this identical sense (Hua6, 140/137). Husserl explicates the possibility of such alteration between actively engaging periods and latent phases by his concepts of habit and habituality. He warns that we should not take this terminology in the empirical sense of social routines and communal customs (Hua4, 111/118; Hua4/5, 351; Hua29, 365–366; cf. Arango, 2014). Rather, the reference is to certain immanent unities of experiencing, constituted in internal lived time. Effectively, Husserl argues that all acts can be invested with varying forms of habitual permanence and that only contrary acts can terminate the established intentional engagements (e.g. Hua4, 117/124, 311/324; Hua4/5, 351; Hua4, 113/120).6 Institution and habituation are two related ways of intending and bestowing sense. Both establish immanent unities of egoic consciousness, that is, not empirical, worldly or real unities or transcendent unities of any sort, but unities that pertain to individual consciousnesses and their intentional relations to other consciousnesses. In a nutshell, “institution” names the act of introducing a new sense into conscious life, and “habituation” refers to the stabilization of such intentional accomplishments (Hua1, 101–103/66–69, 129/98; Hua4, 111–120/118–127; cf. Hua6, 10–12/12–13, 72–75/71–73). This implies that consciousness is not just a series of intentional acts or lived experiences (Erlebnisse) but also entails unities of intentional activity with various durations, some of which are overlapping and some of which build on others.7 By the concepts of habituation and institution, classical phenomenology is able to account for all types of temporally extended forms of intending: cognitive, emotional and practical (e.g. Hua4, 112/119; Hua4/5, 350).8 So, the same concepts account for the permanence of everyday beliefs and scientific convictions as well as the stability of emotional attitudes and practical dispositions. Husserl provides various kinds of examples: the permanence of mathematical convictions and modes of ethical reflection (Hua27, 29–30; Hua4, 114; Hua4/5, 341–342); that of aesthetic as well as epistemological valuations (Hua4, 114/121, 118/125, 275/228; Hua4/5, 349–353); the resilience and stubbornness of certain kinds of emotions (Hua4, 113/120; Hua4/5, 341; cf. Hua42, 359; Hua43/2, 508); the persistence of acquired personality features (Hua4, 114/121, 275–280/288–293); and our practical readiness for tool use (Hua1, 114/111). Each “intention or opinion” [“Meinung”] is an institution [Stiftung] which remains a possession [Besitz] of the subject as long as motivations do not arise which require the stance-taking to be ‘varied’ and the former intending/opinion [to be] abandoned (Hua4, 113/120).9 What is common to all processes of habituation and institution is that they extend intentional acts across the living present given in immanent time and thus establish intentional unities with various durations. Each intentional act entails an impressional present and has a certain temporal position in the continuum of streaming consciousness (Hua4, 118/125; Hua4/5, 349–350). But, concomitantly, each intentional act also essentially entails the ideal possibility of prolongation or temporal extension by habituation (Hua4, 117/124; Hua4/5, 342–351). So, each act can in principle be habituated into an enduring or permanent active project (Vorhabe) or possession (Besizt, Eigentum) of the ego which then characterizes the ego and informs her 138

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further activities until refuted by a contrary act, from other motives (Hua1, 100–101/66–67; Hua4, 113–118/120–125, 311/324; Hua4/5, 352; Jacobs, 2013; Moran, 2011; Meacham, 2013; Jacobs, 2013; Moran, 2014).10 This ideal possibility is not actualized in each case, so not all acts become habituated into permanent egoic possessions. The habituation of an intentional act depends on motivating reasons; and conversely, each habituated activity can be terminated, but only by contrary acts from other motivations (Hua4, 117/124). The general gestalt of the thus habituated acts is distinctive to the ego and singularizes her (Hua1, 101/67, 129/98; Hua4, 279/291–292, 300/313; 311/324; cf. Hua14, 230).11 Institutions and habituations thus add an elaborate temporal “stratum” onto the basic layer of lived temporality which characterizes all acts per se.12 The results do not just entail references to past and future experiences, but also have durations and relative permanence in the immanent time of experiencing. They extend and continue onward from the now of the present act to subsequent lived moments and constitute intentional continuities in which intentional acts can build on earlier acts and ultimately on the institutive act that originally established a new sense for the first time. Thus, institution and habituation can be said to offer intentional “springboards” that allow consciousness to move forward dynamically and consistently (cf. Lohmar, 2014).

10.3 Personal and Generational Aspects of Vocational Time In Cartesian Meditations, Husserl exemplifies the act of instituting new sense by picturing a child who for the first time discovers the purpose of scissors (Hua1, 141/111; cf. [1939] 1985, 35/38). In phenomenological terms, we can say that the child institutes a new tool-sense, that is, constitutes a particular practical sense for herself for the first time. From then on, the child is immediately able to identify, recognize and distinguish such cutting tools from the general category of implements simply by perceiving them and does not each time need to go through complicated processes of sense-bestowal. However, in an intersubjective consideration, the child’s accomplishment merely measures up to a reinstitution of a sense which already has been instituted by others, generations before the child’s reinvention. Thus, two different dimensions of institution must be distinguished: first, the strictly subjective and personal dimension in which a particular sense is established within an individual stream of egoic consciousness and, second, the broad communal dimension in which a sense is first established within the intersubjective community of mutually related constitutive acts. Husserl uses the term “reinstitution” (Nachstiftung) for accomplishments that depend on the accomplishments of earlier constitutors, such as the child’s realization of the sense of scissors. The earlier act on which the reinstitution depends can be either one’s own act or an act by some other constitutor. The English translation is somewhat misleading, since the point is not that we repeat the same conscious operations that have already been performed by ourselves or our forerunner(s). Rather, the crucial idea is that all sense – doxic, axiological and practical – can be instituted, not merely originally, but also in accord with what has already been instituted by ourselves or by others. The analysis of the intersubjective dimensions of institution illuminates intentional relations between generations in which descendants are able to move forward by using the earlier institutions of their forerunners as a platform for new production of sense (Hua1, 53/12–13; cf. Hua42, 307, 316, 324–325; 336–337, 424; Hua43/2, 511). Together, the concepts of institution and habituation account for the permanence of vocational decisions through a person’s life. However, the intersubjective dimensions of institution point us beyond the limits of our individual lives and refer us to the lives of others. 139

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Vocational tasks can bind us not only to contemporaries but also to past and future others, that is, other practitioners who may already have departed or who may be entering the field just now or only much later, after our demise (Hua39, 363–364; cf. Hua6, 442–443). In this regard, the temporal structure of communal vocations is extensively two-directional: opening onto past and future, vocational goals tie us intentionally to the products of previous practitioners as well as the possible achievements of the ones who follow us. This means that the goals and tasks of communal vocations are intersubjective in a particular sense. We can share them with others who belong to different eras and whom we may never meet in person. This is not just an essential fact about vocationally dedicated persons but also a fact about communal vocations themselves: some of them are realized, and can only be realized, by the common efforts of subjects who belong to different generations. Such vocations, we can say, are “generational” or “intergenerational”, in addition to being communal. In Husserl’s account, all generational vocations have the temporality of historical processes: they start from the original first institution (Urstiftung) of a certain goal-sense and the tasks that are to be realized in an open-ended future (Hua6, 378/368–369; Hua29, 363; cf. Hua14, 230–232).13 From the first institution, such vocations proceed, via transmission of their determining tasks, from one generation to the next. Moreover, generationally shared vocational tasks are not only historical but also characterized by the specific temporality of inheritance: they are handed down to us by predecessors and, as inherited tasks, they demand from us not only realizing actions here and now but also preparation and provisions for future generations. Correspondingly, our vocational predecessors are not given to us as idols to be imitated but as co-workers whose achievements are to be promoted and fostered by us. Thus understood, the intersubjectivity of vocations is both generational and normative. Due to their inheritance character, vocational tasks have two possible origins in our lives. They can be either received from others, from predecessors, and adopted by us, or they can be freely instituted by us without a priorly established goal-sense (e.g. Hua4/5, 354–356; cf. Hua1, 141/111; Hua4, 311/324).14 In the former case, they need to be reinstituted (nachstiften) by ourselves in order to become our own and structure our personal lives internally and concretely. Until they are affirmed by us in free acts of decision and thus incorporated into our lives, they remain mere intents: they are consciously entertained but in a loose manner, and we have not committed ourselves or our actions to the realization of them. Thus, freely adopted goals and tasks differ intentionally from wishes and dreams that we merely entertain in our mind. We can now summarize the results of our explication thus far by saying that philosophy, and phenomenology more specifically, is a communal and generational task that is passed forward through history with an identical intentional sense and content and received and reinstituted by ourselves as such (Hua29, 363–365). Phenomenology, as a philosophy, is essentially inherited, that is, acquired from past practitioners and passed forward through generational lines. Ultimately, this intersubjective temporality connects all contemporary and future practitioners to past ones and, through their line, to the commitments of the first institutor(s): “[P]hilosophy is a unified idea of a task, [an idea] that is inherited [and always passed further] in the course of history” (Hua29, 363). As pointed out above, the task-based definition classifies vocations among the accomplishments of practical intentionality. This is the intentionality of willing, which entails the constitution of goals and aims as well as the means and actions that contribute to their realization. Vocations therefore are not just any types of habituated acts or instituted senses but are, more precisely, habituations and institutions of willing acts, choices, decisions, resolutions and commitments (Hua6, 153–154/150–151; Hua34, 42; cf. Jacobs 2013, 356, n. 24–25). 140

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However, in Husserl’s analysis, phenomenology and philosophy in general are defined by very specific types of goals, and it is this specific goal-sense that distinguishes them from all other communal vocations and unites them with other sciences, from mathematics, medicine and musicology to biochemistry and world history. Phenomenology, philosophy and the sciences are not just established as projects with comprehensive goals that persist through our whole lives nor even as projects with transgenerational goals, transmitted from one historical era to the next. Rather, all philosophy and all science have their primary institution in the idea of infinite goals. Examples of such ideas include the idea of grasping the thing-in-itself and the idea of attaining full truth or perfect evidence about the world (e.g. Hu6, 372–373/362–364; Hua1, 52–53/12–13). This new goal-sense was first constituted in Ancient Greece, Husserl argues, and is handed down to us through generations of philosophical and scientific enterprises (Hua6, 12–17/ 15–18, 23–26/26–29, 321–333/276–286, 358–364/344–350, 365–368/334–357, 378–382/ 369–373; Hua29, 363). It posits completely new kinds of goals that organize new kinds of practices and actions. These are not just goals that transcend the limits of our individual lives and presuppose future practitioners who can take on the tasks that we will leave unfinished. Rather, the new goal sense first instituted in Ancient Greece with the idea of a universal science also transcends the limits of all generative communities. The goals of the sciences cannot be fully realized by any individual or community and not even by the endlessly chaining collective of humanity as a whole; they transcend all individual and communal realizations imaginable. This does not make them deceptive chimeras but instead establishes them as regulative principles that permanently guide both individuals and generations. Husserl argues that this structural feature of determining goals shapes all sciences, independently of their subject matters and regions of operation. For the developed theoretical interest each goal acquires in advance the sense of a merely relative goal; it becomes a pathway to ever newer, ever higher goals within an infinity marked off as a universal field of work, as the ‘domain’ of the science. Science, then, signifies the idea of an infinity of tasks, of which at any time a finite number has been disposed of and are retained as persisting validities (Hua6, 323–324/277–278). Finally, Husserl also contends that the new sense of infinite goals, first instituted with the practice of philosophizing in Ancient Greece, has spread and still spreads further to other practices, radically transforming their ways of intending and their goals as well as all real possibilities of striving for goals. This semantic “contamination”, so to speak, concerns all cultural practices, from religious to economic. As a result, infinity does not just characterize the ends of the European sciences, but also concerns the ends that are posited and striven for in the extra-scientific projects that are – either explicitly or implicitly – guided by the Greek idea of science: ethical reflections, artistic projects, religious services, and political and economic enterprises (Hua6, 15/17, 72/71; cf. Hua13, 207–208; Hua42, 315–316; cf. Arendt, 1958, 264ff.; Meacham & Tava, 2020).

10.4 Volitional Grounds of Decisions and Commitments All vocations entail several different kinds of intentional acts, from cognitive to emotional and practical. Moreover, many of these constituent intentions must be habituated into permanent possessions for the establishment of vocations as long-term commitments. In different vocations – scientific, artistic, professional and intimately personal ones – the cognitive, emotional and practical elements are in various relations of dependency, and their manners of entanglement may also change as a function of time. 141

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However, Husserl argues that in all vocations the determining intention, the one that unifies or synthesizes the rest, is practical. This is why vocations can have the sense of life-task, with central and comprehensive positions in our lives. In addition to the temporal character, the will-based establishment of vocations also gives them a creative character. In order to see what is at issue here and study the implications of this analysis, we need to look more closely into the structures of practical intentionality of willing and its power to posit sense. In Husserl’s account, the capacity of volitional acts to establish complicated temporal structures characteristic of vocations is ultimately based on their positional power. Whereas doxic acts of perception and judgment, and their different modalities, posit being and existence in various senses (what is actual, real, ideal, etc.) and thus constitute objects of different kinds (e.g. things, events, states of affairs and essences), volitional acts of deciding, resolving and doing posit what ought to be or ought to be done (Hua28, 104–112, 157; Hua29, 366; cf. Hua18, 53–59/ 33–37; cf. Mulligan, 2004, 185). This holds for decisions, resolutions and choices of all kinds as well as for actions: they are all guided by goals, that is, nonexistent but realizable possibilities posited by acts of the will. They are all concerned, not only with being but also, and more fundamentally, with what ought to be or become. Husserl calls “Seinsollen” the type of positing that is common to all volitional or conative acts, and we can translate the term into English by the neologisms “ought to be” or “whatought-to-be”.15 In other words, volitional acts entail an authorizing, commanding or obliging character which necessarily points beyond what is posited as existing in one way or another. This means that the intentionality of the will is creative in a pregnant sense. Husserl explicitly argues that this is the unique character of volitional consciousness: will, and only will, is able to bring about, to bring into being, to make, produce and create: “The consciousness does not say: ‘It will be, and therefore I will it,’ but says: ‘Since I will, it will be’. In other words, the will speaks out its creative ‘Let it be!’” (Hua28, 107; cf. Nenon, 1991; 2009; Mulligan, 2004).16 Volitional acts are able to posit what-ought-to-be and what-ought-to-become because they essentially transcend the lived present to which they are anchored and do so in a manner that differs from all other types of acts. The acts of the will do not just open onto a future, like all acts do, thanks to the basic form of intentional time (retention-present-protention). They are not just capable of establishing permanent intentional possessions through habituation, like all acts are, thanks to the preservative and stabilizing operations of the ego. In addition to these basic forms of inner temporality, volitional acts expand their constitutive and formative power forward in time, to subsequent phases of volitional consciousness. Thus, rather than being objectifying, the function of the will is formative. [T]he volitional thesis stretches or extends itself into the future time span and demands there a completed span of willing, through the phases of which it stretches, and [it] is now, what future will brings to volitional positing in every phase, to future creation of what the will has posited in its current resolution. (Hua28, 108; cf. Nenon, 1991, 304) The present, immediately deciding will does not determine future consciousness by positing ever new volitional acts in a serial fashion. Instead of giving being to ever new decisions, resolutions or actions, the will creates by “informing” future consciousness: [T]he present will as will, as the unique reality-positing of the form “Let it be!”, does not posit the future/futural willing or even [realizing] action but rather sends through them the thesis “Let it be!” (Hua28, 108, italics mine). 142

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Thus, we can say that, already before and independently of all forms of habituation, the will binds itself by outlining or sketching out its own future (cf. Hua29, 364, 367–369). It drafts for itself a futural “field” in which it operates, and thus gives form to future volitional consciousness. This means that consciousness is not just a stream of lived experiences or intentional acts which follow one another in immanent time, nor is it merely a stock or warehouse of earlier accomplishments, instituted and habituated prior to the living present. In addition to these general temporal structures, consciousness is able to move forward by trails of decisions, resolutions and actions and thus open onto the future in a dynamic manner. Despite this creative freedom, volitional acts are bound to reality and bound in two related manners. First, volitions demand actions that are able to realize the goals that they posit (Hua16, 105–112; Hua 28, 104, 109; cf. Loidolt, 2022); and, thus, they send their directive thesis of interest to all intents of the agent, right down to her perceptions and movements (cf. MerleauPonty [1945] 1993, 348/271). In other words, willing necessarily commits us to action in Husserl’s account: “Whoever wills something in the future, more precisely, something that does not have the beginning of its becoming in the present, could not want it if that person did not want the future action” (Hua28, 108, cf. 225).17 We can, of course, try to cancel or undo already executed actions and operative volitions but this is possible only by separate acts of willing (Hua28, 109; Hua29, 377; cf. Nenon, 1991, 303). Only new volitions are able to annul the intentions that originally bond us as agents to the open future of willing certain goals and performing the actions that contribute to their realization. Second, volitional acts also necessarily entail consciousness of the real possibilities of the agent, consciousness of her capabilities and opportunities, of what she can do and is able to achieve in given conditions. On this basis, proper acts of the will differ – and must be kept distinct – from daydreaming and from wishes and hopes of all kinds. Whereas volitions necessarily entail consciousness of realizable possibilities and a commitment to the execution of actions that contribute to the realization of the goal, wishes and hopes merely concern what could be without committing the subject (e.g. Hua28, 104–105, 108–109, 218; Hua29, 364, 367). A person can wish and hope, and purport, to become a ski jumper, a stockbroker or a nuclear physicist, for example, but in order to will the same, the person would consciously have to possess certain physical, psychological and social skills and abilities as well as certain situational opportunities (or else decide to develop such). This means that the possibilities over which we deliberate and about which we decide in our volitional acts are not pure possibilities of imagination or thinking, but are our real practical possibilities, that is, possibilities that we consider realizable, and, more, realizable and actualizable by ourselves. Thus, they necessarily refer to general human abilities, but also to our own capacities and powers as well as to our practical situation and its future and past horizons (Hua29, 366–367 n. 1; cf. Hua4, 266–268/278–280; Hua27, 30–32; Hua42, 299–300, 306–307, 317). Husserl stresses two consequences of this analysis: the will cannot intentionally be directed at past events or happenings or at ideal forms of being. We are, of course, able to entertain all kinds of possibilities in our mind, and can envisage, imagine and fantasize that they would materialize either in the present or in the future. However, none of these manners of intending measure up to genuine acts of willing in Husserl’s analysis: “The will is directed at reality, not ideal but rather individual actual reality” (Hua28, 109; cf. 225). We can now summarize the results of our explication of Husserl’s analysis of the special power of volitional acts. What is most crucial to our analysis of vocations is that these acts do not posit being in the manner of cognitive acts but posit obligations that (in)form and guide the will of the agent. In addition to this positional difference, there is also a crucial difference in the 143

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temporal stretch of the respective acts. Volitional theses, independently of the processes of habituation, bind us in three related ways. First, volitional theses commit their subjects to a goal or a set of goals, not in the present, but in the future. At the same time, such theses also bind their subjects to a future of willing, and in several different modalities: decisions, resolutions and interests. Finally, the future of obliging willing necessarily entails actions and, more, specific types of actions that are capable of realizing the posited goals or that contribute to their realization: [T]he statement “I will” [something or other] does not merely mean: at the moment I have the lived experience of an act of willing, or I am a real psychophysical being, called human, whose “soul” or consciousness entails a willing as a passing objective occurrence – in a similar manner as a wave occurs and streams further in a real stream. Rather, “I will” entails more: I posit a goal for myself (…) and am now, from now on continuously the one who thus wills, until further notice (Hua29, 364).

10.5 Periodical Alteration or Irrecoverable Transformation? On the basis of our explications of the habituation of intentional acts and the special powers of volitional intentionality, we can now draw consequences about the character of the phenomenological vocation. The main result is that, as a habituated form of willing, phenomenological philosophy, like all philosophy, depends on two temporal structures and processes of sense making. First, due to the processes of institution and habituation, philosophical and phenomenological vocations carry in themselves the results of earlier acts which, in the form of permanent possessions, are able to serve as footings for new productions and new types of productions. Second, since phenomenological and philosophical vocations are not institutions and habitations of just any acts whatsoever but are habitations of acts of willing, that is, acts of deciding for certain specific ends, they also carry in themselves, and carry forward, commitments that oblige us to act in accord with our originally deciding willing. Whereas habituation offers retrospective resources which allow us to ground our current intendings on earlier ones, volitional intentionality entails prospective measures that inform our future consciousness. As pointed out at the beginning, Husserl argues that the determining goals of all philosophy, traditional as well as present, are in truth and evidence. Philosophical vocations, however, require different types of truths and evidences than the ones produced by the empirical sciences of the world, natural, social or human. Rather than striving for comprehensive truths about specific regions of being, philosophies strive for evidences of the most general kind and unconditional truths that hold for everything that has sense or can have sense (e.g. Hua1, 52–53/ 12–13). Phenomenology, however, is unique among modern philosophies in contending that such truths cannot be delivered on the ground of any world-belief but have to be based on radically unprejudiced inquiries into the sense-constituting operations of transcendental subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Thus, the principal decision of the phenomenologist, the one that sends its obligation through the rest of volitional life, is the decision to accomplish a universal suspension of all theses of worldly being. As pointed out at the beginning, The Crisis describes two different ways of striving for this goal: a serial periodic manner of progressing and an all-embracing move that suspends all theses at once. On the one hand, we can reckon that a total epoché of all worldly being may eventually be reached by thematically restricted suspensions in a serial manner. In this model, we would withdraw from one worldly region or stratum after another and, at each step, lessen the burden of worldly posits and correlatively discover new areas in the field of pure 144

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phenomena. At each step we would keep a foothold in the world but, step by step, our footholds could diminish in number or size (cf. Hua6, 151–155/148–151). On the other hand, we can also try to identify a core thesis that supports all other posits universally, so that by hitting that central pillar, we could annul all other theses “at one blow,” so to speak (Hua6, 153/150). Husserl originally introduced this latter approach in the first volume of the Ideas, but he reconsiders its possibility and necessity in The Crisis, starting in paragraph §40, as follows: Instead of [a] universal abstention in individual steps, a completely different sort of universal epoché is possible, namely one which puts out of action, with one blow, the total performance running through the whole of natural world-life and through the whole network (whether concealed or open) of validities (Hua6, 153/150). These two manners first seem to be alternatives in The Crisis, but when Husserl takes on the question concerning the consequences of the suspension of the objective sciences, he argues, I believe, that this is not the case: if we want to realize the decision that established phenomenology in the first place – the decision to suspend all validities without exception –, then we have no other alternative than to proceed through one all-embracing suspension. Let me explicate what I take to be the crucial consideration in Husserl’s reasoning. Husserl first contends that the phenomenologist can start by suspending the theses of the objective sciences one after another, including their common thesis about the objective being of the world. If she manages to perform this first task, then she discovers the world of experience, the lifeworld, that operates as the secret sense-support of the positive sciences and is independent of their abstractive, idealizing and formalizing operations. A new philosophical field of study is thus delineated: the ontology of the lifeworld. However, the phenomenologists cannot rest satisfied in merely describing and analyzing the newly exposed world of experience, its objective, subjective and intersubjective aspects. Namely, the original phenomenological commitment to an exceptionless suspension demands that the phenomenologist also subjects the lifeworld itself to a radical critique, in an analogous manner as the world of the objective sciences. But how is this to be done? Can the phenomenologist proceed in the similar manner as thus far, suspending one presupposed validity or set of validities after another? A new problem issues from the newly discovered object under investigation. Namely, the experience of the lifeworld differs in structure from the idea of the objective world posited by the sciences. It is not an aggregate or an additive totality but an undividable whole: None of these acts [characteristic of our natural lives], and none of the validities involved in them, is isolated: in their intentions they necessarily imply an infinite horizon of non-actual validities which function with them in streaming mobility […] Because of this horizontality, then, every straightforwardly performed validity in natural world-life always presupposes validities extending back, immediately or mediately, into a necessary subsoil of obscure but occasionally available reactivatable validities, all of which together, including the present act, make up a single indivisible connectedness of life [einen einzigen untrennbaren Lebenszusammenhang] (Hua6, 152/ 149; cf. Hua3, 58–60/51–53, 112–113/107; Hua4, 229/313).18 Husserl thus reasons that as long as the basic posit of the objective natural (and human) sciences is in operation – the being of the objective world –, we can always proceed by regional 145

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thematic suspensions in a piecemeal and stepwise manner. This is so, because the objective world of the sciences is divisible into isolable units and regions of such units. However, if we suspend the objective and idealizing sciences, with their founding posits, and do this in a consistent and rigorous manner, then also their shared assumptions about the world and its composition have to be set aside. With these assumptions, we lose the possibility of a stepwise manner of progressing. It is not applicable anymore, since the suspension of the objective sciences robs from us the guiding idea of the world as a totality divisible into discrete realities and regions of realities. If we still remain persistent in our decision to perform the transcendental-phenomenological reduction, that is, the decision to suspend the world-thesis in all its variants, then the step-wise manner of progressing cannot serve us anymore. This means that we have to perform the transcendental-phenomenological reduction in a different manner: as one universal suspension that covers the world as a whole. Instead of moving one’s foothold from one worldly region or stratum to another and thus relocating oneself in the world, one ventures to abandon, for the first time, all worldly footholds equally and at the same time. Husserl argues that such a transition “above” the world, if successfully performed, permanently transforms one’s way of looking at worldly being. One can still turn toward and occupy oneself with worldly affairs – things, facts, situations, human individuals and communities –, but one cannot treat any of them anymore as self-sufficient positivities. From here on one has to live with the realization that all worldly beings are what they are thanks to the formations of sense constituted by transcendental subjects.19 On this account, the two manners of doing phenomenology – the periodic and the permanent – actually concern two stages of Husserl’s systematic enterprise: on the one hand, delimited inquiries into specific phenomena and regions of phenomena, for example, “a phenomenology of the lifeworld,” “a phenomenological psychology,” or “a phenomenology of logic and mathematics,” and, on the other hand, transcendental phenomenology in its full depth.20 Both stages are made possible by the methods of epoché and reduction, but they require different types of epochés and reductions for their performance, targeted at different kinds of prejudices about the world. The periodic model in which we constantly alternate between two attitudes would merely concern the former type of phenomenology, that is, phenomenology which operates by inner-worldly suspensions but does not proceed to inquiry into the constitutive depts of the lifeworld. However, if we manage to disclose the lifeworld, and still keep to our original determination to suspend all worldly posits, then we cannot any more proceed in a serial and periodic manner as we do when organizing our worldly vocations (cf. Hua13, 205, 208/123; Hua34, 73–74). The lifeworld gives itself as an indivisible totality, and all validities in its experience refer to all other. If we suspend one of them, then the others are effected, and necessarily so. Thus, no stabile foothold can be retained that would serve as a platform for a return. We are of course still free to renounce our phenomenological vocation, abandon it for some other end, scientific or practical, and we are also free to re-embrace this vocation once abandoned. But as long as we remain committed to the goals of phenomenological philosophy and operate within the horizon of the lifeworld, we cannot return unaltered to or rest upon any form of positivity. I can cast aside my attitude toward phenomenological work and completely abandon the reflective attitude that belongs to the phenomenologist; and then I am again simply a natural self. As long as I am not a transcendental idealist, both thematic attitudes are compatible in the same concrete self. (…) But as soon as the 146

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phenomenologist has become a transcendental idealist, the incompatibility of these attitudes comes to the fore and thereby the realization of them [both] as absolute. This implies that the phenomenological thematic alone becomes the prevailing and ruling one, that I can only stand on the transcendental ground as the one that supports all other [grounds]; and then, when I am “naturally engaged”, this [just] means a modification [of the phenomenological attitude] (Hua34, 74–75).

Notes 1 We can distinguish between different types of vocations on the basis of their determining goals: (i) the theoretical vocations of the positive scientists and philosophy, (ii) the aesthetic vocations of the artists, art lovers, art historians, and art collectors, (iii) the political vocations of parliamentarians, activists, reformers, and revolutionaries, and (iv) the intimate personal vocations of friends, lovers, siblings, children, and parents (cf. Hua6; Hua28; Hua37, Hua42; HuaMat9). 2 The challenge is not only to find an optimal rhythm of altering between different vocations but also to control the direction of attention and focus. Already in Logical Investigations, Husserl speaks about the constant risk of “falling back” to the natural attitude from the phenomenological attitude (Hua19/1, 14/170). 3 Ultimately, Husserl argues, practical acts of willing are founded on axiological acts of valuing (Hua28; Hua37). This implies that vocational life necessarily involves valuations and emotions in which values are disclosed or manifest to us in experience. For the axiological grounds of vocations, see, Heinämaa (2020; 2022c). 4 In the translation of The Crisis, the German term “Stiftung” is rendered as “establishment”, and the related term “Urstiftung” as “primal establishment”. 5 Husserl’s concept of vocation allows us to distinguish between vocations with different durations, from short-term preoccupations to life-long dedications (e.g. Hua6, 139–140/136, 240–241/237–238; Hua27, 28–30; Hua42, 353–356, 390–392). 6 Methodologically, the analysis of habituality and habituation belongs to genetic phenomenology (Hua1, 100–101/66–67, 109–111/75–77; cf. Moran, 2011; Crespo, 2016; Jacobs, 2020). 7 Since Husserl’s concepts of habituation and institution concern durable unities of consciousness, and since consciousness essentially is intentional for him, habituation and institution have both noematic and noetic sides. In other words, each habituated and instituted experience entails both noetic and noematic correlates: on the one hand, enduring acts and on the other hand, the objective senses that correlate with them. Thus, we can broadly speak about the habituation and institution of volitional acts as well as their objective correlates, e.g. goals and means (i.e. diverse senses of goals and means, also called “final senses”). 8 Husserl’s concepts of habituation and habituality are comprehensive and reach down to the lowest levels of egoic activity in bodily, motor, and perceptual intentionality (see, e.g. Husserl [1939] 1985, 64–65/62–63, 138/124; Hua4, 256–257/268–269, 278–279/291, 310–311/324, 387–388/397; Hua4/5, 585–586; cf. Moran, 2011, 56, 60–61, 65; Moran, 2014, 29–31; Lohmar, 2014, 49). However these concepts are not restricted to individual experiencing but also operate at the level of communal or intersubjective intentional life (e.g. Hua14, 230–232). A thorough discussion and clarification of both individual-personal and social levels of analysis is provided by Caminada (2019, esp. 339–352). Finally, habitation is also crucial in the constitution of types of objectivities. For this aspect, see Lohmar (2014). 9 The permanence of decisions, beliefs, or emotions differs intentionally and constitutionally from the experiences of remembering or imagining such states (Hua1, 101/66–67; cf. Hua4, 114ff./120ff.). 10 Husserl characterizes the habitualities of the intending ego by saying that they and their noematic correlates are egoic particularities and possessions (Eigenheit, Eigentum, Besitz,) (e.g. Hua1, 100–101/ 66–67). Thus, he distinguishes habitualities conceptually from general properties (Eigenschaft) that belong to transcendent objects of different sorts, such as material things and empirically apprehended human beings. The pure ego must not be conceived as any kind entity that merely would instantiate or exemplify its habitualities in the manner that things exemplify general properties, accidental and essential (Hua4, 310–311/324; cf. Husserl [1939] 166–167/145). Rather, the ego must be conceived as the source and origin of all its genuine possessions, including its habitualities of various sorts. Thus, if

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we follow Husserl and say that egos function as substrates (Substrat) of their habitualities (e.g. Hua1, 103/69; Hua4, 121/128–129, 212/223–224, 299–300/313–314), then we must guard against the idea that they would be lifeless platforms, inert podiums, or receptive surfaces on which haphazard qualities gather. The concept of substrate, when applied to the ego and the person, rather expresses the insight that egos operate as living sources and nourishing roots of their possessions (Hua42, 358–359, cf. Hua1, 100–101/66–67). For the depth dimensions of egoic life, see Heinämaa (2020). Thus understood, the pure ego is not an empty pole or merely a pole of temporary acts. Rather the ego also operates as the pole of habitualities or habituated acts with lasting and permanent characters (Hua1, 100–102/66–68; Hua4, 300/313, 299–300/313–314, 310–311/324; Hua4/5, 349–356; Hua42, 358–359; cf. Held, 1974; 1984; Heinämaa, 2009; 2022b). In Husserl’s analysis, the basic layer of lived temporality is articulated into a tripartite structure retentionpresent-protention. Whereas “the living present” names the now-moment of the lived experience (Erlebnisse), “retention” names its structural openness onto past consciousness, and “protention” onto future consciousness. These three aspects of lived temporality are not separable parts of live time but are mutually dependent structural features. This entails that in Husserl’s analysis, experiential temporality is not a simple series of now-points but each now-point already has a complicated structure. For the historicity and generativity of intentional life, see Carr (1974); Steinbock (1995); and Carr (2014). Husserl’s temporal analysis of vocations entails that each vocation has a volitional subject or a group of such subjects as its first institutor. We do not need to know these individuals or be able to identify them (Hua6, 321–322/276–277, 365–367/353–357; 383/375; [1939] 1985, 47–48/49), but the intentional-temporal structure of vocations, as will-instituted projects, implies that they have their beginnings in the first instituting acts of some volitional subjects or other. Thus, in Husserl’s analysis, vocations are not natural processes analogous or comparable to geographic formations or natural species but result from and persist merely on the basis of free acts of willing. The German term “Seinsollen” is actually translated into English by several different terms. In Logical Investigations, J.N. Findlay translates “Seinsollen” by “shall be”, “should be” (Hua18, 53–54/33–34), “ought [to be]” (Hua18, 160/317), and “what ought to be” (Hua18, 231/145). This equivocation has complicated discussions on Husserl’s arguments about the relations between practical and cognitive acts as well as those between normative and eidetic sciences and laws. Later, translators and commentators have tried to add systematicity by using some of these alternatives consistently; Buckley and Moran, for example, use “ought to be” (Buckley; Moran 2021; 2016; cf. Carta, 2021), and Steinbock operates with “should be” (Steinbock, 1994). Despite these linguistic formulations that all utilize the verb “to be”, the positing involved in Seinsollen must not be construed as yet another modality of doxic positing, characteristic of cognitive acts, and correlative with different senses of being. Husserl, thus, distinguishes the creative function of the will from the common constitutive function of intentional activity that in different ways bestows sense and validity without literarily creating anything (cf. Fink, 1933, 373; Heidegger, 1979, 97/71; Zahavi, 2009, 72–77). Husserl uses the English term “fiat” for the onset of the positing thesis of the will, i.e. the onset of the thesis that posit what ought to be (Hua28, 107–111, 156–157; Hua29, 364; cf. James, 1898, Vol. II, Ch. XXVI). The concept of fiat combines three ideas in Husserl’s analyses: First, the fiat must be understood as the beginning point in which the will starts to exercise its positing power and thereby determine consciousness (Hua28, 107–111). Second, the fiat thus marks the beginning of a goal or a set of goals (final senses) (Hua29, 364, 525; Hua4/5, 306, 516–517; cf. Hua6, 395–396; 485–486; Hua43/ 3, 202). Third, the fiat must be understood also as the power engine or power source from which the obliging intentional character issues and spreads further in consciousness (Hua28, 111). Elsewhere, Husserl argues that all spontaneous egoic acts entail a “fiat-like” point of beginning (Hua3, 300/291). Experience and Judgment illuminates the matter further by explaining that the realm of actual experience does not allow divisibility into infinitum or limit-ideas based on such divisibility: “In actual experience there is no division in infinitum, and above all no experienceable plurality which, in the progress of experience (for example, in drawing nearer), is resolved into ever new pluralities in infinitum” (Husserl [1939] 1985, 154/135). Husserl gives this realization the name “transcendental idealism”, but he does not thereby indicate any traditional metaphysical position. Rather, the title renames his method or its consequences—in a provocative way: “Only those who misunderstand either the most profound sense of the intentional method, or that of the transcendental reduction, or even of both, may want to separate phenomenology from transcendental idealism” (Husserl Hua1, 119/86; cf. Hua4/5, 622–623; Hua5, 150–151; Hua36, 21–38, 70–79; Husserl [1931] 1962).

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Phenomenology as Vocation 20 The former type of phenomenological inquiry, the inner-worldly one, can also be exemplified by phenomenological humanities and phenomenological studies of sociality, outlined in the second volume of Ideas (Hua4, Hua5, Hu4/5) and in the 1927 lectures on natural and human sciences, titled Natur und Geist (Nature and Spirit) (Hua32).

References Arango, A. (2014) ‘Husserl’s Concept of Position-Taking and Second Nature’, in Bower, M. and Carminada, E. (eds.) Mind, Habits, and Social Reality, Phenomenology and Mind, The Online Journal of the Research Center in Phenomenology and Sciences of the Person, 6, pp. 168–179. Arendt, H. (1958) The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Caminada, E. (2019) Vom Gemeingeist zum Habitus: Husserls Ideen II: Sozialphilosophische Implikazionen. Dordrecht: Springer. Carr, D. (1974) Phenomenology and the Problem of Historicity: A Study of Husserl’s Transcendental Philosophy. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. Carr, D. (2014) Experience and History: Phenomenological Perspectives on the Historical World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carta, E. (2021) ‘Husserl on Eidetic Norms’, Husserl Studies. doi: 10.1007/s10743-020-09284-5 Crespo, M. (2016) ‘Das ‘Problem’ der Habituskonstitution und die Spätlehre des Ich in der genetischen Phänomenologie E. Husserls’, Husserl Studies, 32, pp. 237–261. Donohoe, J. (2004) Husserl on Ethics and Intersubjectivity. Amherst: Humanity Books. Donohoe, J. (2010) ‘The Vocation of Motherhood: Husserl and Feminist Ethics’, Continental Philosophy Review, 43 (1), pp. 127–140. Fink, E. (1933) ‘Die phänomenologische Philosophie Edmund Husserls in der gegenwärtigen Kritik’, Kantstudien, 38, pp. 319–383. In English ‘The phenomenological critique of Edmund Husserl and contemporary criticism’, in The Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl: Selected Critical Readings, Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970, pp. 74–147. Heidegger, M. (1979) Gesamtausgabe, II. Abteilung: Vorlesungen 1923–1944, Band 20: Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, ed. Jaeger, P., Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann. In English History of the Concept of Time, trans. Theodore Kisiel, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992. Heinämaa, S. (2007) ‘Selfhood, Consciousness, and Embodiment: A Husserlian Approach’, in Heinämaa, S., Remes, P. and Lähteenmäki, V. (eds.) Consciousness: From Perception to Reflection in the History of Philosophy. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 311–328. Heinämaa, S. (2019) ‘Epoché as a Personal Transformation: On the Similarities between the Philosophical Change of Attitude and Religious Conversions’, Phänomenologische Forschungen, pp. 133–160. Heinämaa, S. (2020) ‘Values of Love: Two Forms of Infinity Characteristic of Human Persons’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 19 (3), pp. 431–450. doi: 10.1007/s11097-019-09653-2 Heinämaa, S. (2022a) ‘Cartesian Meditations: Husserl’s Pluralistic Egology’, in Jacobs, H. (ed.) The Husserlian Mind. London, New York: Routledge, pp. 38–49, forthcoming. Heinämaa, S. (2022b) ‘Self – A Phenomenological Account: Temporality, Finitude and Intersubjectivity’, in Bortolan, A. and Magri, E. (eds.) Empathy, Intersubjectivity, and the Social World: The Continued Relevance of Phenomenology, Essays in Honour of Dermot Moran. Berlin: De Gruyter, forthcoming. Heinämaa, S. (2022c) ‘Varieties of Normativity: Norms, Goals, Values’, in Heinämaa, S., Hartimo, M. and Hirvonen, I. (eds.) Contemporary Phenomenologies of Normativity: Norms, Goals, Values. London, New York: Routledge, forthcoming. Held, K. (1974) ‘Habitualitäten’, in Ritter, J., Gründer, K. and Gabriel, G. (eds.) Historisches Worterbuch der Philosophie. Basel: Schwabe, pp. 983–984. Held, K. (1984) ‘Habitualität als Potentialität: Zur Konkretisierung des Ich bei Husserl’, Husserl Studies, 1, pp. 281–305. Husserl, E. [Hua1] (1950) Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, Husserliana I. Strasser, S. (ed.) The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: (1960) Cartesian Meditations. Translated by D. Cairns. Dordrecht, Boston: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. [Hua3] (1950) Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, Husserliana III/1. Biemel, W. (ed.). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: (1983) Ideas Pertaining to Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book. Translated by F. Kersten. The Hague, Boston: Martinus Nijhoff.

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Sara Heinämaa Husserl, E. [Hua4] (1952) Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution, Husserliana IV. Biemel, M. (ed.). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: (1993) Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Second Book: Studies in the Phenomenological Constitution. Translated by R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer. Husserl, E. [Hua4/5] (2021) Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution und Wissenschaftstheorie, Husserliana IV/V. Fonfara, D. (ed.). The Hague: Springer. Husserl, E. [Hua6] (1954) Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie: Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie, Husserliana VI. Biemel, W. (ed.) The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. In English: (1988) The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Translated by D. Carr. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Husserl, E. [Hua8] (1959) Erste Philosophie (1923/1924), Zweiter Teil, Husserliana VIII. Boehm, R. (ed.) Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer. In English: (2019) First Philosophy, Lectures 1923/24 and Related Texts from the Manuscripts (1920–1925). Translated by S. Luft and T. M. Naberhaus. Dordrecht: Springer. Husserl, E. [Hua13] (1977) Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, in Husserliana XIII. Kern, I. (ed.) In English: (1973) The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, From Lectures Winter Semester 1910–1911. Translated by I. Farin and J. Hart. Dordrecht: Springer. Husserl, E. [Hua19/1] (1984). Logische Untersuchungen, Zweiter Band, Erster Teil: Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie und Theorie des Erkenntnis, Husserliana XIX/1. Panzer, U. (ed.) The Hague, Boston: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. [Hua27] (1989) Aufsätze und Vorträge 1922–1937, Husserliana XXVII. Sepp, H. R. and Nenon, T. (ed.) Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Husserl, E. [Hua28] (1988) Vorlesungen über Ethik und Wertlehre (1908–1914), Husserliana XXVIII. Melle, U. (ed.) Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer. Husserl, E. [Hua29] (1993) Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, Ergänzungsband: Texte aus dem Nachlass 1934–1937, Husserliana XXIX. Smid, R.N. (ed.) Dordrecht: Kluwer. Husserl, E. [Hua36] (2003) Transzendentaler Idealismus, Texte aus dem Nachlass (1908–1921), Husserliana XXXVI. Rollinger, R.D. with Sowa, R. (ed.) Dordrecht: Springer. Husserl, E. [Hua37] (2004) Einleitung in die Ethik, Vorlesungen über Sommesemester 1920/1924, Husserliana XXXVII. Peucker, H. (ed.). Dordrecht: Springer. Husserl, E. [Hua42] (2013) Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie: Analysen des Unbewusstseins und der Instinkte, Metaphysik, Späte Ethik, Texte aus dem Nachlass (1908–1937), Husserliana XLII. Sowa, R. and Vongehr, T. (ed.). Dordrecht: Springer. Husserl, E. [Hua43/2] (2020) Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins, Teilband II: Gefü hl und Wert (Texte aus dem Nachlass 1896–1925), Husserliana XLIII/2. Melle, U. and Vongehr, T. (ed.). Dordrecht: Springer. Husserl, E. [HuaMat9] (2012) Einleitung in die Philosophie, Vorlesungen 1916–1919, Husserliana Materien IX. Jacobs, H. (ed.). Dordrecht: Springer. Husserl, E. [1931] (1962) ‘Author’s Preface to the English Translation’, in Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Translated by Boyce Gibson, W.R. London and New York: Routledge, 1931. Husserl, E. [1939] (1985) Erfahrung und Urteil: Untersuchungen zur Genealogie der Logik. Revised and edited by Landgrebe, L. Hamburg: Felix Mayer Verlag. In English: (1973) Experience and Judgement: Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic. Translated by J. S. Churchill and K. Ameriks. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. Jacobs, H. (2013) ‘Phenomenology as a Way of Life? Husserl on Phenomenological Reflection and Selftransformation’, Continental Philosophy Review, 46, pp. 349–369. Jacobs, H. (2016) ‘Husserl on Reason, Reflection, and Attention’, Research in Phenomenology, 46, pp. 257–276. Jacobs, H. (2021) ‘Husserl, the Active Self, and Commitment’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 20, pp. 281–298. James, W. (1898) Principles of Psychology, Volume II. New York: Dover. Lohmar, D. (2014) ‘Types and Habits: Habits and their Cognitive Background in Hume and Husserl’, in Bower, M. and Carminada, E. (eds.) Mind, Habits, and Social Reality, Phenomenology and Mind, The Online Journal of the Research Center in Phenomenology and Sciences of the Person, 6, pp. 40–51.

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Phenomenology as Vocation Loidolt, S. (2012) ‘The ‘Daimon’ that Speaks Through Love: A Phenomenological Ethics of the Absolute Ought – Investigating Husserl’s Unpublished Texts’, in Sanders, M. and Wisnewski, J.J. (eds.) Ethics and Phenomenology. New York: Lexington, pp. 9–38. Loidolt, S. (2022) “On Personhood and Practical Agency,” in Jacobs, H. (ed.) The Husserlian Mind. New York: Routledge, forthcoming in 2022. Meacham, D. (2013) ‘What Goes Without Saying: Husserl’s Concept of Style’, Research in Phenomenology, 43, pp. 3–26. Meacham, D. and Tava, F. (2020) ‘Epoché and Institution: The Fundamental Tension in Jan Patočka’s Phenomenology’, Studies in East European Thought. doi: 10.1007/s11212-020-09398-8. Merleau-Ponty, M. [1945] (1993) Phénoménologie de la Perception, Paris: Gallimard. In English Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Smith, C., London: Routledge, 1995. Moran, D. (2011) ‘Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology of Habituality and Habitus’, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 42 (1), pp. 53–77. Moran, D. (2014) ‘The Ego as Substrate of Habitualities: Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology of the Habitual Self’, in Bower, M. and Carminada, E. (eds.) Mind, Habits, and Social Reality, Phenomenology and Mind, The Online Journal of the Research Center in Phenomenology and Sciences of the Person, 6, pp. 26–47. Mulligan, K. (2004) ‘Husserl on the ‘Logics’ of Valuing, Values and Norms’, in Centi, B. and Gigliotti, G. (eds.) Fenomenologia della ragion practica: L’ethica di Edmund Husserl. Bibliopolis, pp. 177–225. Nenon, T. (1991) ‘Willing and Acting in Husserl’s Lectures on Ethics and Value Theory’, Man and World, 24, pp. 301–309. Nenon, T. (2009) ‘Feelings and Reason in Husserl’s Lectures on Ethics 1920–24’, at OPO III, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008, and the international conference Space of Phenomenology: On the 150th Anniversary of Edmund Husserl, Moskow 2009. Rinofner-Kreidl, S. (2011) ‘Motive, Gründe und Entscheidungen in Husserls intentionaler Handlungstheorie’, in Mayer, V., Erhard, C. and Scherini, M. (eds.) Die Aktualität Husserls. Freiburg in Breigau: Karl Aber, pp. 232–277. Steinbock, A. (1994) ‘The Project of Ethical Renewal and Critique: Edmund Husserl’s Early Phenomenology of Culture’, Southern Journal of Philosophy, 32 (4), pp. 449–464. Steinbock, A. (1995) Home and Beyond: Generative Phenomenology After Husserl. Evanston, Illinois: Nortwestern University Press. Zahavi, D. (2009) Husserl’s Phenomenology. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

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11 PERSONAL ACTS, HABIT, AND EMBODIED AGENCY IN MERLEAU-PONTY’S PHENOMENOLOGY OF PERCEPTION Justin F. White

11.1 Introduction In June of 2019, the Utah Jazz traded for Mike Conley, the perennial almost all-star who had spent his entire career to that point with the Memphis Grizzlies. By pairing Conley—a dynamic ball handler and good shooter who is adept at running the pick-and-roll—with their young stars Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert, the Jazz thought they could contend for the NBA title. Things did not go as expected, as Conley started the 2019–2020 season with one of the worst stretches of his career. Conley’s speed, intelligence, and skills have allowed him to consistently go toe-to-toe with (and often outperform) the best. But in a different basketball situation, the fine-tuned skills that allowed him to flourish on his previous team were less effective. His shot was not falling. His reads were tentative and off. He was, as the expression goes, thinking too much. As Michael Lee described it, “Conley’s timing is a tad off, mostly from overthinking how many extra dribbles he’ll need to set up a Gobert lob, whether to feed the hot hand or instill confidence in a teammate seeking to find a rhythm” (2019). When asked in December 2019 about his on-court struggles, Conley explained, I actually feel really good at this point. It’s not a matter of making shots or not making shots. That’s not the issue for me, especially early on. It’s being comfortable … Understanding when to be aggressive, how I can be effective with the lineup that we have. I’m so used to having the ball in my hands for so long. So it’s just an adjustment … You’re talking twelve years of the same habits, you’re trying to break. (Lee, 2019) Conley’s familiarity with his previous team’s system and teammates “removed much thought, allowing his instincts to take over whenever improvisation was in order” (Lee, 2019). Developed over many hours of practice and game time, these instincts or “habits,” as Conley 152

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called them, involved the ability to see what a situation called for and the muscle memory to respond well. Conley’s on-court struggles involved habits in two ways: he needed to develop new habits for a new system and new teammates and to break old habits that no longer fit. Conley is an elite basketball player seeking peak performance, but he illustrates a common phenomenon. We regularly acquire new habits (skills) and modify existing ones. And the same challenges Conley faces can occur whether we are seeking to learn to play the piano, improve as a surgeon, be more patient with others, or find better balance in one’s life. Our lives are filled with skillful, habitual actions, and the relevant habits and skills are acquired in various ways. Some are purposefully acquired; others are absorbed largely unintentionally. Some habits fade without consistent care and practice; others stubbornly persist despite our best efforts. In short, even though our lives are filled with habits—some helping us more effectively navigate the world and others impairing our ability to do so—the nature of habit and the process by which we change habits are complex. Many philosophers discuss habit, but as this volume attests, their views on its value vary widely. Some think that (good) habits are crucial to the good life. Some see habit as an obstacle to robust human agency. Some see habit as an inevitable, if somewhat deficient, part of human existence. Because habit can be an ambiguous notion, some apparent disagreements about its nature or value may be more apparent than actual. But many see habit as occupying a middle ground between robust human action and mere physiological reflexes—even if habits seem partly agential, their automaticity can make them seem less agential than other actions. For Maurice Merleau-Ponty, however, the middle ground habit occupies is a reason to elevate its status. On his account, habit (which he understands as motor skill) is not merely inevitable but is crucial to human existence. Consequently, understanding habit is integral to understanding human existence. Although Merleau-Ponty focuses on obviously bodily habits—such as athletic and musical performance—his work also illuminates qualities and characteristics such as kindness and patience. His accounts of habit and of how aspired-to skills and characteristics can become habitual, sinking into one’s muscle memory, naturally pair with recent work on aspiration, which Agnes Callard describes as the “agency of becoming.” However, the way habits become second nature is double-edged. Aspiration typically involves seeking to make certain actions habitual. But often, for aspired-to actions to become habitual, one must change one’s current (sometimes recalcitrant) habits. Thus, acquiring or changing one’s habits often involves significant conscious thought and effort. Although Hubert Dreyfus’s influential interpretation of Merleau-Ponty consistently emphasizes the “mindless” or “thoughtless” nature of what Dreyfus calls skillful coping, some think his interpretation goes too far and ultimately distorts both Merleau-Ponty’s view and human action. For example, Komarine Romdenh-Romluc (2012, 2013) highlights problems with Dreyfus’s account and seeks to remedy the problems by offering a Merleau-Pontyan account of the role of thought in action. Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the conscious, effortful acts he calls “personal” (or “human”) acts and their relation to habit (or reflexes) lends support to this corrective, giving a clear place for conscious thoughts about what one is doing or, applied to aspiration, about who one is seeking to become. Not only do conscious thoughts often affect and guide one’s agency, but many habits begin as what Merleau-Ponty calls personal acts and, over time, become habitual. Personal acts often succeed by becoming “dormant” and continued “absent-mindedly” as reflex (Merleau-Ponty, [1945] 2012: 90). In many cases, personal acts becoming reflexive (or habitual), becoming what Merleau-Ponty describes as “knowledge in our hands,” allows agents to more effectively navigate their practical environments. In the basketball example, Merleau-Ponty’s account explains how for Conley to 153

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excel in his new situation, he must develop new habits (and change some existing habits) so that he can better respond to what the basketball game solicits in his new environment. This chapter begins by situating Merleau-Ponty’s account of embodied agency as a corrective to what some see as the overly intellectualistic tendencies of prominent accounts of agency (Section II). The bulk of the chapter then lays out Merleau-Ponty’s account of habit as part of his account of human agency (Section III). I close by describing the relationship between habit and personal acts and by connecting it to Callard’s work on aspiration (Section IV), discussing the role (and limits) of explicit thoughts about what we are doing and who we want to be (Section V). I argue that a Merleau-Pontyan account of habit, agency, and the relationship between personal acts and habit must walk a fine line, appropriately pushing back against the intellectualist tendencies that often predominate but without losing sight of the role of thought (and explicit intentions). Those inspired by Merleau-Ponty typically succeed on the first front, but often by making action thoughtless. I argue that while doing so is a mistake, it rightly highlights the essentially bodily nature of habit and human agency more broadly.

11.2 Habit, Action, and Merleau-Ponty One reason for the unpredictable conceptual status of habit is that, in ordinary usage, habit can refer to multiple things. Habit can refer to (a) an addiction or compulsive inclination, (b) something one routinely does (e.g. drinking water after waking up, going for a run in the morning, or reading before falling asleep), or (c) “an acquired capacity or a disposition to deal with recurrent situations or tasks” (Capek, 2017: 433).1 Although these senses can overlap, they are distinct. The capacity or disposition to brush one’s teeth (sense c above) is different from the mere routine of brushing one’s teeth before bed (sense b above), for example. And although acquired capacities and dispositions (sense c) usually seem agency-enhancing, addictions or compulsive inclinations (sense a) and even routine actions (sense b) can sometimes undermine robust human agency.2 Much of the philosophy of action literature begins with the distinction between actions—things that one does, that express agency—and mere happenings in one’s life.3 Some things seem to be clearly actions—typing words, chopping onions, folding clothes, grading papers, and going for a run. Other things seem to be mere happenings, even when one’s body does them—digesting food, stumbling on a rug, and having muscle spasms. One common explanation for what sets actions apart from mere happenings is that actions are appropriately connected to the right “psychological item” or items (Pollard, 2006: 58). This psychological item could be an intention, desire, belief, reason, or some combination of these. Two early proponents of this approach, Elizabeth Anscombe (1957) and Donald Davidson ([1971] 1980), argue that something is an action if it is intentional under some description.4 If the intention to type a word leads one to hit the right keys, then typing the word is an action.5 Although it seems clear that some actions involve psychological items like intentions, desires, or beliefs, some think that mental states being required in all actions leads to an overly intellectualistic picture that overlooks or distorts some instances of agency. Some who find the dominant accounts of agency overly intellectualistic have found inspiration in Merleau-Ponty’s picture of a thoroughly embodied existence, in which herethinks the nature of the body and contextualizes the intellectual faculties typically thought to be distinctive of human existence. In Phenomenology of Perception, he concludes that careful attention to phenomena such as perception, temporality, and freedom shows that prevailing theoretical alternatives cannot capture important features of human existence without distortion. Antecedent theoretical commitments can impede one’s ability to see the phenomena 154

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clearly. An antecedent commitment to a highly intellectualist picture of human existence—for example, an (over)emphasis on the role of conscious intentions in actions—will lead one to distort phenomena or overlook contradicting features so that the phenomena will fit the theoretical framework. However, Merleau-Ponty thinks one goes too far in the other direction if human experience is reduced to mere physiological processes. If one characterizes actions as mere instinct or reflex, one distorts the skillful nature of the motor intentionality and overlooks how such intentionality is typically couched within broader intentions. In short, he argues that our being in the world is distorted if one treats it either “as a sum of reflexes” (the “physiological”) or as “an act of consciousness” (the “psychological” or the “psychical”). Because careful attention to the phenomena shows both approaches to be insufficiently attentive to the particularities of the phenomena they seek to explain, his analyses can appear to split the difference between the two approaches. As habit is often seen as occupying a middle ground between robust actions and mere happenings, it is fitting that habit is central to Merleau-Ponty’s account of agency.6 Typically, when actions are described as habitual, it is to distinguish them from actions that involve explicit mental states, tacitly assuming that more robust actions involve intentions or something similar. By contrast, Merleau-Ponty sees habit as occupying a privileged position. In order to understand human existence, he believes, one must understand the body. And habits are often clearly (sometimes infuriatingly) bodily. The automatic nature of habit—including the way one can find oneself doing (or having done) things of which one was not fully aware—is one reason habits can seem less than fully agential.7 But Merleau-Ponty’s account of habit draws support from the fact that much of the time, the muscle memory of habit is a sign of hard-earned competence, even expertise, that allows one to fluidly respond to situations without explicit thoughts about what one is doing. One can drive home on “autopilot” only when one has the skills to maneuver a vehicle in very precise ways while one’s mind is directed elsewhere. Merleau-Ponty understands bodily skills and actions generally as responses to the world’s solicitations, the nature of which depends on the way the body is always situated in or interwoven with a world. Habits (bodily skills) affect how the world solicits one and how one can respond to those solicitations. Mike Conley’s bodily skills allow the world to solicit him to move to a particular space, make a specific pass, or take a shot, and allow him to respond well. Because Merleau-Ponty thinks this solicitational structure typically occurs prior to reflective awareness and, on some interpretations, without psychological elements such as intentions, desires, and beliefs, his account is seen as a response to what Bill Pollard describes as “the prevailing intellectualist philosophy of action” (2006: 57). But even though Merleau-Ponty believes human agency is distorted when viewed through an overly intellectualist lens (one which emphasizes mental states), it is a mistake to see him only as pushing against intellectualism. For one, when Merleau-Ponty discusses habit, he distinguishes it from automatic reflexes or physiological responses, such as when pupils dilate in response to low-light in one’s environment. To clarify: although reflex can refer to purely physiological responses to stimuli, Merleau-Ponty sometimes uses reflexes more synonymously with habits, in that they are acquired, are sensitive to the practical world, fall under one’s broader intentions, and involve what Pollard (2006) calls intervention control. In many cases, what begins as a personal or human act “becomes dormant and is continued absent-mindedly as a reflex” (Merleau-Ponty, [1945] 2012: 90). The experienced birder instinctively spots birds in ways novices cannot, but that skill typically results from extended practice and is situated in her broader projects. Moreover, she can intervene and overcome instinct and avoid looking at a specific bird if, say, the bird would find a direct look threatening. Conscious thoughts, then, often determine whether and how one acquires habits (motor skills) but can also influence 155

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whether and how habits are enacted. Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of the relationship between personal acts and habits helps clarify his view of how mental states fit in human agency. That these mental states have a place at all, let alone a prominent one, goes against Dreyfus’s influential account of skillful (sometimes “mindless”) coping, a view he develops in his interpretation of Merleau-Ponty (see Romdenh-Romluc 2012, 2013). But there is also a risk of overcorrecting Dreyfus’s error and making Merleau-Ponty’s account more intellectualist than it is. On Merleau-Ponty’s account of embodied agency, one’s projects polarize the world, making some possible acts more attractive and others more repulsive: “projects polarize the world, causing a thousand signs to appear there, as if by magic, that guide action, as signs in a museum guide the visitor” ([1945] 2012: 115). Not all projects are explicitly thought, of course. But because some projects involve explicit thoughts, a truly Merleau-Pontyan account must avoid tendencies of the intellectualist tradition without under-appreciating the role of thought in human action. Too often, action in Merleau-Ponty’s account has been interpreted as “thoughtless,” as lacking mental states. But a proper understanding of the role of thought in action should not come at the expense of the strong bodily dimension of thought and of habit, which he describes as “knowledge in our hands.”

11.3 Merleau-Ponty’s Conception of Habit To see the nature of habit and, by extension, human existence clearly and without phenomenological distortion requires careful attention to the phenomena and a willingness to venture from the poles of intellectualism and scientistic reductionism. By describing habit as “knowledge in our hands,” Merleau-Ponty places it in a middle ground between knowledge and automatic reflexes([1945] 2012: 145). Again, for Merleau-Ponty, this middle ground is a privileged position. He thinks we distort much of human existence—including perception and action—if we over-intellectualize it and overplay the importance of mental states or if we under-intellectualize it and reduce it to mere physiological reflexes. He does not reject the importance of the intellectual or the physiological. Rather, he believes that because human existence (being in the world) is an interweaving of the intellectual and the physiological, attempts to separate them will distort human experience. Habit figures prominently because, as knowledge in our hands, it paradigmatically illustrates this interweaving. Skilled, habitual action has instinctive and reflexive elements, but it is different from mere instinct or reflex, such as when pupils dilate, in part because it is couched within and shaped by intentionality. Romdenh-Romluc (2012: 200) describes habits in the following way: “The ability to experience the world as soliciting her and respond accordingly is made possible by the agent’s motor skills—what Merleau-Ponty calls ‘habits.’ One acquires such skills through practice.” Until the sought-after skills become habit, related actions are often consciously (sometimes painfully) intentional. As one more fully acquires a habit, one typically can better see and respond to a situation’s solicitations without those responses being as conscious or intentional. But even when acquired habits allow for skillful responses without explicit thoughts and intentions, thoughts can still guide and influence habits. Thoughts can, for example, set parameters on whether and how to exercise habits. The skilled basketball player could take it easy when playing with her young child by suspending or altering habitual responses. Even if she sees opportunities to block a shot or drive past her defender, the salience of these solicitations can be altered by her broader aims and an explicit decision to play for fun. Of course, such changes in one’s skillful actions need not involve such thoughts. When the skilled pianist transitions from a Brahms lullaby to a Rachmaninoff concerto, adjustments in how she plays are not mere reflexes even if she does not articulate to herself the specific changes she is making. 156

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Given her projects and abilities, the world calls for certain responses, and her habits (bodily skills) allow her to respond well to those solicitations. When we have a habit a MerleauPontyan sense, the world can call for precise bodily responses and we have the relevant perceptual ability and motor skills to respond to those solicitations. According to Merleau-Ponty, motor skills and perceptual experience are intertwined. So, when one acquires a habit (changing one’s motor skills), it changes one’s perceptual experience of the world. Because one primarily perceives the world in terms of solicitations to action and motor skills affect how the world can solicit one, the way the world solicits one will depend on the motor skills one has and acquiring new habits can restructure one’s perception and engagement with the world. When Merleau-Ponty ([1945] 2012) describes “acquiring a habit as the reworking and renewal of the body schema” (143), the body schema is not “merely an experience of my body, but rather an experience of my body in the world,” and the world is primarily a practical context (142). Whether one is learning how to drive a car or to type, learning a new dance or learning how to navigate the world with a cane or with a feather in one’s hat, to learn a new bodily skill is to “catch” and “understand” some movement ([1945] 2012: 144). It is to change how one moves in the world. Let us look at three key features of Merleau-Ponty’s account of habit: 1 2 3

Incorporation: habit (often) involves extending one’s body through the skillful use of instruments, that is, through incorporating instruments into one’s body. Spatiality: acquired habits rework one’s existential spatiality. Bodily knowledge: habit is neither mere reflex nor mere knowledge but involves both; as Merleau-Ponty puts it, habit is “knowledge in our hands” ([1945] 2012: 145).

First, incorporation. Merleau-Ponty often talks about habit using examples of learning how to use or deal with instruments or objects—cars, feathers in hats, canes, and keyboards, for example. When one learns to use an instrument, one incorporates the instrument, or brings it into one’s body. This incorporation alters one’s bodily presence and capacities. As he puts it, “Habit expresses the power we have of dilating our being in the world, or of altering our existence through incorporating new instruments” ([1945] 2012: 145). When one becomes adept at using some instrument, it becomes an extension of one’s body: “the subject who learns to type literally incorporates the space of the keyboard into his bodily space” ([1945] 2012: 146). Incorporating instruments also expands one’s possibilities for action. Being able to drive a car, ride a bike, or play the piano changes what one can do. Again, because “every habit is simultaneously motor and perceptual” ([1945] 2012: 153), acquiring habits (and incorporating instruments) changes how one perceives the world. He compares learning to perceive the world with a cane to a child learning to distinguish between blue and red, calling the gaze “a natural instrument comparable to the blind man’s cane” ([1945] 2012: 154). To learn to see (new) colors is to acquire “a certain style of vision, a new use of one’s body” ([1945] 2012: 155). Similarly, learning to see things in a new activity—patterns in chess, options in a basketball play, or different markings of bird species—is to acquire a new style of vision, one that affords a new use of one’s body. For Merleau-Ponty, however, the body is more than an object or instrument: “I am not in front of my body, I am in my body, or rather I am my body” ([1945] 2012: 151), and that body is “an anchorage in a world” ([1945] 2012: 146). My body anchors me and gives me a foothold in a fundamentally practical world, the shape of which depends on my tasks and projects. Second, when Merleau-Ponty ([1945] 2012) claims that acquiring a new habit is to rework one’s spatiality, the body’s spatiality is “situational spatiality” (102). In situational spatiality, when 157

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“here” is applied to my body, it situates my body in relation to its tasks rather than in relation to external coordinates ([1945] 2012: 102–103).8 When one acquires habits by developing motor skills and incorporating instruments, it changes how one experiences the spatiality of one’s body and of the practical environment: the incorporated feathered hat and the automobile “become voluminous powers and the necessity of a certain free space” (144). They are powers in the ways they alter one’s spatial presence in the world and open up possibilities, but they also have an element of necessity because they set limits on how one can move. The hat requires one to duck through certain doorways and driving allows for faster speeds but also eliminates access to doorways or sidewalks. And one perceives the world accordingly. One with the habit (motor skills) for driving perceives roads and traffic primarily in terms of possibilities for action, and whether the spaces allow one to reach one’s aims. One skilled with an instrument can adeptly navigate the situational spatiality of one’s environment. The person wearing the feathered hat and the driver size up their situations and respond without calculating the heights of the doorway in relation to the feathered hat or measuring the space between two cars on the highway. Habituation is less learning to apply theoretical knowledge and more developing bodily skill. Merleau-Ponty ([1945] 2012) describes the process of learning how to use a cane in the following way: If I want to become habituated to a cane, I try it out, I touch some objects and, after some time, I have it “in my hand”: I see which objects are “within reach” or out of reach of my cane. This has nothing to do with a quick estimate or a comparison between the objective length of the cane and the objective distance of the goal to be reached. Places in space are not defined as objective positions in relation to the objective position of my body, but rather they inscribe around us the variable reach of our intentions and our gestures. (144–145) He extends this process to other instruments and connects the spatiality of one’s body to the process of incorporation: “To habituate oneself to a hat, an automobile, or a cane is to take up residence in them, or inversely, to make them participate within the voluminosity of one’s own body” ([1945] 2012: 144–145). Habituation involves significant bodily know-how, a nuanced understanding and skill that, for example, allow one to perceive and navigate the world with a cane. When one skillfully inhabits an instrument, takes up residence in it, one’s being in the world dilates—the world affords new possibilities to one’s newly expanded body and one can respond to those possibilities. Some instruments extend one’s physical reach. But different and enhanced skills also expand one’s intentional reach by disclosing new possibilities and enabling novel responses to situations. For one habituated to them, the hat and car are part of one’s body and thus open and close practical possibilities. One can and must navigate terrain differently while driving than while on foot. When the driver rotates her hands while holding the steering wheel, her whole body changes its orientation, and by pressing her foot on the gas pedal, her velocity increases. Ordinarily, the skilled driver does not perceive her body and environment in terms of a Cartesian coordinate system but in terms of progress toward her destination. And her primary experience of velocity is not in terms of numeric quantity but of her aim to arrive quickly at her destination, with the sense that she can press the gas to arrive more quickly. As instruments are incorporated into one’s body, the spatiality of those instruments, one’s body, and one’s environment change. Although it is easy to see in cases involving instruments, in general, one’s habits affect how one experiences the world and one’s own body. Third, although Merleau-Ponty’s account of bodily knowledge has been interpreted as rejecting the intellect’s role in habit or skilled agency—and he does push back against the strong 158

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intellectualist strand in philosophy—one can easily swing too far in the other direction by cutting out the intellect entirely. While Merleau-Ponty has misgivings about reducing the motor skill of habit to a certain kind of knowledge, he also does not reduce skill to mere reflex. By saying that “habit [motor skill] is neither a form of knowledge nor an automatic reflex” ([1945] 2012: 145), he resists both the intellectualist tendency to see habit (skill) as applied theoretical knowledge and the naturalist tendency to reduce habit (skill) to reflexes or instincts. But if habit is neither of these, what is it? “It is a question of knowledge in our hands,” he posits, something that “cannot be translated by an objective designation” ([1945] 2012: 145). With the notion of bodily knowledge, Merleau-Ponty seeks to capture both the fluid, skilled nature of habit without overor under-emphasizing the role of the intellect. Perhaps because the predominant accounts of human agency are often intellectually demanding, accounts inspired by Merleau-Ponty can overcorrect by characterizing motor skills as skillful but explicitly thoughtless (or mindless) agency. While this interpretive approach rightly highlights that bodily knowledge is different from “knowledge,” it problematically downplays the knowledge aspect of bodily knowledge, including the role for thoughts and personal acts in acquiring and enacting bodily skills. To show the distinctive nature of bodily knowledge and how such knowledge is distorted by other theoretical approaches, Merleau-Ponty ([1945] 2012) uses the example of instrumentalists: “[they demonstrate] even more clearly how habit resides neither in thought nor in the objective body, but rather in the body as the mediator of the world” (146). Skilled instrumentalists show that the motor skill of habit cannot be adequately captured either by the intellectualist category of thought or the physiological or mechanistic understanding of reflex (the objective body). To show how neither approach captures the nature of such skill, he describes how a musician becomes accustomed to a new instrument. [A]n experienced organist is capable of playing an organ with which he is unfamiliar and that has additional or fewer keyboards, and whose stops are differently arranged than the stops on his customary instrument. He needs but an hour of practice to be ready to execute his program. Such a brief apprenticeship prohibits the assumption that new conditioned reflexes are simply substituted for the already established collection, unless, that is, they together form a system and if the change is global, but this would be to go beyond the mechanistic theory since in that case the reactions would be mediated by a total hold on the instrument. Shall we say, then, that the organist analyzes the organ, that he forms and maintains a representation of the stops, pedals, and keyboards, as well as their relation in space? [No.] … [D]uring the short rehearsal that precedes the concert he hardly behaves like someone who wants to draw up a plan. He sits on the bench, engages the pedals, and pulls out the stops, he sizes up the instrument with his body, he incorporates its directions and dimensions, and he settles into the organ as one settles into a house. ([1945] 2012: 146) The organist’s preparation does not fit what he would (need to) do if the skill were reducible to conditioned reflexes or if it fundamentally depended on mental representations: the practice time is too brief for the former and his manner of rehearsal does not fit the latter. The organist settles into the new organ, incorporating it into his body and getting a feel for the spatiality it requires and makes possible. Once he gets a feel for the new instrument by practicing with it and adapting to its contours, the organist’s habit (motor skill) allows him to perform the music. The organ and the organist’s body become a place of passage between the musical essence of the piece in the score and the music that resonates around the organ (Merleau-Ponty, [1945] 2012: 147). The body is an expressive space, and “during the rehearsal—just as during the 159

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performance—the stops, the pedals, and the keyboards are only presented to him as powers of such and such an emotional or musical value” ([1945] 2012: 146–147). When he gives himself over to the music, the skilled instrumentalist responds bodily with the incorporated instrument to express the emotional or musical value of a piece. And in this immersed, expressive experience, “no sooner have I formed the desire to take hold of an object than already, at a point in space that I was not thinking about, my hand as that power for grasping rises up toward the object” ([1945] 2012: 147). Because the motor skill of habit allows one to respond to the world’s solicitations in ways that harmonize with one’s desires before those desires become conscious thought, it is easy to see Merleau-Ponty’s account of “knowledge in our hands” as offering little to no role for thought in skilled human agency. The lessskilled instrumentalist needs to think through the piece; the skilled instrumentalist adjusts to a new instrument and plays masterfully without thinking about it. Similarly, Mike Conley’s play suffers when he thinks too much about what he is doing and improves when he finds himself passing or shooting just as the desire forms and before consciously settling on the action. Highly skilled individuals can respond well to situations before responses becomes conscious thought. For these reasons, Merleau-Ponty ([1945] 2012) consistently criticizes intellectualist approaches to perception and action. He rejects the idea that know-how depends on knowledgethat: One can know how to type without knowing how to indicate where on the keyboard the letters that compose the words are located. Knowing how to type, then, is not the same as knowing the location of each letter on the keyboard, nor even having acquired a conditioned reflex for each letter that is triggered upon seeing it. (145) Skillful typing is different both from knowing where each letter is on the keyboard and from mere reflex. Although typing when transcribing a page might seem to be a reflex triggered by letters on the page, Merleau-Ponty argues that thinking about habit in merely physiological ways also distorts the phenomenon. For one, habit involves holistic responses to one’s environment that are different from reflexive responses to stimuli. In addition, because the bodily skill of habit is integral to one’s being in the world and connected to projects that are shaped by one’s self-conception, Merleau-Ponty sees it as a mistake to separate habit from thought-infused acts that are often considered more paradigmatically agential. Rather than undermining one’s agency, Merleau-Ponty sees habit as enhancing and as paradigmatic of human agency. As acquired capacities or dispositions, new habits open up new possibilities for pursuing one’s aims; they dilate one’s being-in-the-world. Learning the Fosbury flop significantly enhances the aspiring high jumper’s capacity to achieve her aims. In his essays on tennis and in the novel Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace describes the sheer volume of repetitious training required for one to develop the skill and muscle memory necessary to be even a mediocre professional tennis player. Significant habituation is necessary for high-level tennis because much of the game occurs too quickly for responses to be under one’s conscious control. However, if habit is merely reflex, this habituation could be seen as undermining agency. Insofar as consistent training leads the tennis player to see and respond to situational features or affordances that do not rise to her conscious attention, she could be guided by the situation more than by her conscious will. When the expert tennis player responds to situational forces by hitting the ball with a specific kind of spin, or sharply instead of slightly cross-court, the actions happen too quickly for the deliberation or conscious representation highlighted by intellectualism. As Wallace says in an essay on Roger Federer: 160

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The upshot is that pro tennis involves intervals of time too brief for deliberate action. Temporally, we’re more in the operative range of reflexes, purely physical reactions that bypass conscious thought. And yet an effective return of serve depends on a large set of decisions and physical adjustments that are a whole lot more involved and intentional than blinking, jumping when startled, etc. (Wallace, 2012: 23) The skillful response to the situation involves a “the motor grasping of a motor signification” (Merleau-Ponty, [1945] 2012: 144). This motor grasping enhances one’s agency, but it is neither reducible to rules nor mere reflex. As mentioned, many seize on one piece of this picture and use Merleau-Ponty to push against the tendency to over-intellectualize human existence—including perception and agency—but it is an interpretive and philosophical mistake to fully remove thought from skilled action. One reason to resist making skilled action too thoughtless is that the habits embodied in expert performance typically come through a long process of conscious, thoughtful training. Of course, one could concede that thoughts often play important roles in habit (skill) acquisition yet still hold that once habits are acquired, such thoughts become unnecessary and can even undermine expert performance—thought plays a crucial role for the novice but not for the expert.9 However, habits can manifest differently depending on one’s conscious thoughts, including one’s self-conception and thoughts about one’s purposes. While thought-infused personal acts play important roles in habit acquisition, how one exercises one’s habits (skills) often depends on one’s conscious thoughts. This happens in new circumstances with unfamiliar parameters or when one is working to change a habit. I may habitually look for cars before crossing the street but need to consciously adjust this habit when visiting a city where cars and buses drive on a different side of the road. Even though Merleau-Ponty pushes against the preeminent place of thought and emphasizes the bodily nature of agency, he affirms that thought can play an important role.

11.4 Personal Acts, Habit, and Aspiration To better see both the importance and the limits of thought, let us turn to the phenomenon of aspiration, which Callard describes as the agency of becoming. Although Callard has a very specific phenomenon in mind and I use aspiration in a broader sense, Merleau-Ponty’s account of habit illuminates the process of aspiration (in both narrower and broader senses). When we aspire, we want to acquire new habits or ways of being. Often, aspiration also involves shedding or significantly changing habits. And to change such habits is to unlearn previously acquired bodily dispositions. Conley had been an excellent basketball player at every level. But in a different basketball system, the same habits (skills) that once allowed him to thrive were now tripping him up. Relying on instinct often led to the wrong play. But thinking about making the right play in the new system also undermined his motor skills—he shot worse, made bad passes, and so forth. To succeed on his new team, Conley needed to learn new habits and unlearn (or change) old habits. When discussing motor skills (habits), Merleau-Ponty and others in the phenomenological tradition (such as Dreyfus) use examples from athletics, music, and other obviously bodily activities, such as typing or driving. But Merleau-Ponty’s expansive conception of habit and the way he emphasizes the embodied nature of human experience (and agency) could extend to aspiration (broadly construed) in other areas—including aspiring to be kinder, to stand one’s ground, and to find balance in life. 161

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Aspiration involves more than wanting to act in certain ways; when one aspires, one wants to become a certain type of person. For Callard, because one’s values constitute one’s deep practical orientation, aspiration is the “distinctive form of agency directed at the acquisition of values” (Callard, 2018: 4–5). To change one’s values is to bring about profound changes in oneself (2018: 33). In the phenomenological tradition, one changes in this way by developing the dispositions, attributes, and skills to see the world in a certain way and to seamlessly, skillfully respond to situations. Some such changes come suddenly—some religious conversions, for example. But most are gradual and work-intensive—developing character traits or coming to act in keeping with a commitment to gender or racial equality. Becoming a parent can be a hybrid case. Having a child can shake up one’s world, but “it does not magically endow one with the values, habits, and feelings of parenthood” (Callard, 2018: 60). To become a parent in the deep practical orientation sense involves a change in one’s values, habits, and feelings, in one’s being in the world. Becoming a skilled athlete or musician involves developing the perception and muscle memory that allow one to see what a situation requires and respond well, whether one is returning a tennis volley or playing a concerto. Similarly, when one aspires to be kind, one does not seek merely to acquire the beliefs or outward movements of a kind person; one wants to become kind, to see and respond to the world in a kind way. No matter who or what one wants to become, one must develop the right habits (skills), including the relevant perceptual orientation. Of course, habits are acquired differently. Some are acquired passively without conscious effort, perhaps through upbringing or enculturation. But others are actively acquired through intensive learning and training until they become second nature. Learning a new instrument or a new piece of music typically involves focused, intentional practice. Over time and with significant repetition, what once required intense concentration can become second nature. Similarly, when one tries to be a better parent, considering those relationships and working to develop parenting skills can help one become more attuned to the world as a parent and better able to respond well. But if one aspires to become and not merely act in certain ways, conscious effort and deliberate practice are important primarily because they help dispositions and skills to become muscle memory. Recall Merleau-Ponty’s poetic claim that one’s projects “polarize the world, causing a thousand signs to appear there, as if by magic, that guide action, as signs in a museum guide the visitor” ([1945] 2012: 115). The different ways projects like parenthood can polarize the world are worthy of attention. To some extent, genuinely adopting a project already changes how one’s world is polarized. But the polarization at that point is likely effortful and partial. Because one does not yet have the habits (bodily skills) that would more fully polarize one’s world and allow one to fully inhabit that world, one is working to see and respond to the world in a certain way. Early aspiration is thus often characterized by effortful, conscious personal acts. As aspiration succeeds, the personal acts become habit, and one sees and responds to the world differently. Aspiration thus involves two dimensions of human action. Personal acts and thoughts about one’s aims involve the capacity for conscious thought and reflection. But to genuinely aspire is to seek to change one’s habits and one’s being in the world. Merleau-Ponty ([1945] 2012) highlights the bodily dimension of this transition: “even if our body does not impose definite instincts upon us from birth, as the animal’s body does, then it at least gives the form of generality to our life and prolongs our personal acts into stable dispositions” (147). Viewed from a certain perspective, when something becomes habit, one relinquishes some conscious control.10 While developing a habit gives stability and consistency to a personal act that one wants 162

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to be more fully integrated into one’s way of being, when it becomes habit, it is no longer continually under one’s conscious control. And this is double-edged. It makes possible masterful performance that occurs too quickly for full control by explicit thoughts, but it also allows one to be moved by habits that one wishes were no longer effective. Because personal acts do not exhaust one’s habits or existential projects, the world can be shaped by habits and polarized by projects of which one is unaware, that one wishes one did not have, that one denies having, or that one is working to change. Framing things in terms of Callard’s conception of value, one can find oneself valuing things or in ways one wishes one did not. When this happens, personal acts can help change one’s habits and ways of seeing the world, and thoughts about one’s aims and projects can help change one’s practical situation. Romdenh-Romluc (2012, 211–212) proposes a Merleau-Pontyan account of how thoughts can affect the salience or strength of solicitations. For one arriving late to a lecture hall, the desire to slip in unnoticed and the memory of a squeaky floorboard can strengthen the solicitation to avoid that floorboard. Or one who aspires to be kinder and thus consistently thinks about kindness and how to be kinder might plan for and notice opportunities to be kind; kind actions could come to solicit one more strongly and unkind actions could become repulsive. Genuine aspiration can lead one to think about possibilities for action and affect the salience of solicitations, thus affecting how the world appears to one, even before one more fully acquires the aspired-to habits. But in both cases just described, these people do not yet have the relevant habits as fully as they would like. Romdenh-Romluc’s late lecture hall arriver needs to think to himself to avoid the squeaky floorboard because he does not yet have the habit (the perceptual and motor skills) to spontaneously avoid it; the kindness aspirant has to think about what a kind person would do because her kindness habits are underdeveloped. In a Merleau-Pontyan framework, the goal of aspiration is to develop the habits that allow one to live differently, and this involves a more lasting change in the world’s polarization and the strength of the solicitations. Near the end of his first season with his new team, things started improving for Conley. In his second season with the Jazz, Conley was playing arguably the best basketball of his career. As Tony Jones puts it: What’s obvious is Conley has a much better grasp of the offense in Year 2. And the understanding of the offense has allowed him to get back instinctually to what he does best. Conley has always been great at running pick and roll, finding open shots for himself, or getting into the paint and dissecting a defense. ( Jones, 2021) Jones’s characterization softens the fact that Conley was not great at those things for much of the previous season. His habits were in a time of transition. Jazz coach Quin Snyder described it in a way Merleau-Ponty would likely approve of: “‘He’s been able to be more instinctive […] Things take time, and that’s important to remember’” (Jones, 2021). By being able to rely on habits and instincts again, Conley became an All Star for the first time in his career. The Merleau-Pontyan point, however, is not that conscious thought or aspiration has no place. Such thought plays an important role in developing and modifying habits and in framing the context within which habits are exercised. What starts as a personal act can in time become habit, and then as one engages with the world, those habits can be refined and modified to better respond to the nuances of the situations one encounters. In some cases, those modifications are the result of conscious thought. Even fully developed habits are often still tied up with personal acts and the capacity for conscious thoughts. But for Merleau-Ponty, such thought does not enjoy the conceptual pride of place it often does. 163

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Take, for example, how he describes the entanglement of personal acts and reflex (habits) in the context of a discussion of human existence more generally: Taken concretely, man is not a psyche joined to an organism, but rather this backand-forth of existence that sometimes allows itself to exist as a body and sometimes carries itself into personal acts. Psychological motives and bodily events can overlap because there is no single movement in a living body that is an absolute accident with regard to psychical intentions and no single psychical act that has not found at least its germ or its general outline in physiological dispositions. It is never a question of the incomprehensible encounter of two causalities, nor of a collision between the order of causes and the order of ends. Rather, through an imperceptible shift, an organic process opens up into a human behavior, an instinctive act turns back upon itself and becomes an emotion, or, inversely, a human act becomes dormant and is continued absentmindedly as a reflex. The psychical and the physiological can be related through exchanges that prevent almost every attempt to define a mental disturbance as either psychic or somatic. (Merleau-Ponty, [1945] 2012: 90) In this back-and-forth that characterizes human existence, we sometimes engage in personal acts, consciously thinking about and pursuing an outcome. Yet, some personal acts aim at acquiring habits that change our way of being—what start as personal acts can become habits that allow us to exist bodily with conscious psychological motives figuring less prominently. However, we are never fully (or merely) either a psyche or an organism but a to-and-fro of existence that swings between and intermingles these. Thus, even the headiest activities are bodily and not merely psychical and, alternatively, even the most bodily actions occur against the background of conceptual frameworks and can be infused with the reflective thought often seen as central to human existence. To over- or under-emphasize either side is to lose sight of what makes us the distinctive beings we are.

Notes 1 Jakub Capek (2017) describes four different senses of habit, adding one to those mentioned above: habit as “the mere habituation to something, as when we become used to a new climate after having moved” (433). 2 See Callard’s (2018: 164–166) discussion of Donald Davidson’s discussion of the habitual pre-bedtime toothbrusher. Also, Pollard (2006) notes that habit can be understood as addiction, compulsion, or phobia, which all seem to compromise agency. 3 Donald Davidson and Harry Frankfurt begin “Agency” and “Identification and Externality”, respectively, with this distinction. 4 In “Habit and Attention” (2013) and “Thought in Action” (2012), Romdenh-Romluc calls this approach the dominant view. 5 Because actions can be described differently, something can be an action if it is intentional under one description, even if it is not intentional under another. For example, hurting my colleague’s feelings could be an action if I intentionally make a hurtful remark about her, even if my intention is not to hurt her feelings (I could make the comment to someone else and not intend for her to overhear). 6 Describing Merleau-Ponty’s account of perception, Taylor Carman (2020: 76) writes: “Perception is irreducibly intentional and bodily, sensory and motor, and so neither merely subjective nor objective, inner nor outer, spiritual nor mechanical. The middle ground between those traditional categories is not just their middle but indeed their ground, for it is what they depend on and presuppose”. 7 Not all think this. Pollard (2003) and Julia Peters (2015) argue that habitual automaticity is constitutive of truly virtuous actions.

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References Anscombe, G.E.M. (1957) Intention. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Callard, A. (2018) Aspiration. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Capek, J. (2017) ‘Habit and Freedom in Merleau-Ponty and Ricoeur’, Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 31 (3), pp. 432–443. Carman, T. (2020) Merleau-Ponty. New York: Routledge. Davidson, D. (1971) ‘Agency’, in Essays on Actions and Events. Reprint, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980, pp. 43–61. Dreyfus, H. and Dreyfus, S. (2014) ‘From Socrates to Expert Systems: The Limits of Calculative Rationality’, in Wrathall, M. (ed.) Skillful Coping. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 25–43. Jones, T. (2021) ‘Mike Conley Is Finding His Comfort Zone in His Second Year with the Jazz’, The Athletic, 11 January. (Accessed: 08 October 2021). Lee, M. (2019) ‘Donovan Mitchell and the Jazz Are Determined to Take That Expected Leap, Despite Their Uneven Start’, The Athletic, 4 December. (Accessed: 08 October 2021). Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945) Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Landes, D. Reprint, New York: Routledge, 2012. Peters, J. (2015) ‘On Automaticity as a Constituent of Virtue’, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 18, pp. 165–175. Pollard, B. (2003) ‘Can Virtuous Actions be Both Habitual and Rational?’, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 6, pp. 411–425. Pollard, B. (2006) ‘Explaining Actions with Habits’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 43 (1), pp. 57–69. Romdenh-Romluc, K. (2013) ‘Habit and Attention’, The Phenomenology of Embodied Subjectivity: Contributions to Phenomenology, 71, pp. 3–19. Romdenh-Romluc, K. (2012) ‘Thought in Action’, in The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Phenomenology. Zahavi , D. (ed.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 198–215. Wallace, D.F. (2012) Both Flesh and Not. New York: Back Bay Books.

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12 DELEUZE ON HABIT AND TIME; OR, HOW TO GET, AND HOW NOT TO GET, FROM HUME TO BERGSON Mark Sinclair

A key part of the project of Gilles Deleuze’s, 1968 Difference and Repetition involves ascertaining “why repetition cannot be explained by the forms of identity in concepts or representations” and “in what sense it demands a superior ‘positive’ principle” (1968: 31/1994: 19). Repetition of what is essentially or conceptually the same – the number of times, say, I have made a coffee today – involves a higher or more fundamental principle than conceptual thought, and in the second chapter of the book, ‘Repetition for Itself’, Deleuze’s account of this principle involves a particular account of the nature of time. The first of what the chapter presents as three ‘syntheses of time’ brings into relation the notions of time and habit in a bold and interesting manner: the claim here is that the principle of habit is time as the ‘living present’, time as something other than a series of instants. The idea that adequate reflection on habit requires critique of linear conceptions of time as composed of a series of instants is not new, however, for it features in the work of 19th-century French thinkers that Deleuze does not cite. In what follows, I show that returning to these sources allows us to see that Deleuze’s approach is flawed, and that this flaw threatens to undermine his philosophical project as a whole in Difference and Repetition. To that end, it is necessary first to assess Deleuze’s argument and address the sources he does cite. The argument is elaborated as an attempt to explain ordinary psychological processes of association. In this, Deleuze follows the modern philosophical tradition (especially Hume), which, when it has not begged the question by supposing that association explains habit (as did a later Scottish philosopher, Dugald Stewart; see Sinclair, 2011: 84), has considered habit as a principle that explains association. When, in the presence of a thing A, I think in some sense ‘automatically’ and involuntarily of the absent B with which it is normally present, this psychological association is shaped by repeated experience of perceiving A and B together in the past. Although I may be able to call up in my mind particular instances of seeing A and B together, the association appears not to be a function of episodic memory: there is no experience of remembering particular, datable episodes in the association, and the association is not voluntary. Association presupposes a different type of relation to the repeated instances of A and B in the past (a different type of ‘memory’, as we might be tempted to say), one that makes thinking of B in the present automatic. The more that we have seen A and B together in the 166

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past, the more that we will think automatically of B in the presence of A. In this way, rather than simply being recorded, the previous instances of A and B are somehow condensed or contracted such that together they shape and anticipate what will occur in the future. This anticipatory contraction is habit (French has people contract habits – contracter l’habitude de faire quelque chose – as English has people contract illnesses), but Deleuze argues that habit thus understood requires revision of common conceptions of the nature of time. When A appears, we expect B with a force corresponding to the qualitative impression of all the contracted ABs. This is by no means a memory, nor indeed an operation of the understanding: contraction is not a matter of reflection. Properly speaking, it forms a synthesis of time. A succession of instants does not constitute time any more than it causes it to disappear: it indicates only its constantly aborted moment of birth. Time is constituted in the originary synthesis which operates on the repetition of instants. This synthesis contracts the successive independent instants into one another, thereby constituting the lived or living present. It is in this present that time is deployed. To it belong both the past and the future: the past in so far as the preceding instants are retained in the contraction; the future because its expectation is anticipated in this same contraction. The past and the future do not designate instants distinct from a supposed present instant, but rather the dimensions of the present itself in so far as it a contraction of instants. (1968: 96/1994: 70-1) Experience presents us with independent, evanescent instances and instants, each replacing the other; that is what, for Deleuze, appears first of all. But a synthesis comes to contract these instances and instants together, a synthesis in which the past and future are not instants that exist no longer or not yet, but dimensions of a living-present. It is this synthesis, Deleuze claims, that makes anticipatory contraction in association possible. The words ‘properly speaking’ here signal the conclusion of an argument that is not presented fully; it is the sign of a ‘transcendental argument’ that moves from experience, here the experience of association, to an account of what it presupposes. The first premise of the argument is easily identifiable: association involves a notion of the retention of the past that cannot be explained by a notion of episodic memory. This claim is historically familiar – it would be hard to find a treatment of habit in modern philosophy that does not articulate a version of it – and philosophically straightforward,1 but another, crucial premise of the argument is missing. This premise has to refute not cognitive or intellectualist approaches in psychology, as did the first, but rather mechanistic and ultimately physiological explanations of habit. The missing premise is this: the contraction of the past in the automaticity of association cannot be adequately explained by any material or mechanical changes.2 Contemporary neuroscience – which follows the neurophilosophy of the 17th-century in this – considers that a contraction of the past that shapes the future, i.e. an acquired habit, can be accounted for in material terms, in terms of changed neurological structures that allow for different reactions in the future. In this way, neuroscience saves itself, apparently at least, much metaphysical trouble, but Deleuze implicitly rejects this approach in taking an anti-mechanist and anti-physiological premise for granted. Consequently, and in presuming that no other explanation of habit is adequate,3 Deleuze can conclude that the only way that associative anticipatory contraction can be explained is by recognising that the present as we live and experience it is not punctual, instantaneous or exclusive of the past and the future. For Deleuze, then, cognitive approaches in psychology are as little able to explain anticipatory contraction as physiological and mechanist approaches – and only a revised notion of 167

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time as the living-present can save and explain the phenomena. Anticipatory contraction is, at bottom, time as the living-present, the experience of time as a form of primary synthesis of past and future in the present that makes any particular associations (A to B, strawberries to cream, precipice to danger) possible. Since associationist doctrines have held that association always structures experience, Deleuze can claim that this synthesis is ever-present and grounds our experience of time as such. Time as a “passive synthesis” – passive in that it is not the act of a reflective, thinking self or subject – “is essentially asymmetrical; it goes from the past to the future in the present … thereby imparting direction to the arrow of time” (1968: 97/1994: 71). In describing the synthesis as passive, and as constituting a living-present, Deleuze evidently echoes the influential account of time-consciousness advanced by Edmund Husserl (see Hughes 2009). Deleuze does not discuss Husserl directly in these passages, however, but rather two of his more central sources of inspiration, namely Hume and Bergson, about whom he had already written books. Concerning the principle presupposed by association, Hume says precisely that it is a question of habit. But how to explain that—in the case of Bergson’s clock strokes just as in Hume’s causal sequences—we feel ourselves, indeed, so close to the mystery of habit, yet recognise nothing of what is habitually called habit? Perhaps the reason lies in the illusions of psychology, which made a fetish of activity. […] It asks how we acquire habits in acting, but the entire theory of learning risks being misdirected so long as the prior question is not posed – namely, whether it is through acting that we acquire habits. (1968: 98/1994: 73) Hume had already argued that the principle of habit explains association and causal inference, and thus that it is the most basic – and perhaps ultimately inexplicable – principle of human nature, but, remarkably for those unfamiliar with earlier 19th-century French philosophy, Deleuze claims that the ‘mystery of habit’ thus conceived underlies Bergson’s account of time as ‘real duration’ in his 1889 Time and Free Will. When Bergson describes duration as the preepisodic retention of the past in the present – and this by appealing to the experience of uncounted clock-strokes – he is really, Deleuze suggests, describing the most primitive form of habit, whose principle does not reside in reflective thought. Although Bergson’s clock strokes can be represented as a series of the same thing, as a series of As rather than as a successive of As and Bs, the philosophical lesson, Deleuze claims, is essentially the same. This Hume-Bergson amalgamation had already featured in Deleuze’s, 1953 Empiricism and Subjectivity: Anticipation is habit and habit is anticipation; these two determinations – the thrust [la poussée] of the past and the élan towards the future – are at the centre of Hume’s philosophy as two aspects of the same fundamental dynamism. It is not necessary to force the texts in order to find in habit-anticipation most of the characteristics of Bergsonian durée. (1953: 101/1991: 92)4 Although the term ‘habit’ here stands – as a synonym of contraction in contrast to anticipation – for just for one aspect of the whole first ‘synthesis of time’ in Difference and Repetition, the basic claim is clear: Hume’s reflection on habit implies a notion of time as duration just as much as Bergson’s notion of duration implies a notion of habit. Despite Deleuze’s protestations, we will struggle to find either a non-linear, non-spatialised notion of time in Hume’s work or a positive reflection on habit in Bergson’s articulation of the 168

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idea of duration. Moreover, Deleuze’s more detailed reading of the clock-strokes example shows that he does force things in amalgamating Bergson’s ideas with those of Hume: Associationism possesses an irreplaceable subtlety. It is not surprising that Bergson rediscovers Hume’s analyses once he encounters an analogous problem: four o’clock strikes … each stroke, each disturbance or excitation, is logically independent of the other, mens momentanea. However, quite apart from any memory or distinct calculation, we contract these into an internal qualitative impression within this living present or passive synthesis which is duration. Then we restore them in an auxiliary space, a derivative time in which we may reproduce them, reflect on them or count them like so many quantifiable external-impressions. (1968: 98/1994: 72) Deleuze knows that Bergson offers an almost complete rejection in Time and Free Will of associationism and the psychological atomism it presupposes.5 It is unclear, however, whether he is aware that Bergson rejected such a view of the clock-strokes. Deleuze’s reading can claim to be textually faithful in that it relies on Bergson’s initial concessions to common sense: “I retain each of the successive sensations to organize it with the others and to form a group that recalls a familiar tune or rhythm; in this way, I do not count the sounds, and limit myself to gathering the, so to speak, qualitative impression that their number has on me” (1889: 64/1911: 86). But Deleuze’s reading is philosophically unfaithful – one might even say ‘anti-Bergsonian’ – in that Bergson’s position is that the clock-strokes originally are not logically or even physically independent of each other; they are not particular disturbances or excitations; and they are not mens momentanea, momentary instants of mind. The whole point of the (perhaps challenging) example is to show that what language and reflective thought ordinarily consider to be the isolated, separated and atomic strokes are originally experienced, before we try to determine what time it is by counting them, as fused and merged with each other. The example is supposed to show that we can hear what we call ‘the strokes’ like we normally hear music, i.e. as a continuous process rather than as a concatenation of atomic and distinct ‘notes’.6 Quantity, for Time and Free Will, is a product of quality, just as the instant is a product of duration (1889: 92/1911: 123). For this reason, pace Deleuze, we do not ‘restore’ the clockstrokes when we reflect on them with the spatializing categories of mind; we extract and abstract from a prior whole, according to which the past ‘melts’ into the present and future, and ‘each stroke’ into each other. On Bergson’s account, the ‘melting’ of duration is the prior condition of an isolated instant (and thus of a thing melting) and not vice versa. This is not to deny that in Time and Free Will Bergson describes duration as a synthesis, or that he would accept the oxymoronic qualification of that synthesis as passive (he too holds that it is not the work of a reflective consciousness). But he describes it as a “qualitative synthesis” (2007: 75/ 1910: 111; see Sinclair, 2020: 50–52) rather than as a quantitative synthesis precisely in order to affirm that it does not presuppose pre-existing instants. As he emphasised later, “if our existence was composed of separate states whose synthesis had to be carried out by an impassive self, then there would be no duration for us” (Bergson, 1907: 4/1911: 4). Hence if it still makes sense to speak of duration as synthetic – the literal sense of the term (syn-thesis, posing-together) may mean that it does not – this synthesis is not a composition or combination of originally isolated moments. Although the Hume-influenced infidelity of Deleuze’s reading of Bergson in these passages of Difference and Repetition seems to have escaped the notice of Deleuzian commentators, a sense of its strangeness has perhaps encouraged them to ignore it.7 Tano Posteraro seems to sense it indirectly in noting that although “one might expect him to have begun with a description of 169

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temporal experience, lived continuity”, with his “cue taken from Hume, Deleuze makes the opposite gesture, invoking a repetition of discrete elements or atomic parts” (2016: 95). One might, that is, have expected Deleuze, given that he had written articles and a book on Bergson, to have begun with a more authentically Bergsonian reflection on time. Hence the first synthesis has been characterised as somehow “Humean” (Somers-Hall, 2013: 57) – even though, from the perspective of “Hume scholarship”, the chapter’s “initial arguments and conclusions are wholly unsatisfactory” (Williams, 2013: 95) – and that it is only the second synthesis, which concerns memory, that Bergson’s thought (in the 1896 Matter and Memory rather than Time and Free Will) is central. To regard the first synthesis as ‘Humean’, however, not only risks over-interpreting Hume, but also neglects the essential connection between habit and a notion of time as duration in the history of French philosophy; it is to fail to recognise that, between Hume and Bergson, French reflection on habit had already posited ‘flowing duration’ as its principle. At a certain level, Deleuze was not wrong to amalgamate the work of Hume and Bergson on the question of habit and time. My point in what follows is just that he was not right in the way that he intended. 19th-century French philosophy allows us to recognise the impossibility of arriving at a notion of duration as the principle of habit in retaining, even minimally, the psychological atomism that Hume’s associationism presupposes and that Time and Free Will destroys. This point is not minor. It concerns the sense of Deleuze’s ‘transcendental empiricism’ and, as I indicated above, his philosophical project as a whole in Difference and Repetition.

12.1 Hume (and Reid) on the Force of Habit Before turning to 19th-century French philosophy, we should ask what there is in Hume’s account of habit as the principle of association that might at least imply or require revision in a vulgar, linear conception of time. In the 1748 Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume accounts for “habit or custom”, terms which he treats as synonyms, thus: wherever the repetition of any particular act or operation produces a propensity to renew the same act or operation, without being impelled by any reasoning or process of the understanding, we always say, that this propensity is the effect of Custom. By employing that word (custom) we pretend not to have given the ultimate reason of such a propensity. We only point out a principle of human nature, which is universally acknowledged, and which is well known by its effects. Perhaps we can push our enquiries no farther, or pretend to give the cause of this cause; but must rest contented with it as the ultimate principle, which we can assign, of all our conclusions from experience. (1902: 44) An acquired habit, as a propensity of an act or operation to occur unthinkingly and automatically, is the effect not just of repetition of the act or operation in the past, but of a capacity to be transformed by that repetition such that the propensity can arise. This Aristotle had pointed out with the example of a stone thrown into the air a thousand times that does not acquire the habit of rising: the acquisition of a propensity requires a hexis, a pre-existing disposition or virtue that can be developed by repetition. Habit in this sense of hexis, as distinct from repetition, is what allows repetition to produce a new propensity. On Hume’s account, this principle of habit can be known only by its effects and not directly; acquired habits as propensities are available in experience but, he supposes, the principle that allows for their formation is not. Hume’s hesitations concerning knowledge of this principle seem to result 170

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from reluctance to engage in either neurological hypotheses or metaphysical speculations that could not be justified by his own ‘empiricist’ epistemological principles. Certainly, Hume’s Treatise Concerning Human Nature had entertained neurological hypotheses as a possible explanation of, at least, confusion and error in the advent and course of our ideas (on this, see Deleuze, 1953: 95-6/1991: 89): “‘twou’d have been easy to have made an imaginary dissection of the brain, and have shewn, why upon our conception of any idea, the animal spirits run into all the contiguous traces, and rouze up the other ideas, that are related to it” (Hume, 2011: 44). But such a dissection can be undertaken only in the imagination precisely because the earlymodern idea of animal spirits carving out neurological traces is a mere hypothesis. In the chapter ‘Of Habit’ of his 1788 Essay on the Active Powers of Man, Thomas Reid shares Hume’s scepticism on this point. Although “habit differs from instinct … in its origin”, since habits are acquired through experience, both operate in some sense automatically, and both are equally inexplicable in physical terms: I see no reason to think, that we shall ever be able to assign the physical cause either of instinct or of the power of habit. Both seem to be parts of our original constitution. Their end and use is evident; but we can assign no cause of them, but the Will of him who made us. With regard to instinct, which is a natural propensity, this will perhaps be easily granted but it is no less true with regard to that power and inclination which we acquire by habit. No man can show a reason why our doing a thing frequently should produce either facility or inclination to do it. (Reid, 2010: 90) Reid claims not just that it was impossible given the state then of science to adduce a physical cause for why our doing something frequently produces a propensity to do it, but that no one could ever reasonably hope to do so.8 There must, as he puts it, “be a cause of the power of habit” (Reid, 2010: 90) to produce propensity or inclination from a repeated operation, but given the impossibility of accounting for this cause physiologically we may just as well, Reid supposes, invoke God, ‘the will of him who made us’, in order to explain it. Why do both Hume and Reid seem to think that the principle of habit will never reveal its secrets to mechanical or physiological explanation? From the vantage point of later French philosophy, it appears that one answer to this question lies in the very nature of an acquired habit as a propensity, inclination or, to use another synonymous term, tendency. These terms suggest a certain dynamism or spontaneity in an acquired habit, a dynamism that cannot be accounted for by mechanistic doctrines according to which things do not have the principle of movement within themselves. Although it is not the reflective I or self that guides habitual action, it seems not to be the case that a mechanical principle comes to act for me, such that the motion would, strictly speaking, now be a third-person worldly event rather than an action. Is this spontaneity or dynamism in habit not what Hume had already sensed in describing the “secret tie or union” in association, the “propensity” to move from impression to idea, as a “gentle force”, one which “commonly prevails” (Hume, 2011: 12)? Do we not, that is, tend to think of B upon seeing A, rather than necessarily think of B, in a way that cannot be reduced to an iron rule? Is this tendency not just primitive, and thus inexplicable by any other principle? If so, propensity in habit would be irreducible to any notion of mechanical necessity. But if the propensity in an acquired habit resists mechanical explanation so too must the principle that engenders it through repetition. The dynamism that we experience in habit, as Hume and Reid seem to sense, would thus forbid any interpretation of its principle as mechanical. 171

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The dynamism involved in Hume’s notion of propensity or tendency is what Deleuze drives at when he claims to find in “habit-anticipation most of the characteristics of Bergsonian durée” (1953: 101/1991: 92). Deleuze’s claim is that the nature of habitual propensity, when understood dynamically, implies a revised notion of time; the “dynamic unity of habit and tendency” is the “synthesis of a past and a present that constitutes the future, a synthetic identity of past experience and an adaptation to the present” (1953: 103/1991: 94). French philosophy before Deleuze had already arrived at something like this thought, as we will see, but in order not to be disappointed by the lack of a notion of time as duration or living-presence in Hume, we should not exaggerate the extent to which he is committed to a dynamic sense of propensity. It may well reverberate in the depths of his thinking, but he does not elaborate it consistently, and it hardly forms the ‘centre’ of his reflections. Proof of this is that in his famous analysis of causal power Hume claims that the force of habit in association is the origin of the idea of necessary connection: we project the felt necessity to think of the ‘effect’ that typically follows the sense impression of the ‘cause’ onto external objects, among which, as Hume claims, no necessary connections are to be found. But if association is a function of necessity – if the idea of B has to follow the sense-impression of A (unless some other causal process prevents the thought of B) – it is hard to see how it can retain any spontaneity or dynamism, and why it should be resistant to mechanical explanation. Here Hume fails to hold on to the thought – if he ever had it clearly – that propensity is irreducible to necessity, and that it is thus necessarily irreducible to mechanical explanation.

12.2 Tendency and Time in Nineteenth-Century France With its move from Scotland to France, reflection on habit in the 19th-century involved greater metaphysical ambition: “we can aspire”, according to Félix Ravaisson’s 1838 Of Habit, “not just to establish its [habit’s] apparent law but to learn its how and its why, to illuminate its generation and, finally, to understand its cause” (2008: 39). This post-Humean ambition involved elaboration of the claim that tendency or propensity in habit is irreducible to physical or mechanical explanation: in habits of sensation and habits of action – Hume had already come across this distinction in the work of Joseph Butler (Hume, 2011: 424) – “no organic modification can explain the tendency, the inclination whose progress coincides with the degradation of sensation and effort” (Ravaisson, 2008: 45). Tendency in sensory habituation – Ravaisson developed this argument from Pierre Maine de Biran’s 1802 Influence of Habit on the Faculty of Thinking (Biran, 1987) – expresses itself as a kind of need for the sensation, a need which becomes manifest in a disquieting way when the sensation to which we have become accustomed is removed, as when after falling asleep in a passenger seat we awaken due to the absence of noise when the car has come to a stop.9 In habitual action, tendency can also express itself as a need, particularly when it is frustrated; if I am in the habit of doing something, not doing it can make me uneasy. When not frustrated, habitual tendencies possess a dynamic and automatic spontaneity allowing them to bring a voluntary operation to completion without conscious control, and even to instigate the action in the first place. Such spontaneity is perhaps not often visible in goal-directed activity; the electrician may be well-practiced in her trade without having a tendency, or any kind of associated need, to wire houses. It is, however, more visible in expressive gestures (the typical gestures of the lecturer in front of the class, for example) rather than telic movements, and in language-use (in, for example, filling one’s speech with the word ‘like’ (on this point, see Victor Egger, 1880: 212). Ravaisson posits a continuum underlying the distinction between skills (what Reid above termed ‘facility’) and tendencies, between habits in a weak and strong sense, and argues that we 172

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experience this continuum in the gradual acquisition of motor habit. Experience shows us actions becoming ‘more and more’ proficient, ‘less and less’ (these adverbial phrases are Ravaisson’s signature in Of Habit) consciously controlled the more that they become habitual. There is no abrupt transformation – which would remain unexplained and inexplicable given the Cartesian mind-body problem – from a psychological cause into a purely physiological result. This gradualist position leads Ravaisson beyond the vitalism in Biran’s thinking towards an animist position (for more on this, see Sinclair, 2019: Chapter 1): although the principle of a motor habit “goes further down into the organism, increasingly concentrating itself there” (Ravaisson, 2008: 53), it is never wholly separate from the will and consciousness. The obscure spontaneity in habit, for Ravaisson, expresses degrees of will and consciousness prior to reflective awareness. Crucially, these arguments concerning the irreducibility of habit to mechanical causation were accompanied by original reflection on the modal status of tendency. If Ravaisson persisted in considering tendencies as a function of necessity, necessity on his account is moral rather than mechanical, and belongs to final rather than efficient causation. Just as Leibniz, for example, had argued that the soul has no power but to act on what it perceives to be the best, Ravaisson argued that the force of habit is “a necessity of attraction and desire” (Ravaisson, 2008: 57). His position, however, is inherently unstable given that he holds that habit is an intrinsically graduated principle, that an action becomes more and more habitual by means of its repetition. Something cannot be more or less necessary – it is either necessary or it is not – and so the idea of moral necessity can only be an approximation of his real thought (for more on this, see Sinclair, 2019: Chapter 4). Emile Boutroux saw this when in 1874 he conceived the force of attraction operative in moral obligation and habit as a quasi-necessity, as involving a degree of elasticity or contingency. In the experience of moral obligation, he argued, the mind “is not pushed something already realised; it is attracted by something that is not already given, and which, perhaps, will never be given” (1874: 154), and the same force is operative in habit. 19th-century French philosophy thus arrived at the thought that tendency has its own modal value irreducible to any form of necessity, a modal value that Boutroux named ‘contingency’. It is in this light that we should understand the conclusion of Ravaisson’s Of Habit as a response to Hume’s scepticism concerning the force of habit: “the disposition of which habit consists, and the principle engendering it, are one and the same thing: this is the primordial law and the most general form of being, the tendency to persevere in the very actuality that constitutes being” (Ravaisson, 2008: 77). Contra Hume, there is no need to separate the disposition or tendency in an acquired habit, which we do experience, from a principle engendering it, which we supposedly do not. Ravaisson’s claim is that the ‘cause’ and the ‘effect’ here are the same principle: tendency. Tendency shapes existence everywhere – as Boutroux will also say, “tendency is being itself [la tendance, c’est l’être même]” (1874: 129) – and it allows us to acquire particular tendencies in the acquisition of a habit. The tendencies that we already have are the principle or cause that allow us to acquire others, and since we have an experience of the obscure activity of tendency in habit acquisition and habitual performance, habit is not a meta-empirical principle to which we are wholly without epistemological access. Although he had signalled the importance of the notion in the work of Hume, Deleuze ignores this French history concerning tendency as the explanatory principle of habit when, as we saw, he claims in 1968 that only a notion of the living-present can explain anticipatory contraction in association.10 That said, once the notion of tendency in habit was unshackled from any notion of necessity, French philosophy did not have to wait long for the claim that it supposes a revised and non-linear notion of time. The particular tendencies that we have are 173

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grounded in the sense or meaning of being itself as tendency, but this fundamental tendency is time in an original sense. In his 1875 L’Habitude et l’instinct, published a year after his death, Albert Lemoine writes this: [f]or the living being, the intelligent, rational and free being, capable of habit, the three elements of time are fused together [solidaires] with each other. For that being, is it not true to say that the past is no longer, nor even that the future is not yet; if it lives in the present, it lives in the present by the past and for the future. Its past is not abolished; it carries its past within itself in its very present, and with this past anticipates the future. For it, the past is accumulated and is summarised in the present; it holds the past within itself in its entirety in the form of habit, hexis. (Lemoine, 1875: 26) Lemoine names time in this sense durée: “habit establishes precisely an indissoluble solidarity between the different moments of flowing duration [la durée qui s’écoule]; it consists in making the past endure [faire durer le passé] and in prolonging it indefinitely in the present” (1875: 59). The passage of time in this sense changes the very ‘nature’ of living beings, and does not merely alter, as with dead, inorganic things, “the relations of their elements” (Lemoine, 1875: 16). For the living being, then, time is not a kind of empty container through which that being, always identical to itself, would pass. These ideas seem to develop Ravaisson’s remarks about durée in Of Habit and to prefigure the account of time as ‘real duration’ in Time and Free Will.11 French reflection on habit had already involved questioning of being and tendency, but with Lemoine it involves, still more profoundly, questioning of being and time, of time beyond any vulgar or linear conception of it. This position casts new light on Ravaisson’s conclusion in 1838. Lemoine leads us to see that the tendency to persevere is grounded in time as duration, and thus that the most ‘general form’ or ‘actuality’ of being is time as flowing duration whereby the past and future are fused with the present and not simply earlier and later than it.

12.3 Repetition and the Instant Lemoine, unfortunately, did not develop these remarks about duration before his death, but his critique of the idea that habit is simply the product of repetition illuminates his position. Lemoine points out that if I acquire the skill – taking skill as a weak form of habit – of, say, playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata by repeating the piece ten times, the tenth instance when the skill is acquired is dependent on the previous nine instances; “every movement that is added to the others and enlarges the sum of the past adds something to the power of habit, engenders or prepares the future and explains the movement that will follow” (1875: 4). But where does the second instance of the repetition get its power, the nascent habit, that is developed by the third and the succeeding instances? This second instance, “even though it explains the third, and transmits to it the generative force of habit that will be increasingly augmented, cannot result from a repetition, since it has been preceded only by a primary and unique action of which it is the repetition” (1875: 4). The second instance is the first repetition; it is the first time the movement has been repeated. But this means that the power or capacity that the second instance already has and develops does not come to it from the fact of repetition: it comes from the first instance. Repetition develops a power that is already present in and with the first instance. This is to say that “the second instance is already, however slightly, an effect of habit, without it being a result of a more or less frequent repetition of the same movement” (1875: 5). If a 174

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power – which, as we saw above, is irreducible to reflective thought – that can be altered and developed by the movement did not exist, then the learning would not occur and no habit would be acquired; we would be faced with an eternal return of equally voluntary, equally effortful and inept actions. Thus, as Victor Egger – Lemoine’s student and editor of L’habitude et l’instinct – put it in his 1880 ‘The Birth of Habit’: “habit was prior to repetition; it is the power of repetition before being its result; the first act was enough to engender the second by a beginning of habit; and it is habit, product of the first act, that engendered the first repetition” (1880: 210). Repetition in the acquisition of habit, then, presupposes the principle of habit, but given that this principle is flowing duration, repetition presupposes duration. This flow, therefore, is not the result of instants; it is not the instance or instant that leads, by means of a certain metaexperiential synthetic power, to the fusion. On the contrary, the experienced fusion engenders what, on reflection, and through a process of abstraction and extraction, we speak of as isolated instants, thus enabling us to speak of them as essentially, i.e. conceptually, the same, however different may be the moments of time that they occupy. Isolated instants, and generic separate moments, are not what is originally given empirically; they belong not to the immediate data of experience, but rather to its mediate data. Although Lemoine does not say this explicitly since he did have not have the opportunity to develop his pregnant remarks on duration in habit, it is the lesson that in the 1880s Bergson will draw from his work. We need to be clear about the implications of Lemoine’s proto-Bergsonian perspective: habit as anticipatory contraction does not contract isolated instances. It is not habit that contracts the number of times I have sat at the piano to play the Sonata, but instead habit as anticipatory-contraction that allows me, after the primary fact of fusion, to speak in a derivative, reflective and generic sense of those separate instances in the acquisition of the habit. Anticipatory contraction allows us, after the primary fact of fusion, to count the repeated instances in the acquisition of a habit just as it allows us to count the number of times the bell has been struck. In this way, the notion of flowing duration brings into question the idea of repetition itself as integral to habit acquisition: if repetition presupposes isolated instances conceptually identifiable as essentially the Same, then, at a primary level, there is no such repetition in the acquisition of a habit. The prior condition of repetition in this sense is habit as tendency, as anticipatory-contraction, as flowing duration. At this level, there are no isolated instances to repeat; there is just anticipatorycontraction as the flow of time. Clearly, some form of repetition is necessary for the habit of playing the Sonata to be acquired, but this repetition is not what we think it is, i.e. it is irreducible to generic and representable repetition of isolated instances. Lemoine does not articulate a superior notion of repetition, and nor does Bergson, at least not explicitly, in developing the idea of duration. For him – unlike for other modern philosophers such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and, of course, Deleuze – repetition tends to be on the side of the Same, mechanism, boredom and death. Here it stands with habit, which he is also usually content to interpret as a mechanical principle (see Sinclair, 2019: Chapter 2), and which he consequently does not see as fundamental to a notion of duration, despite all that he seems to have learnt from Lemoine. By the time of Creative Evolution, however, it is evident that a non-mechanistic notion of tendency – and thus, at bottom, of habit – was in the background of Bergson’s reflection on duration all along; “life”, both psychological and biological, “is tendency” (1907: 104/1911: 100), as he writes after Boutroux, and if this tendency is “neither an impulsion nor an attraction” (1932: 119/1935: 105), then this is because duration, as contraction-anticipation, is somehow a form of anteriority and futurity at the same time. And when Bergson reflects on free will in terms of this notion of duration, he stands in the vicinity of a more positive reflection on repetition: “the profound states of our mind, those that are 175

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translated by free acts, express and summarise the whole of our past history” (1907: 185/1911: 139). Free acts express and thus repeat the entirety of our past history rather than being causally determined by it. My free act takes up and repeats the contraction-anticipation that is my duration in an authentic and integral way. But what, in this light, of Deleuze’s own positive account of repetition? For Lemoine, what Deleuze calls the “superior ‘positive’ principle” (Deleuze, 1968: 31/1994: 19) of repetition was habit as flowing duration, and for Difference and Repetition it is a matter of the passive synthesis that is the living-present and a more original sense of repetition. Concerning the latter, Deleuze holds that “[t]he two repetitions are not independent. One is the singular subject, the interiority and the heart of the other, the depths of the other. The other only the external envelope, the abstract effect” (1968: 37/1994: 24). In Deleuze’s ‘transcendental empiricism’, the transcendental does not simply condition the empirical, but produces and causes it as an effect; the empirical is merely an abstraction from the transcendental, just as, for Lemoine and Bergson, the instant is an abstraction from flowing duration. Despite these parallels, when Deleuze accounts for what this internal repetition repeats in claiming that “[t]he repetition of dissymmetry is hidden within symmetrical ensembles or effects; a repetition of distinctive points underneath that of ordinary points”, we might sense a significant departure from the Lemoine-Bergson emphasis on flowing duration in this notion of ‘distinctive points’ at a transcendental level. The impression seems to be confirmed in the conclusion of the book: “in order to represent repetition, contemplative souls must be installed here and there; passive selves, subrepresentative syntheses and habituses capable of contracting the cases or elements into one another” (1968: 366/1994: 286). Prior to the level of empirical representation and repetition, habitual synthesis (undertaken by pre-representative, pre-subjective ‘contemplative souls’) contracts elements and cases. But these elements and cases are not and cannot be the empirical elements and cases precisely because passive synthesis stands as their condition, precisely because passive synthesis produces them as representable instances. This is what Lemoine made particularly clear: repetition at this level presupposes a higher principle. There must, then, in Deleuze’s terms, be a transcendental synthesis, a transcendental repetition that makes empirical representation and generic repetition possible, but Deleuze’s position seems to be that at this more profound level there are still cases and elements, and thus a fundamental discontinuity in existence, even though these cases and elements cannot yet be represented to and by a knowing subject. Is this the position of Difference and Repetition concerning the first synthesis of time? When Deleuze writes, in conclusion again, that “contraction is not external to what it contracts, or the difference external to the repetition; it is an integral, constitutive part of it, the depth without which nothing would repeat on the surface” (1968: 366/1994: 286), he may appear to have something else in mind. The idea of the synthesis drawing off a difference – in the synthetic power itself – from already constituted cases and elements may, then, just be a slip of Deleuze’s pen. This would support James Williams’ view that, for Deleuze, “the separation of instants and of particular past events and general possibilities cannot be conditions for the synthesis. The synthesis is not a synthesis of separate things. On the contrary, synthesis is a condition for the conception of such separation but also for the demonstration of its incompleteness and secondary nature” (2011: 31). This is clearly true in so far as past events cannot be a condition of the synthesis; only the synthesis that is the living-present, on Deleuze’s account, gives us something more than ever-new present instants. The claim does not tally, however, with Deleuze’s own descriptions of the passive synthesis as operating on points, cases and elements. Hence, in contrast, Joe Hughes has emphasised how the genetic story in Difference and Repetition begins with a ‘transcendental sensibility’ facing not a constituted object, but a “fragmented object” in a 176

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pre-empirical, transcendental materiality constituted by “instants” (Hughes, 2009: 102). Even though Hughes admits that the second chapter of Difference and Repetition is not pellucid on the issue, “many of the difficulties associated with Deleuze’s account of the syntheses can be avoided simply by determining this starting point” (2008: 100). This account seems faithful to much of the text, but it also seems to have Deleuze beg the question. How are these instants in any sense instances in the acquisition of a habit if they have not already been synthesised and if the principle of habit does not engender them? Deleuze’s approach, understood thus, risks an infinite regress: we would need to know what makes the synthesis of pre-empirical discontinuity (of the pre-representable cases and elements) possible just as we needed to know what made the empirical synthesis in association possible. Is this transcendental synthesis the result of a meta-transcendental synthesis … and that, in turn, the result of a meta-metatranscendental synthesis? At the most fundamental level, Deleuze characterises what is given at a transcendental level as intensity. This is understood “as pure difference in itself, as that which is both imperceptible for empirical sensibility which grasps intensity only already covered or mediated by the quality to which it gives rise, and at the same time, as that which can be perceived only from the point of view of a transcendental sensibility that apprehends it immediately in the encounter” (1968: 188/1994: 144). Chapter V of Difference and Repetition, ‘Aymmetrical synthesis of the Sensible’, develops the point: “the ground of the sensible, the condition of that which appears, is not space and time but the Unequal in itself, disparateness as it is determined and comprised in difference of intensity, in intensity as difference” (1968: 287/1994: 222-3). Here Deleuze argues that whatever is given to transcendental sensibility is constituted by difference, in that intensities – neither qualitative not quantitative, but the ground of both quality and quantity – are “made up of relations between asymmetrical elements” (1968: 315/1994: 244). The notion of points or cases and elements at a transcendental level, therefore, may well be merely provisional; if there are points or instants at this level, these are somehow constituted from fields of difference, wherein all identities are ‘differents’ constituted by internal differential relations, and thus by a play of difference. Still, this leaves us with a problem concerning the nature of the first synthesis of time in its relation to this principle of difference: either (and this is what Deleuze seems to suggest in writing that the ground is not space and time) what is given to sensibility in a transcendental encounter is constituted by a play of difference prior to becoming the instantaneous object of the first synthesis of time, and we have not responded to the worries above concerning synthesis as a synthesis of (transcendental rather than empirical) instants, or the first synthesis of time is somehow faced simply with difference, and synthesises it. But how the first synthesis of time could be a synthesis of difference remains obscure given that Deleuze describes it in Chapter II as operating on instants. A broader analysis of Deleuze’s three syntheses as a whole may be able to provide a response to these problems.12 Suffice it to conclude here that the problems could be avoided in the first place by grounding everything, following Bergson, on the idea of duration as a qualitative multiplicity. This will not provide the basis for a philosophy of ‘pure difference’: although “duration begins only with a certain variety of effects”, as Bergson wrote, “absolute heterogeneity, if it were possible, would exclude time, whose principal character is continuity” (Bergson, 1907: 349; see Sinclair, 2020: 52). Duration is a principle of neither identity nor difference, but of a fusion of the two, and thus of fusion, in exactly that sense, tout court. Still, and as I have indicated, we can develop a positive, ‘superior’ notion of repetition, though not of pure difference, from this philosophy of fusion, if we can discover repetition in anticipatory contraction, i.e. in duration, the principle of habit, rather than in its result: the instant, the instance, the point, the case, the element. 177

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Notes 1 For a positive assessment of the claim—but without reference to the philosophical tradition—see Williams (2011: 26). 2 Williams (2011: 30) senses this second premise when he asks: “Why depend on Hume’s distant observations rather than contemporary scientific observations?” This second premise, to be sure, does not have to reject Deleuze’s description of the first synthesis of time as somehow “organic”. All we have to recognize is that the organic is rooted in the nature of time as the living present—but mechanism or purely materialist approaches cannot do this. 3 In this regard, as we will see, Difference and Repetition makes short work of the long French nineteenthcentury tradition of vitalist and spiritualist accounts of the force of habit. 4 Translation very slightly modified, as the translations often are below. 5 The rejection is almost complete in that Bergson admits that association operates at the level of the superficial “self”. Deleuze cites a long passage to this effect from Time and Free Will in Empiricism and Subjectivity (1953: 114/1991: 102), but here his claim is that Hume had already made a similar critical delimitation of association. 6 Duration is “succession without distinction”, a “mutual penetration, and interconnexion and organisation of elements, each one of which represents the whole, and cannot be distinguished or isolated from it except by abstract thought” (1889: 74/1910: 101). 7 None of the book-length commentaries on Difference and Repetition (Williams, 2013 [2003] and 2011; Hughes 2009; Somers-Hall, 2013) notice the infidelity. The degree to which Deleuze’s earlier work on Bergson is more faithful in this regard is a question that is not possible to develop here, but on Deleuze’s Bergsonism, see Lundy (2018). 8 One wonders why Reid is so certain about this given his classification of habit as a “mechanical principle of action”. But the notion of a mechanical principle of action is oxymoronic, as Reid recognizes, and does not represent his most considered thought concerning the force of habit. For more on all of this, see Sinclair (2019: 55–8). 9 On the origins of this idea of disquiet in the work of Condillac, see Dunham (2019: 7). 10 Deleuze, of course, is hardly the only twentieth-century French philosopher to ignore his nineteenthcentury predecessors. For more on this point, see Sinclair and Antoine-Mahut (2020) and Sinclair (2019: Chapter 2). 11 It is highly probable that the 1889 Time and Free Will was directly influenced by them, given that Bergson refers to L’habitude et l’instinct in his lectures on habit at the Lycée Henri-IV in 1892/3 (Bergson, 1889: 275), only a few years afterwards, and given that he had already lectured on habit in 1887-8 (see Sinclair, 2011: 36). What Arthur Lovejoy considered as the “characteristic Bergsonian phraseology about the ‘indivisibility’ of duration, the ‘interpenetration’ of moments, the innocence of the elements of our temporal consciousness of all ‘reciprocal externality’” (1913: 471) derives, it would appear, from the 1875 L’habitude et l’instinct. 12 Joe Hughes attempts to root intensive difference back into Deleuze’s syntheses of time (2008: 156–8), and into the third synthesis in particular, but, as he acknowledges, he has to go beyond the letter of the text in order to do so, and he also has to ignore Deleuze’s statement that intensity is grounded in difference rather than time.

References Bergson, H. (1889) Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience. Paris: Alcan. Bergson, H. (1907) L’Evolution créatrice. Paris: Alcan. Bergson, H. (1910) Time and Free Will. Translated by. Pogson, F. L. London: George Allen Bergson, H. (1911) Creative Evolution. Translated by Mitchell, A. London: Macmillan. Bergson, H. (1932) Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion. Paris: Alcan. Bergson, H. (1935) The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. Translated by Audra, R. A. and Brereton, C. New York: Henry Holt. Biran, P. M.de (1987) Œuvres II, Influence de l’habitude sur la faculté de penser. Rhomeyer-Dherbey, G. (ed.) Paris: Vrin. Boutroux, E. (1874) De la contingence des lois de la nature. Paris: Germer Baillière. Deleuze, G. (1968) Différence et repetition. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. Deleuze, G. (1994) Difference and Repetition. Translated by Patton, P. London: Athlone.

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Deleuze on Habit and Time Deleuze G. (1953) Empirisme et subjectivité. Presses universitaires de France. Deleuze, G. (1991) Empiricism and Subjectivity. Translated by Boundas, C. New York: Columbia University Press. Dunham, J. (2019) ‘Habits of Mind A Brand New Condillac’, Journal of Modern Philosophy, 1 (1), 1, pp. 1–18. doi: 10.32881/jomp.11 Egger, V. (1880) ‘La Naissance des Habitudes’, Annales de la faculté de lettres de Bordeaux, 1, pp. 1–15. Hughes, J. (2009) Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition: A Reader’s Guide. London: Bloomsbury. Hume, D. (1902) Enquiries Concerning the Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals. SelbyBigge, L.A. (ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hume, D. (2011) A Treatise of Human Nature. Norton, D.F. and Norton, M.J. (eds.). Oxford: Clarendon. Lemoine, A. (1875) L’habitude et l’instinct. Paris: Germer Baillière. Lovejoy, A. (1913) ‘Some Antecedents of the Philosophy of Bergson: the Conception of ‘Real Duration’”, Mind XXII, 10, pp. 465–483. Lundy, C. (2018) Deleuze’s Bergsonism. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Postenaro, T. (2016) ‘Habits Nothing but Habits: Biological Time in Deleuze’, The Comparatist, 40 (1), pp. 94–110. Ravaisson, F. (2008) Of Habit. Carlisle. C. and Sinclair, M. (eds.). London: Continuum. Reid, T. (2010) Essays on the Active Powers of Man. Haakonssen, K. and Harris, J. A. (eds.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Sinclair, M. (2011) ‘Ravaisson and the Force of Habit’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 49 (1), pp. 65–85. Sinclair, M. (2019) Being Inclined: Félix Ravaisson’s Philosophy of Habit. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sinclair, M. (2020) Bergson. London: Routledge. Somers-Hall, H. (2013) Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition: an Edinburgh Philosophical Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Williams, J. (2011) Gilles Deleuze’s Philosophy of Time: A Critical Introduction and Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Williams, J. (2013) Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition: A Critical Introduction and Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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PART IV

Contemporary Perspectives on Habit

13 HABIT AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE: PERSPECTIVES FROM CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION Simone Kotva

In this chapter, I examine religious perspectives on habit and show why they matter to philosophy. I argue that religious perspectives on habit provide a rich though still overlooked resource for understanding the influence of habit on human life. I will be focusing on Christian mysticism and its legacy in modern thought. Mystical texts view passivity as the highest state. The loss of the feeling of subjectivity is construed positively in mysticism as a prerequisite for union with God. In mysticism, habit is crucial because it allows a person to let go of the will in order to receive spontaneous revelations and insights. Christian mysticism thus introduces habit as a timely critique of subjectivity and power. For this reason, in what follows I will be thinking with the mystical account of habit as a critique of the “selfpossessed Enlightenment subject” (Coleman, 2014: 12). Three examples are discussed: Augustinian mysticism (especially Quietism and the early modern tradition of contemplative prayer), French spiritualism (focussing on Maine de Biran’s and Félix Ravaisson’s theories of habit), and the contemplative turn in recent philosophy (represented, here, by Pierre Hadot, Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch). Religion and habit are closely connected. In English (as in Latin) the word “habit” (habitus), can be used metonymically for the religious life, as when referring to the distinctive clothing of a monk or a nun as their habit. These exterior habits, worn by members of monastic orders, are in turn the outward sign of an interior habituation. A religious dons their physical habit and conforms to a tradition of dress in order to reflect an inner conforming to a spiritual tradition – a conforming achieved by years of repeatedly performing a set of daily prayers, meditations and contemplations. The connection between religion and habit, then, is metaphysical as well as physical, with mind and body converging on the deepest level (Breen, 2010: 43–44; Agamben, 2013: 15–16). As in the case of physical repetition, through spiritual repetition, the aim is for the individual to desist from active “effort” in order to invite passive “grace.” In the same way that bodily habit decreases the need to pay attention to what one is doing, daily prayer, meditation and contemplation are spiritual exercises designed not to increase mental effort but to decrease it, achieving a state that is more like waiting than willing (Marno, 2014: 154). In the context of the religious life, to act out of habit is often presented as a virtue, rather than a vice; here, habit facilitates the relaxing of mental effort crucial when allowing the mind to DOI: 10.4324/9781315186436-18

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become open and receptive to grace. Augustine in particular praised the “tranquil” mind that had abandoned itself to God through a discipline of daily prayer and introspection. At the same time, throughout the history of Christianity many theologians – including Augustine – have voiced powerful and long-lasting criticisms of habit, comparing its influence to sin and concupiscence (Prendiville, 1972). From Augustine stems a double attitude to habit in Christian theology. On the one hand, habit is blamed for weakening the will and making it passive. On the other hand, the habits of the religious life – which are aimed, ultimately, at “quieting” the individual will and thus rendering it passive – are praised as means of preparing the soul for the arrival of grace itself (Kotva, 2020: 1–27). Christian theology’s double perspective presents philosophers with a fascinating and still largely unexplored means for thinking critically about habit. With a few notable exceptions, modern philosophy (especially since Descartes, whose Meditations encouraged readers to distrust habitual ways of thinking) has tended to take a largely negative view of habit. Descartes’ Meditations was modelled on the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, and, for this reason, instructs the reader to cultivate attention through daily introspection (meditations) (Hatfield, 1986). Descartes, however, does not conceptualise meditation in terms of habit. His actual remarks on habit, overwhelmingly, are cautious. While some habits may provide the philosopher with useful information about the outside world, the habits of forming ill-conceived judgements are especially detrimental to the philosopher (Patterson, 2013). In this way, modern philosophers have developed Augustine’s pessimistic attitude toward habit – while leaving to one side Augustinian accounts of tranquillity and the virtues of habit in the context of the religious life. The ideal of spiritual passivity, and the lure of grace, offers a different perspective (Carlisle, 2013; Carlisle 2014). For the religious person who desires to receive an experience of the more-than-human, God simply is too great to be drawn by human efforts; in relation to God, the individual will is a hindrance rather than an aid. So, by making of prayer a habit, the religious person is not hoping only to become better at praying, they are hoping to be ruled entirely by the habit of prayer. That which, in many other situations, would be a negative consequence of habit is, here, its most praised – and prized – outcome (Corrigan, 1993: 195–199). Christian theology can trace its appreciation of habituation to Hellenistic, especially Aristotelean, accounts of ethics, where habit was identified with virtue (Aristotle, 2000; Lockwood, 2013). The ideal of spiritual tranquillity in particular recalls the concept of ataraxia, “tranquillity,” in Hellenistic philosophy. Similar to how spiritual “repose” (quietas) would be construed later by Christian theologians, ataraxia was understood as the goal, as well as principal result, of living a virtuous life; that is, as the goal of habituation (Hadot, 2002). By attending to theological perspectives on habit, then, we are also reclaiming something about the nature of philosophy itself. The underlying processes involved in becoming habituated are essential to philosophical reflection. In order to facilitate reflection, even the philosopher’s state of willed, effortful concentration needs to become easy, and for it to become easy, it needs to become habitual and passive. “Complete attention…is like unconsciousness”: it is the necessity of losing control of one’s thoughts in order to become open and receptive to their meaning (Weil, 1978: 97). This observation is the reason why religious perspectives on habit matter to the philosopher. They express an experiential paradox that runs very deep. On the one hand philosophical reflection demands a prodigious effort of the will that seems opposed to habit and the habitual; on the other hand, habit is essential to making the effort of reflection easy and effortless. Why is it sometimes good to let go of the will, to exert as little effort as possible? This is what attracts philosophers to religious accounts of habit. 184

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13.1 Habit and Prayer: Augustinian Mysticism In Christian theology, by far the most influential thinker to defend habituation in the way we are considering here – where the mind’s passivity and “unconsciousness” are viewed as virtues rather than vices – is Augustine. At first blush, though, Augustine would seem an unlikely candidate for such a role, since his remarks on the concept of habit (here not habitus but consuetudo, or “custom”) are negative: he thinks of it in terms of “bad habit,” compares consuetudo to concupiscence, and the power of the “second nature” to original sin (Prendiville, 1972). Such an approach would conform more to the modern, pessimistic account of habit than to the classical tradition of Aristotle and the Hellenistic schools. Virtue, as described by Augustine, is opposed explicitly to habit and compared instead to grace (Carlisle, 2013: 33–35). However, Augustine stressed the beneficial effects of daily prayer and self-examination, authored an influential monastic rule (the oldest such rule in the West) and saw repetition as a decisive factor in the religious life (Hofer, 2012). Moreover, in his most influential work, the Confessions, Augustine describes how his inner person was transformed following an extensive discipline of daily self-examination and prayer. In the beginning, Augustine found it difficult to pray, and struggled to keep his mind focussed on God. But daily repetition eventually made concentration easy, until the feeling of effort disappeared. At this point in Augustine’s spiritual development, his prayers to God become so easy they appear more passive than active. Augustine describes this state as the “eternal Sabbath of the Lord”: a state of quiet repose (quietas) in which the mind has abandoned itself to God (Augustine of Hippo, 1912: 376–473). It is this state of ease and repose that, Augustine argues, is what allows the soul to be receptive to divine grace. Grace is only able to reach the soul when the latter is sufficiently passive and receptive, that is, when the soul is no longer straining consciously to achieve grace (Marion, 2011). In Augustine’s Confessions, the experience of quietas, “repose,” is inseparable from the repetition that makes prayer feel effortless, easy and restful. Repose is a state that would be inconceivable without the influence and a conscious acquisition of habit, even as it relies on the deliberate breaking with old patterns of thinking and acting. In this way, although Augustine does not discuss habit itself in positive terms, nevertheless the process of spiritual transformation described by him is one of habituation. In the Confessions, the transformation by which the activity of prayer changes, gradually, from a voluntary to an involuntary effort mirrors closely what is experienced when a person acquires a habit, and was indeed viewed in this way by subsequent thinkers. From Augustine there descends, in the West, a pessimistic view of habit but also a significant tradition of interpreting the effects of habituation as central to the religious life, even to the receiving of grace itself (Stalnaker, 2004). Thomas Aquinas developed the idea that habit and grace might inform one another. In the Summa Theologiae he argues that habit can be identified with what he calls “operating grace,” or those actions which, while they do not solicit divine favour directly (no human effort was thought capable of doing this) nonetheless “makes [the soul] pleasing to God” (Thomas of Aquinas, 1947, Ia-IIae, 111, ii; Miner, 2013: 72). At the core of this idea of habit as a form of grace is the notion of the will’s passivity – the same notion that one finds in Augustine’s Confessions. The reason why habit, to Thomas, could be compared to grace was because, just like grace, habits are involuntary. Habits are not willed but performed spontaneously; they become, in the Aristotelean expression familiar to Thomas, “second nature” (Miner, 2013; Dobson, 2014: 24–38). Similarly, grace is not willed but arrives despite the will of humans. In this way, habits seemed to create, in the soul that desired grace, a condition that mirrored grace itself. Habits deliver the will of independent choice, leaving it open instead to follow the will of God. 185

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Positive appraisals of habit like Thomas’ were significant particularly with the religious orders. It is no coincidence that the striking connection between habit and grace that we find in Thomas’ Summa was written by a Dominican, for monastic orders require monks and nuns to adopt the habit of praying according to a fixed pattern or daily office. Not only that, but the monastic life was designed in order to use prayer, as already mentioned, as a tool for suspending as far as possible the individual, active will. The purpose of the religious life was not only to become good at praying; the purpose was mystical communion with God, and for that aim to be achieved it was thought that the human will needed to become passive and obedient to the will of God. It is thus in the writing produced by members of religious orders and aimed at fellow monastics – in the prayer manuals and the literature of spiritual exercise – that we find some of the richest and most elaborate developments of the ideas originally suggested by Augustine and subsequently theorised by Thomas (Besse, Ludovic de, 1925: 10–17; Agamben, 2013). Christian mysticism yields several fine examples of this double attitude to habit. As Evelyn Underhill describes in their classic study of interior prayer, mystical texts typically will lament the way “inveterate habits” weaken the will, while praising the manner in which the habits cultivated through spiritual exercises accomplish the same end (Underhill, 1911: 210, 198–231). The aim of these exercises is to induce a state of mental tranquillity, “recollection and quiet” (Underhill, 1911: 298–327). After an initial awakening, and breaking of old habits, the self of the mystic is purified through acquiring new habits. These new habits are acquired by repeating, on a daily basis, prayers to God and visualisations of Biblical scenes, a process referred to in the manuals as active meditation or simply meditation. Once active meditation has become second nature, the mystic can move onto contemplation. Contemplation is sometimes called “passive meditation.” In contemplation, the mystic, instead of imagining religious themes, allows the mind to receive visions spontaneously and without any effort. Hence the need to “weaken” the will or pacify it. If the will is too active, it will not be possible to receive visions spontaneously (for this process, see Burrows, 1976: 118–140; cf. Frost, 1935: 49–134). In John of the Cross’ famous expression, the goal of prayer is a “passive loving attention” to God (John of the Cross, 1991: 692, 685). In this method of prayer habit is crucial, not only because it is daily repetition that, eventually, will make it easy and effortless to pray, but because effortlessness bestows on the soul the passivity necessary for the genuine receiving of grace. As one commentator explains, “prayer is a grace,” increasing in the soul according as the act of prayer becomes second nature (Besse, Ludovic de, 1925: 10–17, my emphasis). In this way, the literature of spiritual direction reinforces a positive view of spiritual habituation by emphasising the link between the virtues of habit – involuntary movement – and the receiving of grace (Besse, Ludovic de, 1925: 137–145; Giardini, 1998). In the early modern period, there were many writers who argued that the methods of interior prayer should be the touchstone not only for those monks and nuns who had “taken the habit” but for the layperson also. This was an opinion that became significant especially among Protestants but was widespread also in Roman Catholicism, where it was associated with an extreme form of Augustinianism sometimes referred to as “Quietism” (after quietas, the word Augustine uses to describe spiritual tranquillity). Texts associated with Quietism, such as Jeanne Guyon’s A Short and Easy Method of Prayer, equipped laypersons with simple instructions for how to acquire what was in essence the habits proper to the religious life – but without (or without necessarily) taking religious orders (Certeau, 1992: 1–205). As such, the genre was immensely popular, not only because it appealed to a laity that was becoming more and more alienated from the clerical elite; it was significant also among theologians, who argued that the theory behind interior prayer promised a resolution to the age-old battleground of grace versus works (Coleman, 2014: 21–124; cf. Underhill, 1911:319–327). Prayer manuals stressed the idea 186

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that while there were no works that could ensure the arrival of grace, nonetheless there was a simple method – a form of sanctifying work – that would facilitate the soul’s receptivity to the possibility of grace’s arrival. And that method was habit, which, by “quieting” the will and enabling it to become passive and receptive, created the best possible condition for God’s will to be received in it. One way of understanding the centrality of habit in this type of spirituality is to view it in light of what François Fénelon, an influential interpreter of Augustine and one of Guyon’s most vocal defenders, described as “abandonment to God” (Fénelon, 2006: 235–9). For Fénelon, the reason daily prayer and introspection worked so well as means of preparing the soul for grace was because they encouraged conformity between the will of the individual and the will of God. By humbling oneself repeatedly before God, daily confessing one’s sins and declaring oneself weak and insignificant, the will was trained to assume a passive attitude spontaneously (Merton, 1963). Fénelon held to the Augustinian notion that the once the individual will had been habituated to God’s divine will a person would always unerringly choose the good without needing to make rational deliberations. We shall come back to the broader ramifications of this position at the end of the chapter when we look briefly at Iris Murdoch’s revival of the Augustinian current. For now, I want to draw attention to one consequence of the religious perspective on habit we are considering here: the challenge it poses to modern conceptions of what it means to act and choose freely. While Quietism would come under constant, repeated scrutiny for its perceived renunciation of human freedom, to the 18th century, Fénelon’s ideal of abandonment to God was also seen to offer an alternative to the “self-possessed Enlightenment subject” (Coleman, 2014: 6). This alternative, as Clare Carlisle has shown, relies on a positive appreciation of habit. For Immanuel Kant, as for many later philosophers, a dualistic relationship prevailed between the free will and habit, with the genuinely free choice perceived as a rational deliberation separated (ideally) from the influence of habit. By contrast, the mystical tradition “would reject the modern idea, often implicit in utilitarian, existentialist and ‘decision-based’ ethical theories, that each choice can be conceived as a distinct rational calculation (or as a distinct non-rational ‘leap’)” (Carlisle, 2013: 35). As a result, theological perspectives on habit tend to recognise habit to a greater degree than many modern philosophies, but also to recognise also the interconnectedness between mind and body, spirit and matter, which the experience of habituation – exemplified in prayer – seems to affirm.

13.2 Habit and Grace: French Spiritualism At stake in Christian theology’s double approach to habit is the experience of prayer. The weakening of the will is often seen as a negative consequence of habit. In prayer, however, it is desirable to let go of the will; the weaker the individual will, the stronger its union with God’s will. If, then, the “pacifying” influence of habit may be negative in many cases, it is not so by design but by accident: where there is a deleterious way of weakening the will through habit, there must also be a beneficial way. What this way is and how to understand it becomes a significant theme in the 19th-century French philosophy known as “spiritualism” or “reflexive philosophy” (Janicaud, 1997: 39–50; Sinclair, 2019). Spiritualist thinkers were indebted to the theology of Fénelon we have been discussing and took a keen interest in the phenomenon of habit, which they interpreted through the lens of Augustinian spirituality (Kotva, 2020: 13). In this section, I will be considering spiritualism’s most influential philosophies of habit – the first by Pierre Maine de Biran and the second by Félix Ravaisson – and their relation to the religious perspectives I have been outlining so far. 187

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Biran’s position on habit repeats and develops a double attitude toward habits and its effects on the mind. On the one hand, Biran argued that habits had a negative influence on the faculty of thinking. Habitual ways of thinking discourage independent decision-making: one ends up trusting habit rather than one’s own reason, and one is reduced to a state little better than that of the mollusc. He explains it thus: “Increasing facility corresponds to the weakening of the effort; and if this effort should become nil, there would be no more consciousness of movement, no more volition…Thus is born and strengthened habitual belief, blind faith! obstinate faith! which, to the shame of the human spirit, exerts a much more general influence than the authority of reason and all the splendour of evidence!” (Biran, 1920: 195, 219, emphasis in the original). In other words, Biran thought that the effort of the will was a characteristic of human nature. Whenever there was a “weakening” of the will, such as in the acquisition of a new habit, there was a concomitant retreat to a nonhuman state in which awareness of self had all but disappeared. This negative view supports the fear expressed by Descartes, that excessive reliance on habit would reduce human beings to behaving like “mindless” animals (Carlisle, 2014: 55–56). On the other hand, Biran was of the opinion that habits were essential for memory and thought (Biran, 1920: 60–61, 114), and his own habit of detailed self-observation is welldocumented in his journals. Biran’s practice of introspection has been compared to spiritual exercises and Biran suggests this comparison by citing extensively from spiritual writers like Fénelon (Biran, 1957; Goldstein, 2005: 131). Biran, a keen reader of mysticism, also recognised the significance, in the spiritual life, of repetition and the “weakening” of the will. Biran argued that in the spiritual life there is no place at all for human consciousness, nor for human effort (Gouhier, 1966). In the spiritual life, a person, he thought, needs to be passive in order to receive grace into their soul and experience rapture. For this reason, he sometimes draws a parallel between the spiritual life and the life of nonhuman creatures – a surprising conclusion given his insistence, elsewhere, on the “primitive” nature of nonhuman life when compared to human consciousness. To Biran, both the spiritual and the animal states were similar in the sense that they both entailed a weakening of the human will and an experience of passivity: “Above and below this [human] state there is no more battle, no more effort or resistance, as a result there is no more moi; but now it is becoming divine, now animal” (Biran, 1989: 322–323, emphasis in the original). Biran scholars have often criticised the influence of Quietism on Biran’s definition of the spiritual life, arguing that Biran’s emphasis on passivity leads to a confusion, in his work, between the spiritual life and the purely affective life of the animal (Azouvi, 1995: 430–452). Biran, however, did not seem concerned about this point and it is possible to view the parallel between spiritual and animal positively as an assimilation. Giorgio Agamben, identifying similar “confusions” between spiritual and animal states in early Christian mysticism, uses it to develop an ethics for the anti-speciesistdisavowal of human exceptionalism (Agamben, 2013: 111; cf. Agamben, 2004: 59 and passim). Habit would then be at the heart of this ethics, since it is through the influence of habit that the experience of passivity is accessed and realised. As in Augustine’s work, in Biran’s thinking we thus see habit becoming a double phenomenon, both working against human nature, and – in prayer – facilitating its transformation in a more-than-human, spiritual reality. In Biran’s thought this spiritual appraisal of habit traces its roots to Augustinian mysticism, especially to the writings of Fénelon (Gouhier, 1948: 367–422). Like Fénelon, Biran calls the highest form of knowledge alternatively “repose,” “calm” and “peace,” often in reference to Quietism, and always in relation to prayer. Prayer, he thinks, has often been misunderstood by philosophers. Because it induces passivity in the mind, philosophers have failed to recognise the virtues of prayer where the inner life is concerned. 188

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True, it is not desirable always to allow oneself to be ruled by a power that weakens the will, but in prayer, the will’s passivity does not close the mind to thinking; rather, it opens the mind to receive knowledge it could not have reached by its own efforts: Every faculty relative to the spiritual life constitutes the spirit of man [sic] in a state of pure receptivity by an influence superior to itself, but not foreign to its most elevated nature, an influence which, in manifesting itself to [the spirit’s] interior gaze…can only be glimpsed or perceived momentarily as the end of its labours…when all that is mortal in him will be absorbed by life. (Biran, 1989: 26; emphasis in the original) “[E]xperience proves that to act, meditate, pray are always the necessary conditions for the manifestation and development of the life of the spirit,” writes Biran. “It does not matter whether the person, considered as an organism, is sad, dejected, discouraged, lazy, or happy, confident, full of a feeling of power and vital energy” (Biran, 1957: 214, emphasis in the original). If a person wants to become aware of God and receive grace their sense of self is irrelevant, even an impediment. It weighs down the soul with trivial desires, pulling it to earth. The aim of prayer, by contrast, is to become weightless, soaring upwards to God. The Psalmist, in a verse copied by Biran in his notebooks, seems to express the sentiment: “And I say, ‘O that I had wings like a dove! / I would fly away and be at rest’” (Biran, 1957: 255, emphasis in the original, quoting Psalms 55.6). The one who desires the sweetness of divine repose would need to pray regularly until the effort becomes as easy and effortless as a bird’s flight. Then the habit of praying for grace would become itself a manifestation of grace – spontaneous, effortless and graceful. For Biran, the challenge was how to achieve this habit deliberately, without involving, unwittingly, the movement of the will. As is becoming evident, French spiritualism circles back to the comparison between habit and the spiritual life with which we began, and to the positive appraisal of passivity which that comparison elicited in thinkers like Augustine and Aquinas. The concept of grace is never far from this comparison and indeed seems to be implicated by it (Carlisle, 2014: 115–120). Like grace, habit is involuntary; like grace, habit demands no effort and leaves a person passive. Moreover, like grace, habit involves movement despite the lack of apparent volition. In Biran’s Biblical image of the dove who flies while “at rest,” the passivity implied by the lack of effort does not indicate inertia. The person who receives grace does not solicit the gift but nonetheless they are now moved toward God by means of it; similarly, a person who acts out of habit does not choose their actions voluntarily, yet they are still making an effort (Kotva, 2020: 27–58). This paradox of active passivity is at the root of Félix Ravaisson’s influential interpretation of habit. The analysis that Ravaisson gives of habit suggests that there is here a positive identification with grace. Habit is not simply like grace, it is “a law of grace” (Ravaisson, 2017: 45, emphasis in the original). Like Biran admiring the dove “at rest” in the sky, Ravaisson has in mind the theological concept but also the aesthetic one, grace as in gracility and easy movement. Not only in the spiritual life is it good to abandon the will and move without conscious deliberation. It is indispensable also in bodily life: in dance, painting and music, and really in any form of physical skill. But the recurrent theme in Ravaisson’s work (Ravaisson was himself a painter and sculptor as well as a philosopher) are examples drawn from the visual and plastic arts (Viola, 2012). “In a beautiful thing,” Ravaisson writes, citing Leonardo da Vinci, “everything appears to have been a breeze, col fiato. It is completely different from what appears to have been made with effort, con stento” (Ravaisson, 2017: 304). This does not mean, however, that no effort went into the making of the beautiful thing. To the contrary, it takes many years of practice to 189

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produce the sort of beauty da Vinci had in mind when he wrote the lines quoted by Ravaisson. Rather, it is that the modality of the movement in question has changed. Practice – habit – has made what was initially strenuous, easy, making the movement appear effortless. Ravaisson advocates understanding habit as a spiritual tendency, on analogy with our natural instincts. “How can we explain,” asks Ravaisson, “that there exists in us a science so vast, so profound, often so sure as are instincts and habits in general, but which, however, would be outside of our power?” The answer: we cannot. Only intuition, and the evidence of the inner life gives proof: “We can only [explain] this to a very small extent, but it is nonetheless certified by an irrefutable experience” (Ravaisson, 2017: 304). The point here is to make sense of how habit can be compatible with free will, when so many philosophers had argued that habit destroyed the will by reducing volition to inertia (Carlisle, 2010). Mark Sinclair has recently called this approach to habit Ravaisson’s ontology of “inclination” (Sinclair, 2019). We can all agree that there are plenty of involuntary desires that determine even our most rationally deliberated choices. We simply tend to pay no attention to them because they are the condition for our thinking and acting the way we do, but nonetheless this fundamental passivity of our will to our desire is inescapable. So, the will is never free in that autonomous sense we have come to associate with post-Kantian moral philosophy. Instead, we are always “inclined” in this way or that, moved by desires that compel us in all sorts of directions. We are always, at the core of our being, passive, even when we are at our most physically active (Sinclair, 2019: 126–162). Ravaisson interprets that fundamental passivity of habit positively – by comparing it to the spiritual life. This part of Ravaisson’s argument is reminiscent of Biran and can be traced to the Augustinian tradition of mystical prayer we have just been discussing (Kotva, 2020: 59–96). As Ravaisson describes the nature of habit he is also describing the conditions that make the reception of grace possible. For an experience to be genuinely intuitive, the soul must not be moved by the will but compelled by something deeper than the will. Habit thus puts the soul in touch with that fundamental compulsion in relation to which the human will is passive and without which there can be no genuine intuition or inspiration. The best example of Ravaisson’s spiritual approach to habit may be found towards the end of his essay, “Pascal’s Philosophy,” where Ravaisson writes at length about effortlessness as a spiritual ideal. The notion emerges from a discussion of intuition or “the intuitive mind,” a phrase Pascal uses to describe the kind of mental activity necessary for faith. Intuition typically is considered a passive faculty in contrast to the active faculty of reason and Pascal asserts this attribution but also makes a distinction between intuition and inertia. “It is not that the mind does not do it,” writes Ravaisson, citing Pascal, “but it does it tacitly, naturally and without any art” (Ravaisson, 2017: 262, citing Pascal, 1958: 2). This expression, “tacitly, naturally and without any art,” Ravaisson thinks is helpful also for understanding other involuntary actions, especially, of course, habit. Like intuition, habit is misunderstood if we think of it as implying the inactivity of the mind. In the case of habit or intuition what we have is not inactivity but a passive modality that changes the manner in which an activity is performed, rather than the activity itself. In psychological terms what we have is spontaneity; in theological terms, grace – but also charity, or love. To act according to habit is to act spontaneously, to forget self-interest and allow the will to be guided by charity and love for others. For this reason, Andrea Bellantone has described this aspect of Ravaisson’s philosophy of habit as a metaphysics of grace in the sense of gift, or donation (Bellantone, 2019). From the perspective of the spiritual tradition we have been considering here, it may be said to be drawn from an understanding of habit as a way of living, as a spiritual technology or “form-of-life” (Agamben, 2013: 91–146). For what the spiritual practitioner seeks above all is to make their prayers and meditations as spontaneous as possible. Premeditated prayer, like 190

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premeditated acts of charity, are considered imperfect expressions of a will that still clings to the sphere of the self and has not yet abandoned itself to the Other. In the spiritual life, habit is the law not only of grace but of love also.

13.3 Habit and the Contemplative Turn: Hadot, Murdoch, Weil By comparing habit to grace, French spiritualism develops the Christian mystical idea of the weak or self-emptied will (Caputo, 2006; cf. Agamben, 245–248, 263–279). At stake in this comparison, and impossible to understand without it, is the ideal of spiritual tranquillity, or quietude. According to mysticism, grace cannot be solicited by human willpower. This means that the mystic must give up independent agency in order to be able to receive grace. Mysticism’s understanding of grace thus creates a natural point of contact with the philosophy of habit, since one striking effect of habit is the way it “quietens” the mind, making it possible to perform an action without having to exercise much conscious volition. In the context of the spiritual life, habit and grace converge in the phenomenon of tranquillity, making habit inseparable from the experience of tranquillity itself. Since the end of the 19th century and especially since the middle of the twentieth, an increasing number of philosophers have begun to take an interest in the ideal of tranquillity and the spiritual exercises associated with it. The initial step for these philosophers has been to challenge the notion, so predominant in recent centuries, that philosophical reflection necessarily would be impeded by passive modes of thinking, and recover instead older ways of viewing philosophy as a form of contemplation (see for instance Goodchild, 2012; Sherman, 2014a; Sherman 2014b: 1–38). The Christian vita contemplativa, “contemplative life,” is often drawn on for comparison, as are meditation techniques in other religious and philosophical traditions such as Hinduism and Buddhism (Chase et al., 2013). Given this connection, it is possible to see in the religious habit with which we began an alternative approach also to the question of habit as such – and to philosophy’s ambivalence toward the influence of habit on thought. Consider, for example, Pierre Hadot’s influential comparison of philosophy to spiritual exercise. It was introduced in Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault (orig. 1981–1984), and reflected Hadot’s understanding of ancient philosophy as a means of achieving spiritual tranquillity (ataraxia) – through the “training” of mind and body: “To cure the soul, it is not necessary…to train it to stretch itself tight, but rather to train it to relax” (Hadot, 1995, p. 88). In its original context, Hadot argued, philosophy as practiced by Socrates and later by the Stoics, Epicureans, and Neoplatonists resembled the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola more closely than it did the work of philosophers in the contemporary academy. Despite the differences in worldview between Loyola and the Socratic philosophers, both had very similar ideas regarding the purpose as well as the practice of philosophy. For the ancient philosophers as for the Christian mystics, the aim of philosophy was a state of tranquillity. And, just as in the case of spiritual exercise, in ancient philosophy tranquillity was achieved through repetition and continuity (Hadot, 1995: 79–144). Repetition and continuity, however, are not easily assimilated to modern ideas of philosophy. We are used to philosophers viewing repetition with suspicion; we are not used to seeing repetition praised as the form of philosophical reflection itself (Pickstock, 2014).1 To the contrary, the fact that repetition, eventually, allows us to do and say things without much reflection and as it were passively puts it at odds with the active use of the mind and the sort of intellectual effort commonly associated with philosophy. Hadot himself had no definitive answer to this dilemma, and perhaps the image of “training for relaxation” accounts rather well for 191

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the paradoxical nature of the spiritual perspectives on habit that he invokes. At any rate, Hadot’s approach dovetails well with the interpretation of habit in the Augustinian mystical tradition, as sketched above. Perhaps the anxiety that drove modern philosophers to criticise habit was not really an anxiety about habit – but an anxiety regarding the role of religion in modern society. This last idea is developed by Iris Murdoch, who argued that philosophy’s ambivalence regarding habit could be traced to the emergence of a secular worldview: “The idea of contemplation is hard to understand and maintain in a world increasingly without sacraments and ritual…” (Murdoch, 1970: 67). “Ritual” is the key word here, for the influence of habit is very similar if not identical to the way religious practices and ceremonies, with their iterative structure, may influence decision-making, so that suspicion of one is likely to translate into suspicion of the other (Bourdieu, 1990: 52–79). However, habit is not reducible to ritualism nor, as we have seen, is ritualism itself necessarily mindless. Murdoch illustrates the view with an example familiar from everyday life. If my new in-law, whom at first encounter I disliked, grows in my estimation without changing their outward behaviour to me, the ritual of greeting my in-law repeatedly and celebrating seasonal festivities with them for many years has made me more, not less, mindful of their character (Murdoch, 1970: 17–23). Ritual is critical, for it is precisely repeated exposure to my in-law’s presence – and not a decision or judgment – that has taught me to “see” them differently. Murdoch suggests that this correlation between heightened perception and habit pervades our whole decision-making ability, so that there is no choice we make that is not influenced by the habituated “attention” to the world that we have built up over time. “The task of attention goes on all the time and at apparently empty and everyday moments we are ‘looking’,” Murdoch reflects, “making those little peering efforts of imagination which have such important cumulative results” (Murdoch, 1970, p. 43). Recognising this fact, she suggests that persons are far more likely to learn how to “see” other people with an open mind if they allow themselves to cultivate rather than disdain the habits of attention that shape human ways of perception and understanding. Like Hadot’s comparison of philosophy to spiritual exercise, Murdoch’s comparison of philosophy to ritualised contemplation has as its intellectual neighbour Augustinian mysticism. Hadot’s indebtedness to Ignatius of Loyola is obvious, but Murdoch’s position too owes much to the Augustinian current: her idea of a cumulative “attention” shaped by habit is drawn from the same concept found in the work of the French religious philosopher and mystic Simone Weil (Malikail, 1981). Weil’s thought-world has been described as Augustinian and is characterised by an unusually positive view of habit: “attention” in Weil’s work is not an action performed at will but an ability arrived at through habit, on analogy with the method of interior or mystical prayer (Bourgault, 2017: 233). Weil saw prayer as the highest form of thinking and used it as a model for intellectual work in general. Students applying themselves to a problem should “work without any wish to gain good marks, to pass examinations, to win school successes; without any reference to their natural abilities and tastes; applying themselves…with the idea that each one will help to form in them the habit of that attention which is the substance of prayer” (Weil, 1951: 53, my emphasis) In Weil’s thinking, habit is what makes attention like prayer. In her expression, habit transforms attention from a “positive” to a “negative” effort, making human effort compatible with grace (Weil, 1951: 55). The mystic who has ascended from active meditation to passive contemplation is able to maintain the effort of attention without exercising the will. In this state, where the will exerts no conscious effort, the mind is left open and receptive to what lies beyond its remit of comprehension; it is now “waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to 192

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receive in its naked truth the object which is to penetrate it” (Weil, 1951: 56). Such are the spiritually beneficial effects of habit on the faculty of thinking. But not only in spiritual matters. Weil, like Hadot and Murdoch after her, thought of habituation in moral as well as spiritual terms, perhaps above all in moral terms. Commenting on the moral value of habit she writes: “The capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not possess it” (Weil, 1951: 58). When a person is badly hurt, sight of their suffering will often cause even the most empathetic to wince and turn away. In such situations one discovers that one is not as compassionate as perhaps one had imagined. Compassion (what Weil calls, here, “attention”) then appears as an ability we need to develop through habit in order to really become good at, very much like any other skill. Modern philosophers, however, tend not to treat moral senses like skills, and so the connection between habit and morality is not always evident. Both Weil and Murdoch blame “secular morality” for this state of affairs, though their remarks are general and apply as much to a mind-set as they do to a specific historical period. Thinkers like Bertrand Russell, Hume and Kant – but also many Stoic philosophers – viewed the influence of habit with suspicion. Murdoch suggests that we understand this suspicion of habit as the expression of a more general hostility not only toward the religious (“sacraments and rituals”) but toward phenomena considered inferior because “passive,” such as the emotions – and, of course, toward women, traditionally associated with both emotions and with the “passive” faculty of intuition. “‘The man’ of modern moral philosophy,” argued Murdoch (amplifying the ideal with a gendered pronoun), is a figure who is in control of their thoughts and their actions; above all they are no longer subject to habits (Murdoch, 1970: 4). This figure pictures themselves as perfectly autonomous and self-possessed. And yet, as Murdoch writes: “We are not free in the sense of being able suddenly to alter ourselves since we cannot suddenly alter what we can see and ergo what we desire and are compelled by” (Murdoch, 1970: 39). Does this mean that our dependence on habit renders us, ultimately, powerless to “alter” ourselves? Not at all. Habit, after all, is a concept that explains change and the mechanics of change, albeit on a timescale that is considerably longer and more expansive than what we have become used to in moral philosophy. We like our decisions to have immediate results, we value efficiency and look askance at anything that seems like “time-wasting.” The regimens of habituation one finds in Christian mysticism invariably involve an enormous investment of time that leaves a person waiting to receive results, rather than choosing or willing them to happen. Religious perspectives are a reminder that, where human behaviour is concerned, agency is both active and passive, both fast and slow, as much about doing as it is about receiving. That is why religious perspectives on habit are significant to philosophy; they offer an alternative to the ideals of progress, speed and efficiency which have shaped modern thought-worlds (Bourgault, 2016).

Notes 1 For a different perspective that recovers a positive concept of repetition in the history of philosophy, see Mark Sinclair’s essay in this volume.

References Agamben, G. (2016) The Use of Bodies. Translated by Kotsko, A. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Agamben, G. (2013) The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life. Translated by Kotsko, A. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Agamben, G. (2004) The Open: Man and Animal. Translated by Attell, K. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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Simone Kotva Aristotle (2000) Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Crisp, R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Augustine of Hippo (1912) Confessions, vol. 2. Translated by Watts, W. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Azouvi, F. (1995) Maine de Biran: la science de l’homme. Paris: Vrin. Bellantone, A. (2019) ‘De la persévérance à la donation: La décision métaphysique de Ravaisson’, Revue philosophique de la France et de l’étranger, 144 (1), pp. 49–62. Besse, Ludovic de. (1925) The Science of Prayer. London: Burns, Oats and Washbourne. Biran, P.M.d. (1920) The Influence of Habit on the Faculty of Thinking. Translated by Donaldson Boehm, M. London: Bailliere, Tindall & Cox. Biran, P.M.d. (1957) Journal, vol. 3. Gouhier, H. (ed.) Neuchatel: Éditions de la Baconniere. Biran, P.M.d. (1989) OEuvres, vols. X-2. Derniere philosophie: existence et anthropologie. Baertschi, B. (ed.) Paris: Vrin. Bourdieu, P. (1990) The Logic of Practice. Translated by Nice, R. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Bourgault, S. (2016) ‘Attentive Listening and Care in a Neoliberal Era: Weilian Insights for Hurried Times’, Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics, 18 (30), pp. 311–339. Bourgault, S. (2017) ‘Weil and Rancière on Attention and Emancipation’, in Rozelle-Stone, A. (ed.) Simone Weil and Continental Philosophy. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 223–240. Breen, K. (2010) Imagining an English Reading Public, 1150-1400. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burrows, R. (1976) Guidelines for Mystical Prayer. London: Sheed and Ward. Certeau, M.d. (1992) The Mystic Fable, vol. 1: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Translated by Smith, M.B. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Caputo, J.D. (2006) The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Carlisle, C. (2010) ’Between Freedom and Necessity: Félix Ravaisson on Habit and the Moral Life’, Inquiry, 53 (2), pp. 123–145. Carlisle, C. (2013) ‘The Question of Habit in Theology and Philosophy: From hexis to Plasticity’, Body and Society, 19 (2-3), pp. 30–57. Carlisle, C. (2014) On Habit. London: Routledge. Chase, M., Clark, S.R.L. and McGhee, M. (eds.) (2013) Philosophy as a Way of Life: Ancients and Moderns – Essays in Honour of Pierre Hadot. London: Wiley. Coleman, C. (2014) The Virtues of Abandon: An Anti-Individualist History of the French Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Corrigan, J. (1993) “‘Habits from the Heart’: The American Enlightenment and Religious Ideas about Emotion and Habit,” The Journal of Religion, 73 (2), pp. 183–199. Dobson, M.L. (2014) Health as a Virtue: Thomas Aquinas and the Practice of Habits of Health. Cambridge: Lutterworth Press. Fénelon, F. (2006) Spiritual Writings. Translated by Helms, C. New York: Paulist Press. Frost, B. (1935) The Art of Mental Prayer. London: Philip Allan. Giardini, F. (1998) ‘The Attitude of Prayerfulness’, Angelicum, 75 (4), pp. 591–630. Gianni, V., Rovatti, P.A. and Carravetta, P. (eds.) (2012) Weak Thought. Albany, NY: Southern University of New York Press. Goldstein, J. (2005) The Post-Revolutionary Self: Politics and Psyche in France, 1750-1850. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Goodchild, P. (2012) ‘Thinking and Life: On Philosophy as Spiritual Exercise’, in Moody, K.S. and Shakespeare, S. (eds.) Intensities: Philosophy, Religion, and the Affirmation of Life. Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 165–176. Gouhier, H. (1966) “Expérience religieuse et philosophie dans la pensée de Maine de Biran.” Revue internationale de philosophie, 20 (75), pp. 90–116. Gouhier, H. (1948) Les conversions de Maine de Biran. Paris: Vrin. Hadot, P. (2002) What Is Ancient Philosophy? Translated by. Chase, M. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hadot, P. (1995) Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. Translated by Chase, M., Davison, A.I. (ed.). Oxford: Blackwell. Hatfield, G. (1986) ‘The Senses and the Fleshless Eye: The Meditations as Cognitive Exercises’, in Rorty, O.A. (ed.) Essays on Descartes’ Meditations. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 45–79. Hofer, A. (2012) ‘Looking in the Mirror of Augustine’s Rule’, New Blackfriars, 93 (1045), pp. 263–275. Janicaud, D. (1997) Ravaisson et la métaphysique: une généalogie du spiritualisme français. Second revised edition. Paris: Vrin.

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Habit and the Spiritual Life John of the Cross (1991) The Collected Works. Translated by Kavanaugh, K. and Rodriguez, O. Washington, D. C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies. Kotva, S. (2020) Effort and Grace: On the Spiritual Exercise of Philosophy. London: Bloomsbury. Lockwood, T. (2013) ‘Habituation, Habit, and Character in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics’, in Sparrow, T. and Hutchinson, A. (eds.) A History of Habit from Aristotle to Bourdieu. Lanham: Lexington, pp. 24–40. Malikail, J. (1981) ‘A Philosophy of Mind Adequate for Discourse on Morality: Iris Murdoch’s Critique’, The Journal of Educational Thought / Revue De La Pensée Éducative, 15 (1), pp. 61–72. Marion, J.-L. (2011) ‘Resting, Moving, Loving: The Access to the Self According to Saint Augustine’, The Journal of Religion, 91 (1), pp. 24–42. Marno, D. (2014) ‘Easy Attention: Ignatius of Loyola and Robert Boyle’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 44 (1), pp. 135–161. Merton, T. (1963) ‘Reflections on the Character and Genius of Fénelon’, in McEwan, J. (ed.) Fenelon: Letters. Translated by McEwan, J. London: Harvill Press, pp. 9–30. Miner, R.C. (2013) ‘Aquinas on habitus’, in Sparrow, T. and Hutchinson, A. (eds.) A History of Habit from Aristotle to Bourdieu. Lanham: Lexington, pp. 67–88. Murdoch, I. (1970) The Sovereignty of Good. London: Routledge. Pascal, B. (1958) Pensées. Translated by Trotter, W. F. New York: Dutton. Patterson, S. (2013) ‘Descartes on Nature, Habit and the Corporeal World’, Proceedings of the Aristotelean Society, Supplementary Volumes, 87, pp. 235–258. Pickstock, C. (2014) Repetition and Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Prendiville, J.G. (1972) “The Development of the Idea of Habit in the Thought of Saint Augustine,” Traditio, 28, pp. 29–99. Ravaisson, F. (2017) Selected Essays. Sinclair, M. (ed.) London: Bloomsbury. Sherman, J. (2014a) ‘On the Emerging Field of Contemplative Studies and Its Relationship to the Study of Spirituality’, Spiritus: A Journal of Christianity Spirituality, 14 (2), pp. 208–229. Sherman, J. (2014b) Partakers of the Divine: Contemplation and the Practice of Philosophy. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Sinclair, M. (2019) Being Inclined: Félix Ravaisson’s Philosophy of Habit. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sparrow, T. and Hutchinson, A. (eds.) (2013) A History of Habit from Aristotle to Bourdieu. Lanham: Lexington. Stalnaker, A. (2004) ‘Spiritual Exercises and the Grace of God: Paradoxes of Personal Formation in Augustine’, Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, 24 (2), pp. 137–170. Thomas of Aquinas (1947) Summa Theologiae. Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Cincinnati: Benziger Brothers. Underhill, Evelyn (2011) Mysticism: The Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness. 12th ed. London: Dutton, 1930. Viola, T. (2012) ‘The Serpentine Life of Félix Ravaisson: Art, Drawing, Scholarship, Philosophy’, in Feist, U. and Rath, M. (eds.) Et in imagine ego: Facetten von Bildakt und Verkorperung, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, pp. 155–174. Weil, S. (1951) Waiting on God. Translated by Craufurd, E., Joseph-Marie, P. (ed.) London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Weil, S. (1978) Lectures on Philosophy. Translated by Price, H. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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14 ARE HABITS INHERITED? A POSSIBLE EPIGENETIC ROUTE FROM CHARLES DARWIN TO THE CONTEMPORARY DEBATE 1 Mariagrazia Portera and Mauro Mandrioli

14.1 Introduction What is a habit? What do habitual processes and evolutionary theory have to do with each other and what is the role played by habitual processes in heredity? It is safe to say that the concept of habit is one of those that recur most frequently throughout Charles Darwin’s work, from his Notebooks (1836–1844) to the Origin of Species (first edition in 1859), from the Descent of Man (1871) to the Expression of Emotions of Man and other Animals (1872) up to his very last publication, The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms, with Observations on their Habits (1881), published few months before Darwin’s death. The main aim of this paper is to shed some new light on Darwin’s habitual use of the term habit: we shall analyse functions and role of this concept in Darwin’s evolutionary theory, in the light of early- and mid-nineteenth-century biological and philosophical ideas in England and France and, most interestingly, in the light of today’s theories of epigenetic inheritance, which, as we shall argue, seem to revive (at least to a certain extent) some of Darwin’s early ideas on habits and instincts. In order to develop our argument, we divide the paper into two sections: a) In the first section (paragraphs II and III), we show that habit – a term that Darwin, influenced by the philosophical milieu of his time (Wright, 2011, 2017), uses to refer to recurrent patterns of behaviour, skills and practices acquired by an individual during his lifetime, and performed, at least at the beginning, with a certain degree of consciousness –, together with instincts – unconscious and innate behavioural patterns – represent the very first mechanism of species transformation. For the young Darwin, deeply convinced after his Beagle voyage that species change over time, habits are one of the main agents of evolution; b) In the second section (paragraph IV), we set out to ask whether and, if yes, to which extent current models of epigenetic inheritance (which describe how the expression of genes is modified by the environment and how these modifications are transmitted over generations) may shed a new retrospective light on Darwin’s early conception of habits and instincts. Indeed, as epigeneticist Eva Jablonka has written, “it is to Darwin […] that we should turn again […], to his belief that individual and social habits drive much of the evolution of behaviour” if we want to understand properly what epigenetics is and what is today at stake with it (Avital & Jablonka, 2000: 30). 196

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14.2 Habits and Instincts in the Young Charles Darwin’s Theory As is well known, still aboard the Beagle Darwin started to record his field observations and very first evolutionary statements in a series of notebooks, which he continued to fill with notes and naturalistic reflections once back in England. Darwin’s Notebooks are a collection of observations, quotes and short commentaries written between 1836 and 1844: among them, there are the Red Notebook (1836–1837), the Transmutation Notebooks (B, C, D, E, 1837–1839), the Metaphysical Notebooks (M and N, 1838–1840) the Old and useless Notes about the moral sense & some metaphysical points (1837–1840). In Notebook C, the second Transmutation Notebook, Darwin describes a possible mechanism of evolutionary change: “habits give structure, therefore habits precede structure” (C 199). This means, on the one hand, that according to the young naturalist animals’ anatomical structures can change over time and, eventually, species can evolve (against fixism), on the other hand, that these evolutionary modifications are a consequence of habituation processes. When a group of individuals enters a new environment or when their environment slowly changes, individuals are forced to adopt new habits, Darwin contends in the Notebooks, to accommodate themselves to the new life conditions. These recurrent patterns of behaviour (habits), if practiced over several generations in stable environmental conditions gradually turn into more permanent behavioural features: that is, they evolve in instincts (see Notebook N 48: “Instinct is a modification of bodily structure”), which are innate and transmissible to the offspring. Instincts, also called by Darwin “hereditary habits” (Notebook M 46), once embodied can pave the way for the change of other anatomical structures, generating thus a new species. Back in England from the Beagle voyage, Darwin champions a materialistic view of the mind: “Why is thought being a secretion of brain more wonderful than gravity a property of matter?”, he asks rhetorically in Notebook C 166. He is therefore convinced that the cognitive acts correlated with and consciously guiding any pattern of habitual behaviour leave, repetition after repetition, a “mark” on the individuals’ brains, which gradually modifies the brain’s structures making the corresponding behaviour more and more spontaneous, unconscious and involuntary, i.e. an instinct. Recurrent (habitual) thoughts are therefore the underpinnings of animal instinctual behaviours, which Darwin defines as a kind of “unconscious memory” transmitted trans-generationally. Robert Richards, in his book Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior, recalls a pencilled annotation (probably written by Darwin in January 1840) to Johannes Müller’s handbook Elements of Physiology, that sounds: “The inherited structure of brain must cause instincts: this structure might as well be bred as any other adapted structure” (Richards, 1987: 95). Animal instincts might be explained, in this sense, as some sedimentation of habitual actions originally performed in a conscious and voluntary way, and which left their “mark”, as a deep memory, on the brain: “Perhaps even the most complicated instinct might be analysed into steps, as species change” (Old and Useless Notes 37). Notebooks C and D, the second and third Transmutation Notebooks, are mainly devoted to examining the role of habits and instincts as agents of evolutionary change in animal behaviour and, consequently, in animal anatomy. It is worth stressing that, in Darwin’s view, the sedimentation of habits into instincts is not a merely cumulative process and that not any habitual action or habitual behaviour is per se entitled to turn into an instinct. Indeed, two pre-conditions need to be fulfilled for a habit to be transformed, generation after generation, into an instinct. Firstly, the whole population, not just one individual or a couple of individuals, should adopt the habit in order to make it relevant at the evolutionary scale. In Notebook C, making speculations about the hypothetical case of a 197

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jaguar that gradually takes up the habit of swimming due to the abundance of fish, Darwin writes (C 63): “Fish being excessively abundant & tempting the Jaguar to use its feet much in swimming, & every development giving greater vigour to the parent to tending to produce effect on offspring—but whole race of that species must take to that particular habit.—All structures either direct effect of habit, or hereditary & combined effect of habit,—perhaps in process of change.” Secondly, and already implicit in the first pre-condition, the habit in question must be beneficial to the population: “It is probable that becomes instinctive which is repeated under many generations […] & only that which is beneficial to race will have recurred” (Old and Useless Notes 51), thus suggesting that useful habits, as a result of their usefulness, are practised more frequently, and therefore produce instincts in succeeding generations. Determining what is beneficial to the species, however, is at this initial stage of Darwin’s investigation not an easy task, up to the point that Darwin honestly admits: “until it can be shown what things easiest become instinctive, this part of argument fails, or rather is weak” (Old and Useless Notes 51).

14.3 Moving from a Transformational to a Variational View of Evolution As already mentioned in the introduction to this paper, “habit” is one of the most frequently recurrent concepts in Darwin’s work and, we may add now, also one of those with which Darwin has most intensively struggled throughout his intellectual career, this signalling, on the one hand, the relevance of the concept, on the other hand, its “puzzling” nature. Let us consider, for instance, the first edition of Darwin’s masterpiece On the Origin of Species (1859), published more than fifteen years after the Notebooks, and in which the English naturalist outlines the fundamentals of a “new theory of instincts”. Darwin writes in chapter VII: “It would be the most serious error to suppose that the greater number of instincts have been acquired by habit in one generation, and then transmitted to succeeding generations. It can be clearly shown that the most wonderful instincts with which we are acquainted, namely, those of the hive-bee and of many ants, could not possibly have been […] acquired” through the experience of their utility, or with continued practice during successive generations. Darwin’s view on habits and instincts seems to be at odds, in the Origin (1859), with what he had previously argued in his private notes: whereas in the Notebooks he contends, as we have shown, that certain voluntary habits, given their utility, can be maintained, gradually transformed into involuntary instincts and passed on to the offspring, in the Origin (1859) he boldly states that such an idea “would be the most serious error”. It is because of the selection of causal modifications of a certain innate behavioural pattern that instincts form, not because of previously acquired and regularly repeated voluntary habits: habits and instincts appear to be, in 1859, fully dependent on the principle of natural selection. Relying on Richard Lewontin’s insightful reflections in a paper written in 1983, we can recognize here a transition from a transformational to a variational theory of species change. In transformational theories of change, species are seen as changing “because each individual organism within the species undergoes the same change” (let us recall what the young Darwin required as the second pre-condition for species change in the framework of his early theory of habits: that the whole population, not just one individual or a couple of individuals, takes up the beneficial habit…), whereas in variational theories “the individual members of the ensemble differ from each other in some properties and […] the system evolves by change in the proportions of the different types” (Lewontin, 1983). In the Origin (1859), Darwin’s idea is indeed that each instinct (and the related modifications in the species structure) is the result of the “accumulation of numerous, slight, and as we must call them accidental, variations, which are 198

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in any manner profitable, without exercise or habit having come into play. For no amount of exercise, or habit, or volition, in the utterly sterile members of a community could possibly affect the structure or instincts of the fertile members, which alone leave descendants”. Such a view could not be more distant from the transformational one introduced in the Notebooks! Historian of science Robert Richards (Richards, 1987, 1992, 2009) has extensively written on Darwin’s theory of habits, focusing in particular on what might have been the reason behind Darwin’s transition from his early theory to the new, selection-orientated and variation-based one in the Origin. After all, Darwin had already read Malthus’ Principle of Population in September 1838 and started almost immediately to conceptualize the principle of natural selection and its role in the natural world. Why, then, did it take him so long to replace his old ideas with the new ones and what might have been the “driver” of this transition? As documented in the Notebooks and in other private notes and letters, Darwin was an omnivorous reader: back in England from the Beagle voyage, he started to read “heaps [of] books” (Darwin to Hooker, 11 January 1844) on the most various arguments (including philosophical books and natural theological treatises) and continued to collect facts and evidence to support the first steps of his evolutionary theory. According to Richards, a major contribution to Darwin’s transition from habits to natural selection did come from some natural theologians, whose works Darwin read and studied research works in natural theology he got to read (Richards, 1981). There are many behaviours that animals perform in the most perfect and accomplished way although they have never had the chance to practice them before or to learn them by trial and error. Let us consider for instance – Darwin mulls over this case in The Origin of Species – the “marvellous instincts” of solitary wasps, which build nests to lay their eggs and supplies them with grubs, although they will never see any offspring come out from the eggs and they have never tasted grubs before. How would it be possible to explain the behaviour of the wasp as some gradual sedimentation of habits originally performed by the wasp in a voluntary way, Darwin asks? (Richards, 1981). It would be clearly unreasonable. Even more challenging is the case of the spectacular instincts in sexless or sterile individuals (“neuter insects”), such as ants or hive-bees, which cannot transmit their habits to offspring since they are sterile and have themselves parents endowed with quite different behavioural patterns (Ratnieks & Foster, 2011). How did these “neuter instincts” originally arise? As Richards remarks, these questions and issues were extensively discussed by theologians interested in natural sciences and it is possible that their works helped Darwin to come to grips with the major difficulties of his early theory of habits and, eventually, to move from habits to natural selection (Richards, 1981). The point is that, as has been suggested by a number of historians of science (Robert Richards, Richard Burkhardt, Dov Ospovat, Edward Manier) (Manier, 1978; Ospovat, 1981; Richards, 1987; Burkhardt, 2013), Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, particularly in the early stages of its elaboration, did not come “out the blue”, but was bound up with and deeply influenced by the philosophical, theological and biological thought of his time. In that context, the notions of “habit” and “instinct” were commonly used by a vast array of thinkers (natural scientists, philosophers, theologians) to account for human and animal behaviour: they represented, for anyone interested in accounting for human and animal behaviour, fundamental explanatory tools. It was quite obvious to Darwin, in this sense, to turn to them in his scientific early investigations, and − more or less intentionally − to resist for a long time any attempt to dismiss the habit principle and to replace it with a new one (Wright, 2011). It is, moreover, particularly interesting that a major help towards the elaboration of his new theory of habits and instincts in the Origin came to Darwin from natural theology (as Richards suggests in his 199

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research): this is further intriguing evidence of how multi-faceted and multi-disciplinary the process of elaboration of Darwin’s evolutionary theory as a whole was. To conclude this part, let us draw some partial conclusions from what we have seen so far. With the first edition of the Origin of Species (1859), the key-principle of natural selection appears to play the role that – in Darwin’s account of animal behaviour – had been played by habits and instincts in the Notebooks (at least to a certain extent). Darwin’s downsizing of the relevance of habits and instincts in animal behaviour and his arguments in favour of natural selection has been since then the canonical view in biology. Might the latest advancements in epigenetics, as a relatively new field of inquiry within evolutionary biology, give us the opportunity for a re-assessment of this canonical (or habitual) view?

14.4 What Is Epigenetics? In recent years we have witnessed a resurgence of interest in Darwin’s theories of habits and instincts, particularly in the field of epigenetics, i.e. the discipline that investigates the way in which the functioning and expression of genes is modified by environmental inputs, and how these modifications are transmitted over generations. As mentioned above, and just to refer but to a few examples, epigeneticist Eva Jablonka has argued that through the lens of epigenetics we can appreciate how brilliant and ahead of his times was Darwin’s idea of habits as drivers of the evolutionary change of species (Jablonka, 2013). Indeed, there have been recently many claims by experts in epigenetics (and a growing amount of empirical evidence) that at least some of the habits that animals (including humans) acquire during their lifetime can “leave a mark” on the genome, and, in certain cases, can be transmitted to the offspring. Not all inherited phenotypic variations, then, seem to be necessarily based on underlying genetic variations. Is it perhaps time for us to go back to and reassess Darwin’s early views on acquired habits? To address this question, we should first ask what is epigenetics. Epigenetics is one of the most fascinating research fields in contemporary biology, which has experienced in recent years extraordinary popularity in the media and popular press, up to the point of being “portrayed […] as a revolutionary new science, an antidote to the idea that we are hard-wired by our genes” (Bird, 2007; Carey, 2011). Rarely, however, those who use the term are fully aware of the richness of meanings and complexity of intellectual traditions underlying this notion. As Adrian Bird argues, the word “epigenetics” has “several meanings with independent roots” (Bird, 2007): following one of these roots, we are led from contemporary epigenetics to the ancient notion of epigenesis, which dates back to Aristotle and classical antiquity (Müller & Olsson, 2003: 114–123). In his De Generatione Animalium (1476), Aristotle speaks in favour of a view of embryonic development, as opposed to preformation, which might to called “epigenetic”. Whereas according to preformation all characters of the adult organism are simultaneously present in the fertilized egg and only need to grow into their full expressions, Aristotle interprets embryonic development as an incremental process that unfolds gradually over time and in close interaction with the environment. Asking whether the parts of the animal body “are all formed simultaneously—heart, lung, liver, eye, and the rest of them—or successively, as we read in the poems ascribed to Orpheus, where he says that the process by which an animal is formed resembles the plaiting of a net,” Aristotle puts forward theoretical and empirical arguments to support the epigenetic view (Peck, 1963; Connell, 2001). Aristotle’s theory of embryonic development exercised an extraordinarily deep influence on scientific debates in Europe until at least the 17th century. For example, William Harvey 200

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(1578–1657), the first scientist to describe extensively the systemic circulation of blood in animals (in his Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus, 1628) explicitly referred to Aristotle in the book Exercitationes de generatione animalium (1651), where he presented an embryological theory according to which development proceeds as a cumulative formation and differentiation out of non-structured raw material. At the end of the 18th century, in the framework of a wide intensification of the debate between preformationist and epigenetic views of development, even Immanuel Kant, in his third Critique (Critique of the Power of Judgement, 1790) entered the discussion, lending his support to Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s epigenetic understanding of embryonic development (Goy & Watkins, 2014). As known, the term “epigenetics” per se was coined by developmental biologist Conrad Hal Waddington (1905–1975), partly retaining and partly transforming the traditional meaning of the term “epigenesis” (as it had been used by Kant and Blumenbach, for instance) in light of modern genetics, and trying to find a “balance” or conciliation between the two opposite views of epigenesis and preformation. In Waddington’ words: We know that a fertilized egg contains some preformed elements—namely, the genes and a certain number of different regions of cytoplasm—and we know that during development these interact in epigenetic processes to produce final adult characters and features that are not individually represented in the egg. We see, therefore, that both preformation and epigenesis are involved in embryonic development. Epigenetics, as a “blend” of epigenesis + genetics (where genes play the same role that preformation had played in the ancient debate), is the new science that, in Waddington’s view, reconciles the two opposite theories, preformation and epigenesis: the science of the mechanisms of interaction between genes and their (intra-cellular and extra-cellular) surroundings in order to produce a phenotype. It needs scarcely to be said that, put in these terms, Waddington’s understanding of epigenetics is still largely gene-centred: in his view, development (and the mechanisms that lead from genotype to phenotype) is dependent on genes. Things, in contemporary epigenetics, are slightly different. Although maintaining Waddington’s brilliant neologism, today’s epigenetics tries to overcome his original gene-centrism. It is not (only) genetics that matters for the development and functioning of an organism: changes in gene expression or cellular phenotype can occur also without changes in the Watson-Crick base-pairing of DNA and, most importantly, at least some of these changes can be transmitted to the offspring. In other words, today’s epigenetics mainly focuses (albeit not exclusively) on the trans-generational transmissibility of environmentally induced modifications as a second, autonomous, non-DNA-based system of inheritance ( Jablonka & Lamb, 1998). No evidence of this idea of epigenetics as a non-genetic inheritance system can be found in Waddington’s work. What is at stake with contemporary epigenetics, then, is the extent to which our multifaceted relationship to the world (the material, historical, social and cultural environments in which we live, including the habits that we contract, the type of food we eat, the air we breathe and the relationships that we establish with other people) influences the expression of our genes, without “physically” altering them, and whether these influences and changes can be passed on to descendants. Before addressing the specific question of whether the habits we contract over life (and which of these habits in particular) can influence the expression of our genes, let us focus on the mechanisms of epigenetic inheritance. There are different types of epigenetic mechanisms: the most important are DNA methylation, histone modifications, and non-coding RNAs. 201

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DNA methylation is a major epigenetic modification in the eukaryotic genome and one of the most studied types of epigenetic inheritance. It consists in the transfer of a methyl group to cytosine – one of the four DNA nitrogenous bases – in the DNA strands and it is generally faithfully inherited during mitosis (i.e. the process by which cells split into two identical daughter cells). Indeed, the failure to maintain the correct methylation patterns from one cellular generation to the other leads to aberrant cell functioning, which is often observed in human neurodevelopmental defects, neurodegenerative, neurological, and autoimmune diseases, and cancers. Histone modifications are another form of epigenetic regulation, which refers to modifications occurring to the histones, proteins involved in “packaging” DNA into structural units (nucleosomes) within the nucleus of each cell. Biologists use the term “chromatin” to refer to the complex of DNA plus the histones that package it. Histones can be modified in several ways by adding chemical groups (a methyl group, a phosphoryl group, an acetyl group, resulting respectively in the processes of histone methylation, histone phosphorylation, histone acetylation etc…), altering thus the interaction between histones and the DNA molecule and influencing DNA transcription (very roughly, the process by which DNA is copied into messenger RNA for protein production, which makes up the structure of the body) and genes activity. As pointed out by Carey (2011), if we conceive of our DNA as a script, then: DNA methylation represents semi-permanent additional notes … histone modifications are the more tentative additions. They may be like pencil marks, that survive a few rounds of photocopying but eventually fade out. They may be even more transient, like Post-It notes, used very temporarily. (Carey, 2011: 67) Along with DNA methylation and histones modifications, also non-coding RNAs seem to play a role – indeed, a promising role – in the epigenetic transmission of information over generations. For several years, biologists have considered the inheritance of epigenetic modifications impossible, due to the complete epigenetic resetting occurring during gametogenesis both in males and females. In the last few years, however, different independent research projects have found evidence that gametes (including sperms) carry not only DNA but also a wide variety of RNAs (including microRNAs) that contribute during the embryo development to the regulation of the expression of various genes (Qi et al., 2016). In other words, through these non-coding RNAs found in the gametes and mostly transmitted by fathers, certain paternal traits acquired in response to experiences such continue exposures to pollutants, diet changes or nutritional habits, are inherited by the offspring, and without changes in the DNA sequence (Brown & Montgomery, 2017). In this sense, (at least some) paternal life experiences can be epigenetically inherited and passed down to children. In the last decade, researchers have made significant progress in determining at the molecular level the influence of the environment on genes expression, and much evidence suggests that epigenetics might represent a sort of molecular signature of the environment on DNA, including specific “habits” or behavioural patterns acquired by the organism in its lifetime. In a well-known study, epigenetic mechanisms have been shown to mediate the transgenerational inheritance of maternal care behaviour and stress reactivity in rats (Matthews and Phillips, 2012). Habits of licking and grooming by rat mothers change the DNA methylation occurring in genes coding for glucocorticoid receptors in the offspring (Matthews and Phillips, 2012). This altered methylation patterns modified the gene expression and consequently the development 202

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of the brain, with effects on the behaviour of the next generation of rats. In this case, we have the trans-generational transmission of epigenetic modifications resulting from “habitual behaviour”, without direct inheritance through the germline. Effects on the offspring of habits of maternal care, on the one hand, and of child abuse, on the other hand, probably mediated by the same epigenetic mechanisms, have been shown also in humans. The transmission of acquired behavioural traits, however, can happen in mammals also through the germline (Sharma, 2017). At present, the most remarkable evidence is provided by a study conducted by Dias and Ressler (2014), who showed that when mice are taught to fear a specific odour, both their offspring and the next generation are born with a stable fear of the same smell. Dias and Ressler trained a group of mice to fear the odour of acetophenone (recognized by the receptor Olfr151, and similar to the smell of almonds) by pairing the odour with mild foot shocks and then measured the behavioural response to the exposure in the members of the group and the offspring generation. Researchers reported that, when mice are trained, or “habituated”, to fear acetophenone, their offspring and the subsequent generation as well show a heightened startle response in the presence of the odour. In the molecular analysis, Dias and Ressler found that the gene coding for the odorant receptor Olfr151 was differentially demethylated in the first group of mice, in their offspring and “grand-children” generation, even in case of in vitro fertilization. It can be said, then, that epigenetic markers allowed mice to “remember” and transmit to their offspring what they had learned in their lifetime: there are indeed mechanisms that can translate recurrent adult experience and environmental exposures into inherited phenotypes. An increasing number of studies in recent years have found direct and indirect evidence in humans of the trans-generational presence of epigenetic markers as a consequence of the exposure to a variety of conditions such as traumatic experiences, poor nutritional habits, perhaps even tobacco smoke and mental and psychical disability (Pfeifer, 2016). These experiences “of the fathers” (and, at least in some cases, their “bad habits”) literally epigenetically penetrate the body and are passed down to the offspring up to the second or third generation. Just to mention a few famous studies, one of the most remarkable examples is the (epigenetically mediated) transgenerational inheritance of the effects of malnutrition in the survivors of the Dutch Hunger Winter in 1944–1945, a period of terrible privations due to the German blockade of the Netherlands in the Second World War. Women that suffered malnutrition in their first months of pregnancy had children that showed a greater incidence of obesity, cardiovascular diseases, metabolic disorders as adults. Even more interestingly, recent studies examining DNA methylation patterns in the Dutch Hunger Winter survivors have found epigenetic changes in a set of genes involved in the regulation of metabolic activity (Heijmans et al., 2008; Veenendaal et al., 2013; Radford et al., 2014). Another recent study has found epigenetic changes on the same site of a gene (FKBP5), the expression of which has been shown to be altered in cases of major depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, in a sample of Holocaust survivors and their children, thus providing further support to the hypothesis that traumatic experiences influence genes expression and can result in epigenetic modifications transmissible over generations (Yehuda et al., 2016). In the light of what we have seen so far, indeed traumas, malnutrition, bad habits, and poor health conditions might be considered, at least in certain cases, “sins of the fathers that are to be laid upon the children”, with obvious ethical and social implications (“intergenerational responsibility”) and a rapidly growing field of research in the social sciences (“social epigenetics”) that looks at epigenetics as a challenge and a new stimulating area of interest (Meloni, 2014; Chung et al., 2016; Witherington & Lickliter, 2017). 203

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Furthermore, epigenetic modifications seem also to apply to learning processes: that is, to “active” habits of learning, not only to habitual processes result of (more or less) passive exposure. The acquisition of a “habit of learning” depends on the repeated processing of salient environmental cues and their consolidation to memory, so that future encounters with the same cues are met with appropriate behavioural outcomes. In this respect, several scientists have recently suggested that epigenetic mechanisms play a role in shaping the functioning of neurons in mammals (including humans) and, more specifically, in shaping the neural basis of memory formation, which is a fundamental component of learning processes. In a very stimulating paper, Robinson and Barron (2017) propose that we read animal instincts as embodied learned habits, thus moving from the traditional “mutation first” model of the evolution of instincts (according to which a new innate behaviour can occur only when new mutations occur) to a “plasticity first” model of evolution, involving that plasticity precede and facilitate evolutionary adaptations. We have currently proofs that the genome may respond dynamically to several behaviourally relevant stimuli, also with a massive change in genes expression occurring in the brain: it is possible then that at least some animal instincts have emerged through evolutionary changes acting on initially plastic and learned behavioural responses, much in the same way that Darwin suggested with his theory of the “gradual stabilization of habits into instincts”. But what could be the pros, and what the “benefits”, of accepting such a “plasticity first” mechanism of evolution, instead of continuing to rely only on a “mutation first” model to explain the origin of instincts? The most recurrent criticism raised against epigenetic inheritance is that it is not stable enough to play a role in evolution. However, this “instability” is not necessarily a disadvantage since the “plasticity first” mechanism of evolution might be useful in many respects. For example, an epigenetically inherited behaviour can arise simultaneously in many individuals, differently from gene mutations that generally occur in a single individual. Moreover, transient epigenetically modified phenotypes can be easily lost in cases of environmental conditions change, with individuals reverting to the original phenotype. As Stotz and Griffiths (2016) remark, the reversibility of epigenetics is not a downside per se: exactly because of their tentativeness, epigenetically mediated behavioural patterns prove to be more sensitive to environmental fluctuation, more plastic and “creative”, therefore more adaptive. Summing up, at present there is only incomplete evidence of the permanent incorporation of a complex epigenetic phenotype into the genome; however, an increasing number of studies have started to document the presence of epigenetic markers and the influence they exercise, through the phenotypes they create, on natural selection, thus suggesting a scenario where at least some behavioural traits and character in animals (including humans) could have been acquired not (only) through variation but through habit. In the last decades, epigenetics has been used to try to undermine the foundations of Darwin’s theory of evolution and to suggest that, in the end, Darwin was wrong, since acquired characters can be also transmitted to offspring making genes followers rather than drivers of evolution. But as we have seen, Darwin himself with his early theory of habits was what we might perhaps call an epigeneticist ante litteram. In this sense, the introduction of epigenetic inheritance into the multifaceted system of inheritance mechanisms (genetic, epigenetic, behavioural, cultural inheritance) (Jablonka & Lamb, 2005) does not undermine the strength of today’s Darwin-based evolutionary theory. On the contrary, it helps to shed further light on three important principles, the relevance of which for biology can be scarcely overrated: individual behaviour matters; our brain is extraordinarily plastic; the habits that we contract over the course of life can leave a mark on our genome, and – evidence seems to suggest – also on our offspring’s genes. 204

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Notes 1 The authors have equally contributed to the concept of the paper; MP is responsible for writing it. MP wishes to thank IASH—Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities—University of Edinburgh, and the EURIAS Fellowship Programme for funding and supporting this research throughout its conception and development. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2018 Annual Conference of the British Society for the History of Philosophy, held at the University of Durham in 2018: MP and MM wish to thank the organizers of the conference and all the conveners for their insightful comments on the paper.

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15 THE DISCOURSE ECOLOGY MODEL: CHANGING THE WORLD ONE HABIT AT A TIME Susan Notess

The politics of language use is a burgeoning theme in philosophy—although it does not tend to show up under that name. We find it in discussions of believing and trusting people,1 epistemology of testimony,2 prejudice and implicit bias,3 and concerns about silencing and hermeneutical injustice.4 The politics of language use also includes urgent worries about hate speech, identity politics, and freedom of expression.5 Postcolonial accounts address the role of language use in situations of oppression, genocide, and decolonisation.6 At the root of each of these literatures is the tension between our social dramas, on the one hand, and on the other, the language we use to play them out—the medium of politics, testimony, injustice, and oppression. We argue about whether free speech protections ought to be used to safeguard people’s right to engage in hate speech, because we are concerned about how to manage the relationship between hate speech (a form of language use) and the oppressive context in which it is used. Perhaps it is a chicken-and-egg problem—does hate speech contribute to oppression, or is it because of oppression that some exercises of language function as hate speech? Perhaps if we could solve this chicken-and-egg problem, we could more easily resolve our debates about how to deal with hate speech in our societies. Although the exact relationship between social injustice and hate speech is contested, we keep arguing about how to discourage hate speech, because we understand that our social habits and our norms have some kind of relationship with our habits of speech. What that relationship is, and how it ought to be managed, are the questions that drive the arguments. In this paper, I argue that the relationship between social habits, norms, and language use can be productively understood by using an ecological approach which—unlike the chicken-andegg problem—anticipates the ongoing reciprocity between language and language users. Our language is part of our environment, shaping the way we function in our social lives. In turn, our language is shaped and changed by the way we use it in our social lives. Instead of trying to solve a chicken-and-egg problem, we do better to approach the politics of language use with an eye to how we cultivate our linguistic environment, using language change to both track and to drive social change. This approach is based on John Dewey’s account of how habit structures human behaviour, in Human Nature and Conduct (1922), and I call it the Discourse Ecology Model. I argue for this approach by looking at a different issue than is usually in focus for such debates. Whereas we usually argue about how to suppress the use of language in hateful and oppressive ways, I look at how we can use language change to both track and to drive the DOI: 10.4324/9781315186436-20

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spread positive ideas—in this case, I use the Discourse Ecology Model to see how language habits both track and drive the rise of the global movement toward veganism. In 2017 the BBC released a mockumentary created by Simon Amstell, called Carnage (Amstell, 2017). The film is set in the year 2067, in a world which has become fully vegan, and the consumption of animal products is criminalised. Within this frame, the film presents a genuine documentary showing how the UK has changed from a place in which the consumption of meat and dairy is normalised and celebrated to a world in which the same behaviour is increasingly under normative scrutiny. The film explores this trajectory of social change, beginning with the founding of The Vegan Society in 1944 and the history of factory farming, following developments until the present, and then imagines a future in which, by 2035, an animal rights bill is passed criminalising the production and consumption of animals and animal products. Our focus here will be on the documentary element of the film through to the present day, with only a quick look at Amstell’s imagined future. In what follows, I claim that language is particularly well suited to serving as a lens for change to social norms, because language itself is normatively structured. That is, there are ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways to say things, as the pedants will be quick to remind us. When we want to cultivate new social habits and the broad acceptance of new social norms, we cultivate changes in language use, and the changes in linguistic norms reflect the spread of new habits back at us. My aim here is not to take a stance on the politics of language use debates themselves; rather, my aim is to show that the Discourse Ecology Model is a useful approach to understanding social change. Not only does it provide a framework for understanding how changes in habit spread; the Discourse Ecology Model also enables us to see how changes in our habits of language use themselves can play a key role in the reshaping of our social environment. Language matters, and words are political. Once we understand how they change, it is clearer how we can change them, and in so doing, change ourselves and our world. First, I give an overview of how language change occurs as understood in historical linguistics, outlining the basic mechanics of change in the terms of the Discourse Ecology Model (§1). Once the mechanics of lexical and grammatical change are on the table, we look at how the grammatical norms of language interface with socio-political norms, using the illustrative example of the rise and spread of ‘discursive like’ (§2). Then we look at how the linguistic phenomenon of the institutionalisation of new use patterns interfaces with the instituting of new socio-political norms, which show up in changes to the objective arrangements of our environment (§3). Finally, we look at how the revised discursive environment drives widespread changes to individuals’ habits—how our changed world changes us (§4).

15.1 Habit and Habitat Not far from Chiang Mai, Thailand is an attraction known as Bua Thong Waterfalls, or ‘Sticky Waterfalls’. As water cascades down the hillsides, it leaves behind mineral deposits which have built up over time. The texture of the deposits is a bit rough, like the concrete on the bottom of an outdoor pool. Where one expects to find slippery surfaces and the danger of being swept down by the flow of water, one instead finds lumpy, grippy surfaces which are easy to climb up. It is a surreal experience, to have a waterfall crashing down over one’s head whilst climbing up the accreted mineral history of the water’s course. The water creates the waterfalls, and the accreted waterfalls in turn direct the course of the water. As with any river, the water flows in directions dictated by the surrounding environment. Each droplet’s particular course is an adjustment to the environment, but not only this: it is an adjustment of the environment itself, its momentum and mineral trace contributing to the shape of the archive and the unique 208

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trajectories of the droplets yet to come. A waterfall endures for as long as new volumes of water traverse the ruts and tumble over edges. The same is true of the conventional structures of human society. As Dewey says, ‘In a definite sense, then, a human society is always starting afresh. It is always in a process of renewing, and it endures only because of renewal’ (Dewey, 1922: 95). A language, likewise, endures through its constant ‘renewal’ in fresh utterances, and its contents and norms are an archive of its own history. It is created by our habits of speech, and our habits of speech are in turn made out of and structured by the resources and shape of the language as it stands, in virtue of its cumulative history. Languages change, because the way we use them changes. Every utterance adds to the history and shape of the language, as unique as each rivulet that splashes down Bua Thong Waterfalls, yet the courses which our utterance habits take is structured by the shape of the utterances that have come before. What an individual agent chooses to say is an expression of the individual’s particular will: to say what you will, you deploy various of your linguistic habits to generate unique utterances at unique points in time—utterances which incorporate the entire accreted shape of the language and at the same time adds to it. Importantly, this shape includes not just an archive of the lexicon, the grammatical patterns, the idioms trending, and the values we prefer to articulate; it also includes the gaps—the things we do not have words for, the things we conventionally avoid speaking directly about, and the things that get routinely silenced. One of the simplest forms of language change to witness in real time is the adding of new items to the lexicon, including when new words are created, spread, and eventually become institutionalised—that is, become stable and widespread forms that are recognised and used across a linguistic community (Brinton & Traugott, 2005: 45). Linguists have long been fascinated by the way language holds in tension the restrictiveness of its structures and inventories, on the one hand, with their infinite possibility for producing novel forms on the other. Novel words that become institutionalised are called neologisms (Bussmann, 1996, s.v. neologism; Matthews, 1997, s.v. neologism). This is arguably one of the more straightforward forms of language change, and we can thank Shakespeare (multitudinous, dwindle), Milton (sensuous, oblivious), Spenser (blatant, askance), and Carroll (chortle) for contributing many words to English through this process (Brinton & Traugott, 2005: 44). One person uses a word that was new, constructed out of familiar root words, suffixes, and sounds. Others encounter this novel usage, find they can make sense of what it means, have a use or need for it, and so begin using it. Eventually enough people know and are using the word that it becomes a part of the language, found in dictionaries. Thus, an individual’s novel behaviour becomes institutionalised across the linguistic community. The word vegan was coined by Donald Watson in 1944, to distinguish those who abstain from all animal products from those who abstain only from eating the animals themselves (Watson, 1944). The word is a modification of the already familiar vegetarian and has gone from being a niche word used by a small subculture to being a word with world-wide recognition. Having a word for veganism enables language users to refer easily to a certain lifestyle, which in turn means that more people become aware of its existence. We have seen variation in how the term is perceived over time and in various communities. The patterns of its use in a given context reveals something about the values at play: at various times, established values made vegan apt for use as a punchline, or as a virtue signal, or as anything in between. The word vegan is a tiny deposit in the English language, like a trace bit of mineral deposit added to the Bua Thong Waterfalls. Decades of usage intervene between then and now, and the existence of this added item in our lexicon has by now contributed enormously to the conceptual and expressive resources available to us for describing the values, priorities, and habits surrounding the politics of consumption. 209

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This kind of change is easy to observe because a new word comes into being: an artifact of language is created, a thing which can be copied, referred to, written down, and glossed. Lexicalisations (new words) can occur swiftly and fairly frequently, but other types of language changes occur too. Grammaticalisation refers to changes in grammatical structures used by language speakers; they are slower and occur less frequently, but once a grammaticalisation shift has happened it tends to be persistent. A common example is the shift in English by which a verb of motion, going to, became a grammatically functional modal verb—similar to have to in ‘I have to tell you the truth’—used to indicate futurity (Brinton & Traugott, 2005, 26–30). As a specific verb of motion, we get sentences like, ‘I am going to town’, in which ‘going to’ means I am going, travelling, to some place. As a modal auxiliary, the verb might have nothing to do with going anywhere, as in, ‘Try the casserole; you are going to like it.’ The addressee is not going anywhere. The use of ‘going to’ is to indicate something that will happen in the future. This new usage of ‘going to’ became familiar and speakers developed the habit of reaching for this form to indicate futurity in cases where they would previously have reached for other modal auxiliaries. The grammaticalisation shift represents a new collective habit which spread, in much the same new words spread, as people adopted the new usage. The habit is now fully institutionalised and recognised as a standard form in English.

15.2 The Lexico-Political The introduction of a new modal auxiliary verb does not strike us as revolutionary—it is a structural innovation which we find useful, but which does not typically carry political or moral overtones. Yet this is why it is a useful notion for understanding habit change across individuals and groups: the ostensive neutrality of this new usage of going to enables us to see the mechanics, so to speak, of how changes spread and take hold within the discourse environment. Now, we look at how socio-political norms interface with our language habits. In what follows I illustrate the comparison between the going to shift and a newer shift: the introduction of what linguists call ‘discursive like’. Dewey writes, ‘We may desire abolition of war, industrial justice, greater equality of opportunity of all. But no amount of preaching good will or the golden rule or cultivation of sentiments of love and equity will accomplish the results. There must be change in objective arrangements and institutions. We must work on the environment not merely on the hearts of men’ (Dewey, 1922: 21–22). The ‘objective arrangements and institutions’ which constitute our environment for action include language, and to accomplish the desired results of social change, we need to work on our languages, to shape them as an environment which facilitates justice and makes certain kinds of violence difficult to express with impunity. Donald Watson went to work on our language when he decided that we needed a way to refer to veganism as distinct from vegetarianism. Vegans in the decades since have worked on language when they use and spread the term, making others aware of its meaning, and normalising its presence in the food industry, such as marking on menus and grocery packaging items that happen to qualify as vegan. These kind of intentional changes to our ‘objective arrangements’ are examples of ways that we use language as a medium of promoting change in habits by changing the environment so that some behaviours come easier and others come harder to us. When people try to start movements on the basis of political and moral commitments—such as the abolition of war or of animal product consumption—one vital step is to change our shared behavioural environment in such a way as to modify existing behavioural incentives. Yet the voluntary choices of individual agents remain important for the fulfilment of the moral sea-change being sought. This, for Dewey, is where we see personal 210

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subjective morality intersecting with the sociality of habits, showing ‘the significance of desire and thought in breaking down old rigidities of habit and preparing the way for acts that recreate an environment’ (Dewey, 1922: 57). The social dynamics of change are perhaps most easily seen in language shifts which occur as habitual behaviour patterns not yet incorporated or accepted by the pedants who pose as guardians of linguistic integrity. One of the most iconic instances of this is the emergence of what linguists call ‘discursive like’. The word like has come to have multiple new functions in the last few decades, being previously used for comparatives or to indicate tastes and enjoyment. Now it is also used as a quotative introducer,7 a discourse marker,8 a discourse particle,9 and approximator adverb10 (D’Arcy, 2007; Drager, 2016).11 These technical terms are applied to observed usages, as linguists describe the grammatical patterns in how like is used; by applying technical labels of this kind, linguists validate linguistic innovations which many commentators are inclined to view as a corrupt intrusion infecting the language of youth. This is just one of the myths around the uses of like emerging in the past forty years or so, and as Alexandra D’Arcy argues in ‘Like and Language Ideology’ (D’Arcy, 2007), these myths are ideologically driven. As children, many of us were urged to resist developing the ‘bad habit’ of peppering our speech with this undesirable word, lest we become ‘addicted’ to its use and find ourselves incapable of filtering it out to speak more formally when required. Hidden beneath these injunctions is a tangle of socio-political ideas—habits of interpreting the speech of some groups as less valid than others. The speech pattern as characteristic of an airheaded, teenage, Californian ‘Valley Girl’ is the mythical source of this habitual use of like, and the resistance to adopting the innovation is interwoven with the diminishing of the voices of young women. Discursive like is viewed as a sloppy artefact of youthful impulse. This is why the pedants resist recognising it as linguistically valid: ‘Impulse is a source, an indispensable source, of liberation; but only as it is employed in giving habits pertinence and freshness does it liberate power’ (Dewey, 1922: 105). As we care for our language and the environment it creates for us, we may be tempted to resist letting certain utterances get added to the accreted shape our norms, particularly the utterances of groups who are gaining increasing power to shape society through the freshness of their customs. ‘The place of impulse in conduct as a pivot of re-adjustment, re-organization, in habits may be defined as follows: On one side, it is marked off from the territory of arrested and encrusted habits. On the other side, it is demarcated from the region in which impulse is a law unto itself’ (Dewey, 1922: 104–5). Yet, the more discourse like is used by young people, the more other young people perceive it as a useful option available to them in the expressive resources of the language. The usage proliferates, like a steady stream of mineral deposits added to a new contour of the Bua Thong Waterfalls, increasingly contributing to the direction the water flows and exerting re-organising pressures on the encrusted communicative habits of the wider language community. The Discourse Ecology is adjusted and reshaped by the spread of new forms from individuals’ impulsive innovation to widely accepted and deployed forms. Shifts in widely shared attitudes and values are frequently evidenced in shifts of language use, although the traces are not always so conspicuous as with discourse like. In recounting the shift to a fully vegan society, Amstell’s Carnage (2017) traces the emergence of the concept of free range meat and eggs—originally marking products prized for taste and priced for the pretentious. As people became more widely aware of the dangers and ethical horrors of intensive factory farming, the notion of free range animal products became a way of encoding an orientation toward compassion, a concern for animal welfare, and a prioritisation of ethical practices of consumption. These values are shared with the vegan movement, but the ready availability of the concept and term for free range practices enables people who still consume 211

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animal products to signal the same values. Carnage captures the tension between these two movements, as the idea of preferring to consume free range animals seems somehow even more perverse to the vegans, even though the movements encode similar values. Despite this tension, the free range movement was a key player in dislodging modern societies’ dependence on intensive factory farming, according to the film. Free range, like ‘discursive like’, has proliferated because it is useful to people in expressing something they feel a need to express. And whilst the purists, in either case, might frown on the use of these innovations, it remains the case the world has changed to accommodate them. To understand how either innovation becomes established in linguistic and social norms, we look now at the process linguists call ‘institutionalisation’.

15.3 Reversals in Objective Arrangements Free range consumption works as a medial concept in the trajectory of social change by liberating the power of capitalism to challenge the dominance of factory farming. The peculiarity of this development calls to mind an incident from about ten years ago. I had gone to the nearby shop—part of a health food chain store—to pick up some ingredients for dinner, including red lentils. I browsed the dry goods aisle until I found a packet of lentils and, picking it up, I saw that it was labelled ‘Free Range’ in large letters. What is a free range lentil? Lentils do not graze or range, I thought. After a few baffled moments I realised that many items in this aisle had the same lettering: Free Range, in this case, was being used as a brand name. In linguistic terms, a descriptive phrase (free range) was used to indicate products from animals which had been allowed to range freely during their lives. As the phrase became lexicalised—added to the lexicon—it took on new uses. It became a way to indicate the values behind the free range movement without foregrounding the more literal meaning of how the animals lived. A brand which presumably wished to market itself by its commitment to these values named itself ‘Free Range’ and applied it to all their products regardless of whether the product in question was, in fact, free range. As Amstell attests throughout Carnage, one of the features which interferes with peoples’ willingness to move to a vegan diet is the longstanding association between meat and signalling status and wealth. I took my Free Range red lentils home and cooked a curry for dinner for my family and my uncle, who was visiting town for a day. I apologised for not having prepared a more ‘special’ dinner to celebrate his visit and he replied in good humour, ‘No, I am honoured; you have slain the fatted lentil!’ For thousands of years people have slain their best, most fattened-up animals to feed honoured guests. As a rule, lentils do not carry connotations of honour and indulgence, but rather of being something that takes ages to cook, that may be tough or bland, and that is used in poor, inexpensive, uninspiring food. We see the way this association is tied to the word throughout Amstell’s film as he follows a fictional character, Graham Watkins of the Great British Meat League, who speaks out against veganism and its increasingly widespread presence in society. Watkins refers frequently to vegans and vegan establishments with a tone of disdain for their measly option of ‘some lentils’, a word which he says the way many people speak when they see liver on the menu. The implication is that lentils are something that no one particularly wants, and the shift to veganism involves a loss of good food in favour of some dreaded staple of the impoverished. The point here is that language is closely entwined with our values and desires; to change what we desire, we may need to change the way we speak. The lexicalisation of free range provided a linguistic resource for expressing positive values and things people desired—such as compassion and ethical consumption practices—without going so far as entailing a commitment 212

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to the perceived extremes of veganism. Yet the addition of free range to the lexicon was a change in the ‘objective arrangements and institutions’ (Dewey, 1922: 21–22) of how we talk about consumption, reshaping our environment in such a way as to facilitate the habitual foregrounding of certain values and desires. Although Amstell is very likely right to propose that the free range movement has played a key role in paving the way for widespread veganism, the concept would drop out of usefulness were veganism to become the social standard. Amstell’s film follows real historical developments as far as 2017, tracing the shift from veganism as an obscure notion to veganism as concept with mainstream recognition. The process of veganism becoming institutionalised as a social behavioural norm (not just as an item in our lexicon) is already evident, and the events of the past four years have increasingly paralleled what Amstell hypothesised would happen, from seeing vast improvements in the availability of vegan products, to the outbreak of viral pandemics inflamed by the meatpacking industry. We have seen a shift from veganism being something nonstandard with only niche cafes offering vegan options, to vegan options being included by default as part of the normal array of options available at many high street chains, including even meat-centric fast food chains, as this year Burger King joins KFC and McDonald’s in offering vegan variations of their iconic sandwiches. Although the vegan ‘Rebel Whopper’ has been criticised as not completely vegan, the chain have said it is aimed at ‘flexitarians’—a category which picks out people for whom plant based eating plays a valued role, but who are not fully vegan (BBC News, 2020). The trajectory of veganism involves similar features to the processes by which language changes become institutionalised, with the concept of a flexitarian serving an important role in constructing a transitional context for this trajectory to unfold. Vegans went from being perceived as a tiny group of strangely extreme people, to then being seen as attention-seeking performance artists. In the last few years, it has become trendy for people to participate in Veganuary, which is a yearly charity event began in 2014 involving the adoption of veganism for the month of January to reduce the climate impact of animal product consumption. Surveys indicate that the number of vegans in the UK quadrupled between 2014 and 2019 (TNSBMRB and Food Standards Agency, 2014). Whilst the term Veganuary, like the term free range, implies that the consumption of animal products is still a given and ordinary part of people’s lives, the Veganuary has nevertheless meant that most people in the UK would know someone who has been vegan for at least a bit of time, and veganism is not seen as such an exotically strange or grim diet as to be out of the range of achievability for most people. Amstell’s film shows a clip of a mid-century television show about vegans, over which Amstell comments, ‘In time vegans would come to be regarded as trailblazing heroes, but for now they were sat in a semicircle around a table full of brown food and fruit’ (Amstell, 2017), and we see various brown foods of which several look like some sort of grim paté—a nut-based cheese, a nut-based cream, lentil pie, and others. In contrast to this unappealing picture, the last five years have seen supermarkets and restaurant chains releasing an unprecedented variety of vegan food products, from vegan burgers and mayonnaise to croissants made without dairy (Lupica, 2017). Nearly one quarter of new food products launched in 2019 were marked as vegan (Press Association, 2020). Sales of vegan alternatives were vastly increased and many of the products have remained available even after January’s end due to high demand (Smithers, 2020). In the past six years, the term Veganuary has increasingly become a fixture in our linguistic and social media environment, to an extent which would have been difficult to imagine for the first seventy years since vegan was first added to our lexicon. Veganuary was launched under quite a different arrangement of the objective environment of social norms, habits, and language structures than that which existed when Watson coined the term vegan. Linguists have 213

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identified patterns in which kinds of innovative forms are candidates to become institutionalised and which do not stand much chance of widespread adoption, yet it is tremendously difficult to predict which way events will go. Similarly, as Dewey notes, ‘Impulse in short brings with itself the possibility but not the assurance of a steady reorganization of habits to meet new elements in new situations’ (1922: 104; italics added). In a further reorganization of habits, 2021 has seen a record 500,000 people globally signing up to participate in the Veganuary challenge (more than double the number from 2019), and this year, UK supermarket chains themselves have been promoting the event as well as offering an increasingly dazzling array of vegan products (Carringham, 2021). The unpredictability of lexicalisation processes is two-fold: we can never quite predict how the meaning of the novel form will settle as it becomes institutionalised, and we can never quite predict when a novel usage will spread widely enough to become institutionalised. First, Brinton and Traugott note that for a novel usage to take off, it should be a construction which can be derived from familiar words and bits and processes (or, technically: stems, morphemes, and derivational rules); it should also serve an immediate communicative need and be understandable from its context (Brinton & Traugott, 2005: 45). But in the process of institutionalisation, the meaning ‘often comes to be limited, specialized, or fixed in meaning. It may narrow to a subset (perhaps one) of its possible meanings, become relatively independent of context, and be included in the dictionary along with more generic meanings (Ryder, 1999: 305–6)’ (Brinton & Traugott, 2005: 45). When word bits join up, they have the potential to imply a range of different meanings—this is the feature which gives language its incredible productive and creative capacity. Consider the different implications of ‘over’ in overlook, oversee, and watch over. All three formations combine the preposition ‘over’ with a verb of vision, but the first implies failure to attend to something. The second implies responsibility to attend to something. The third implies constancy of attending to something, whether out of responsibility or otherwise. The bits do not mandate or determine that the meanings land as they have done; rather, the meanings are established by social institution and norms of usage. Thus, ‘What makes an expression a lexical item, what makes it part of the speech community’s common dictionary, is, firstly, that the meaning of the expression is not (totally) predictable from its form, secondly, that it behaves as a minimal unit for certain syntactic purposes, and third, that it is a social institution’ (Pawley & Syder, 1983: 209; italics original). The establishment of familiar and stable usages is a matter of social convention, without which we would have no particular means (apart from context, sometimes) of discerning the different implications of ‘over’ in the verbs above. The term free range has a discernible meaning when applied to meat products—a meaning which makes it a tremendously strange thing to see on a packet of lentils, and a peculiar choice for a brand name. For free range to function in this way falls outside the norms of its usage and has not become widespread. However, for free range to function as shorthand for people caring about ethical consumption practices and discouraging intensive factory farming is a familiar and stable use. Although vegans have little use for free range products, many vegetarians have use for the term, and prefer to buy free range dairy products and eggs for much the same reasons that they choose not to eat meat. At present, our discourse ecology—the shape of our share habits of language use—enables many people of contradictory lifestyle practices to recognise and express their shared values. Old behaviours (consuming animal products) and new behaviours (not consuming animal products) can both be adopted with reasonably little social cost; both behavioural possibilities co-exist, and for many people, the new behaviours make nearly as much sense as the older behaviours. 214

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These features together provide a bridging context (Brinton & Traugott, 2005: 25–31), in which the new form and the old form coexist as the new collective habit becomes established in our environment. We are in an extended linguistic bridging context now, in which discourse like is widely found to be useful for conveying nuances of meaning, but it is also possible to communicate smoothly without using discourse like. The new uses have taken firm hold and accreted as a distinctive shape in our history of language use; they are unlikely to disappear. A similar bridging context now exists for veganism: to be a vegan is an intelligible habit adopted by many people with relatively little difficulty, but it remains voluntary and many opt out. What Amstell has imagined is a trajectory by which we transition out of the current bridging context to one in which it becomes unthinkable not to be vegan. This transition involves the confluence of a whole host of factors—particularly as what we eat is such an all-encompassing part of life—but one vital ingredient is the spreading habit of wanting to eat differently, and it is in this respect that we can see how the changes we have cultivated in our environment can in turn change us.

15.4 How the World Has Changed To many vegan activists, it may seem improbable, if not outright inconceivable, to suppose that our meat-loving, cheese-addicted societies could become entirely vegan. We might suppose that it would take a miracle to accomplish such a vast reshaping of our world, much as we might think that it would take a miracle to accomplish the abolition of war. We return to Dewey’s comment about the greater changes we desire to see in the world: ‘We may desire abolition of war, industrial justice, greater equality of opportunity of all. But no amount of preaching good will or the golden rule or cultivation of sentiments of love and equity will accomplish the results. There must be change in objective arrangements and institutions. We must work on the environment not merely on the hearts of men.’ He continues: ‘To think otherwise is to suppose that flowers can be raised in a desert or motorcars run in a jungle. Both things can happen and without a miracle. But only by first changing the jungle and the desert’ (Dewey, 1922: 21–22). To see an end of the consumption of animals and animal products would require a change in objective arrangements and institutions, and some of the changes which would make this possible have happened. The jungle and the desert have changed since Watson invented the term veganism in 1944. That high street shops might sell more vegan croissants than butter croissants would have seemed like a mere fantasy even in the early 2000s. Such an occurrence now would seem like an ordinary January in the UK. As more people come to desire a different way of thinking about how we eat and how we treat animals, our desires change the environment in ways that change our habits. Dewey continues, ‘Yet the distinctively personal or subjective factors in habit count. Taste for flowers may be the initial step in building reservoirs and irrigation canals. The stimulation of desire and effort is one preliminary in the change of surroundings’ (Dewey, 1922: 22). One is unlikely to invest resources in building reservoirs and irrigation canals in a desert without having some stimulating desire, and it seems unlikely that many would want to do so for the sheer joy of canal-building. More likely, one might desire to live surrounded by the beauty of flowers, and in order that flowers might be raised in the desert, one constructs irrigation systems to make the change possible. Amstell comments about the moment when he imagines a shift in the balance, such that the majority of people desire to be vegans: “Empathy, climate change, and the improvements in nut cheese could no longer be ignored” (Amstell, 2017). It is difficult to imagine people craving vegan alternative products, particularly when the alternatives are far from palatable. But if plant-based cheeses become comparable in quality, taste, and meltiness to dairy 215

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cheeses, and pizza lovers can fulfil pizza cravings without requiring dairy products, then it is much easier to want to make the change in lifestyle. The pivot point Amstell imagines for futurity—when the need for changes can no longer be ignored—is a pivot point which increasing proportions of our societies have already passed. As with the canal builders, it is unlikely many companies would invest in developing vegan alternatives if there is not much market for them, but as Veganuary leads to increased demand for quality vegan options, the incentives for restaurants and grocery producers have changed. They now have reason to invest significant resources in investigating the way soft glassy materials flow in order to create something which melts the way cheese does—they have a reason to build canals in the desert. As the environment changes, the habitual ways we talk also change. It is no longer strange to hear reference to ‘vegan cheese’, or to hear young people choosing a restaurant based on which has decent vegan offerings. Where people used to drop the word vegan as code for something that nobody wants, now customers and diners are sought with advertising which features whole lines of vegan offerings. Once a person has had positive experiences with vegan gelato, she makes a change from thinking about gelato as something that is outside her world of possible enjoyments to something she might want and might allow herself to seek out again. In Dewey’s terms, ‘A genuine appreciation of the beauty of flowers is not generated within a self-enclosed consciousness. It reflects a world in which beautiful flowers have already grown and been enjoyed. Taste and desire represent a prior objective fact recurring in action to secure perpetuation and extension’ (Dewey, 1922: 22). When delicious vegan gelato has been experienced as a prior objective fact, an agent has the basis for desiring to act in ways that lead to reoccurrence of the experience. Vegan gelato becomes a habit for customers, and gelato makers get in the habit of expanding their vegan range. The prior objective fact secures extension through habits and becomes institutionalised. Amstell’s film emphasises the role of activists in promoting a reversal of social norms. In particular, a fictional activist called Troye King Jones is depicted as campaigning for years in support of veganism. King Jones changes his approach over the years, beginning from a place of anger and participating in demonstrations that highlight the cruelty of animal industries. Over time he adopts a more invitational tone, and collaborates with others to make delicious, millennia-old vegan cuisines from South and Central Asia staples for home cooks. The floods induced by climate change and animal flu viruses brought about by intensive farming gradually led to the normalisation of veganism among a majority of society. Whilst campaigning for animal products to be made illegal, King Jones is depicted as appearing on a talk show, where the host questions him about why all people should be forced to become vegans. King Jones answers that he and the majority should no longer be called vegans: ‘We are not “vegans”; they are “carnists”.’ Another interviewee recalls: ‘That was when we stopped being vegans. We didn’t have to be vegans anymore … because they were carnists. He did that.’ What Amstell imagines here brings us back to lexicalisation. An activist creates a new word during a televised interview—a word comprised of familiar, intelligible pieces, which has a meaning that makes it useful to people, and which is not already covered by the more celebratory term carnivore. People rapidly switch from the habit of referring to themselves as vegans, to that of referring to others as carnists, in part because the discourse ecology has changed so much that they no longer have much use for vegan. Whereas before, veganism was a marked category—things could be normal or vegan—it is now the unmarked, dominant category. Foods and people are vegan unless otherwise stated. The character of Troye King Jones illustrates a commonality between how Dewey and the linguist view changes in habit: on both views, people do what they have a desire and a use for, 216

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which is to say, people act in pursuit of goods they desire. The goods available and the possibilities for action in a given environment play an important role in how our habits play out. The initial efforts of King Jones were not massively successful. He reminisces about his early protests: ‘I just remember pretending to die a lot and being ignored.’ As the discursive and dietary environments changed, King Jones contributed to the cultivation of a world in which new goods were available to be sought. Dewey writes, ‘Desire for flowers comes after actual enjoyment of flowers. But it comes before the work that makes the desert blossom, it comes before cultivation of plants. Every ideal is preceded by an actuality; but the ideal is more than a repetition in inner image of the actual. It projects in securer and wider and fuller form some good which has been previously experienced in a precarious, accidental, fleeting way’ (Dewey, 1922: 22). King Jones had a desire to see the shape of the world change into something he had already experienced as good. For this reason, he undertook the work of cultivating a world in which this good could flourish. What he experienced in a precarious way became projected in ‘securer and wider and fuller form’. The word carnist would not have taken root prior to that work of cultivation, because it was not, in the pragmatic sense, a good word. People had no need to use it, because it goes without saying that most people eat meat. It was also not a word which felt good to many people, as it encodes a value which passes blame on their default habits. But in a world where the norms had reversed and the marked category of veganism had become unremarkable, this neologism was a good word—useful and in alignment with people’s values—and it became embedded in the lexicon. Change in social habits led to changes in the language. As I said at the outset, changes in language can also drive changes in habit. Once carnist is in the lexicon and vegan has become obsolete, people’s habits would change further. People who formerly had no need to explicitly state their dietary preferences would be put in the position of needing to speak up if they wish to request an opportunity to consume animal products, and to do so, they would need to identify themselves with the new term which carries blame inside it. To request a carnist cheeseburger at a restaurant would draw attention and censure, and following the hypothesised criminalisation of carnism in 2035, to purvey or seek out carnist products would be illegal. When the carnist choice is no longer the easy choice, habitual defaults will have changed, and widely held social values will be reversed.

15.5 Conclusion It is not always easy to trace how changes in social norms unfold, particularly where the shifts are tied to changes in what people habitually value and the attitudes they hold. Changes in habits of language use are easier to trace, and understanding the patterns by which linguistic innovations become institutionalised gives us a useful lens for seeing how social changes turn up in the shape of our discourse ecology, and how linguistic innovations in turn contribute to broader changes in society’s shared habits. The history of the rise of veganism illustrates this reciprocity. One lesson suggested by the analysis given here is that medial changes in our habitus play a key role in making the aims sought by our social movements achievable. This lesson is not necessarily a comfortable one: When moral and political commitments underlie the movements we seek, it is tempting to be resistant to shifts that could turn out to be vital for reshaping our practical possibilities. The vegan movement would not be inclined by its own commitments to advocate that people eat only the happiest animals or consume animal products for eleven months of the year. But the institutionalisation of the terms free range and Veganuary established bridging contexts which have contributed significantly to 217

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the building momentum of the vegan movement. The choices, innovations, and cultivation efforts of individuals are not insignificant in the reshaping of our social world. They establish the possibility, if not the assurance, of a steady reorganisation of habits across our communities.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

See Fricker (2007); Kidd, Medina, and Pohlhaus (2017). For example, Lackey & Sosa (2006). For example, see Brownstein & Saul (2016); Holroyd (2015); and Puddifoot (2017). See Hornsby (1995); Langton (1993); and Medina (2017). For example, see Maitra & McGowan (2012), and Hornsby & Langton (1998), respectively. For example, Fanon (2000); Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1986); Tirrell (2012); Komska et al. (2019). “And she was like, ‘Oh no you don’t!’” “Like, I was laughing so hard I actually snorted”. “He was like trying to pick a fight”. “We’ve eaten at that place like ten times already this month; let’s go somewhere else”. This is one example of how linguists have categorized newer uses of “like”, though other analyses have also been put forward.

References BBC News (2020) ‘Burger King ‘plant-Based’ Whopper Ads Banned’, BBC, 15 April. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52280017 (Accessed: 10 October). Brinton, L.J. and Traugott, E.C. (2005) Lexicalization and Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511615962 Brownstein, M. and Saul, J.M. (eds.) (2016) Implicit Bias and Philosophy. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. Bussmann, H. (1996) Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics. Trauth, G. and Kazzazi, K. (eds.) London and New York: Routledge. Carnage (2017) Directed by Simon Amstell. Available at: BBC iPlayer (Accessed: 10 October 2021). Carringham, D. (2021) ‘Record 500,000 People Pledge to Eat Only Vegan Food in January’, The Guardian, 5 January. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/05/ veganuary-record-number-people-pledge-eat-vegan-food-january D’Arcy, A. (2007) ‘Like and Language Ideology: Disentangling Fact from Fiction’, American Speech, 82 (4), pp. 386–419. doi: 10.1215/00031283-2007-025 Dewey, J. (1922) Human Nature and Conduct: An Introduction to Social Psychology. London: George Allen & Unwin, LTD. Drager, K. (2016) ‘Constructing Style: Phonetic Variation in Quotative and Discourse Particle Like’, in Pichler, H. (ed.) Discourse-Pragmatic Variation and Change in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 232–251. doi: 10.1017/CBO9781107295476.011 Fanon, F. (2000) Black Skin, White Masks. Markmann, C.L. (ed.) Pluto Classics. London: Pluto Press. Fricker, M. (2007) Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Holroyd, J. (2015) ‘Implicit Bias, Awareness and Imperfect Cognitions’, Consciousness and Cognition, 33, pp. 511–523. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2014.08.024 Hornsby, J. (1995) ‘Disempowered Speech’, Philosophical Topics, 23 (2), pp. 127–147. Hornsby, J. and Langton, R. (1998) ‘Free Speech and Illocution’, Legal Theory, 4 (1), pp. 21–37. doi: 10.1 017/S1352325200000902 Kidd, I.J., José, M. and Pohlhaus, G.M. (eds.) (2017) The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice. New York: Routledge. Komska, Y., Moyd, M.R. and Gramling, D. (2019) Linguistic Disobedience: Restoring Power to Civic Language. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Lackey, J. and Sosa, E. (2006) The Epistemology of Testimony. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Langton, R. (1993) ‘Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 22 (4), pp. 293–330.

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The Discourse Ecology Model Lupica, D. (2017) ‘Demand for Meat Free Food Increases by 987% in 2017’, Plant Based News, 29 December. Available at: https://www.plantbasednews.org/lifestyle/2017-ridiculous-987-increasedemand-meat-free-options Maitra, I. and McGowan, M.K. (eds.) (2012) Speech and Harm: Controversies over Free Speech. Oxford, U.K: Oxford University Press. Matthews, P.H. (1997) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Medina, J. (2017) ‘Varieties of Hermeneutical Injustice’, in Kidd, I.J., Medina, J. and Pohlhaus, G.M. (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice. New York: Routledge, pp. 190–205. Pawley, A. and Syder, F.H. (1983) ‘Two Puzzles for Linguistic Theory: Nativelike Selection and Nativelike Fluency’, in Richards, J.C. and Schmidt, R.W. (eds.) Language and Communication. London and New York: Longman, pp. 191–226. Press Association (2020) ‘Almost One in Four Food Products Launched in UK in 2019 Labelled Vegan’, The Guardian, January 17. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/jan/17/almostone-in-four-food-products-launched-in-uk-in-2019-labelled-vegan Puddifoot, K. (2017) ‘Dissolving the Epistemic/Ethical Dilemma over Implicit Bias’, Philosophical Explorations, 20 (sup1), pp. 73–93. doi: 10.1080/13869795.2017.1287295 Ryder, M.E. (1999) ‘Complex -Er Nominals: Where Grammaticalization and Lexicalization Meet?’, in Contini-Morava, E. and Tobin, Y. (eds.) Between Grammar and Lexicon. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 291–332. Smithers, R. (2020) ‘Veganuary Signed up Record 400,000 People, Campaign Reveals’, The Guardian, 3 February. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/feb/03/veganuary-signed-uprecord-400000-people-campaign-reveals Thiong’o, N. (1986) Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. London: Portsmouth, N.H: J. Currey; Heinemann. Tirrell, L. (2012) ‘Genocidal Language Games1’, in Maitra, I. and McGowan, M. K. (eds.) Speech and Harm. Oxford University Press, pp. 174–221. doi: 0.1093/acprof:oso/9780199236282.003.0008 TNS-BMRB, and Food Standards Agency (2014) ‘Food and You Survey: Wave 3Food and You Surveys, 2010-Food and You Survey, 2014’, UK Data Service. doi: 10.5255/UKDA-SN-7576-1 Watson, D. (1944, November) ‘No. 1.’, The Vegan News, 1 (1). Retrieved from https://issuu.com/vegan_ society/docs/the_vegan_news_1944

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16 HABIT AND PRACTICE Clare Carlisle

At the beginning of their book What is Philosophy? Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari define philosophy as “the art of forming, inventing and fabricating concepts” (1996: 2). Rarely, if ever, is a concept brought into being ex nihilo: the creative process of philosophy is, rather, a work of clarification. To form a concept is to think it into being by distinguishing it from other concepts, defining its scope, refining and elucidating it, and putting it to use. This process can take years, decades; it can take centuries, which is why the history of philosophy is so important. This chapter will draw on the history of philosophy in order to clarify, and thereby create, two concepts: habit and practice. These concepts have deep implications for philosophy: reflection on habit and practice helps to illuminate the porous boundaries between nature and second nature, nature and culture; between our embodiment and our psychology and spirituality; between individuality and community. This reflection uncovers continuities and differences between the organic, the animal, and the human, and it discloses the dialectic of constancy and change, identity and difference, that constitutes a singular life. Clarifying the concepts of habit and practice will help us to think through the question of human freedom. In my book On Habit (2014: 5, 30–1), I suggested that habit is what Derrida (1983: 95–118) called a pharmakon: something that is at once a poison and a cure, a blessing and a curse. Within the history of philosophy, this duplicity is manifested in a long and frequently polarized debate about the value of habit. While a few thinkers, such as Hegel and Ricoeur, recognize and theorise habit’s transitional, ambivalent, pharmakon-like character, most philosophers focus on either its positive or its negative effects, so that we can place them on one or the other side of a debate for and against habit. In moral philosophy, for example, Aristotle’s virtue ethics is based on the principle that “moral goodness is the child of habit (ethos)”, while Kant argues that habit “deprives even good actions of their moral worth.”1 In epistemology, Hume saw habit, or custom, as “the great guide of life,” since it orders our experience and grounds inductive reasoning, while rationalists like Descartes and Spinoza saw the work of philosophy as battling against the force of habit, clearing away the debris of unquestioned, habitual beliefs or “prejudices.” (1975: 44).2 In addition to uncovering a tradition of reflection on habit through the history of western philosophy, On Habit sought to make a constructive contribution to this tradition by drawing a distinction between habit and practice.3 More precisely, I argued that practice might be construed as a species of the genus “habit,” and showed how practices differ from habituation, both 220

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in the sense of becoming accustomed to something, and in the sense of a pattern of behaviour one falls into involuntarily. In the years since that book was published I have, inevitably, come to perceive the incompleteness of its argument, and I have made some further progress in thinking through the continuities and differences between habit and practice. The distinction between these concepts illuminates and, to some extent, qualifies the ambivalence towards habit we find within the philosophical tradition. What seems at first glance to be an outright disagreement between, say, Aristotle and Kant on the moral value of habit, becomes much more nuanced once we establish that when Aristotle teaches that moral goodness is the child of ethos, this should be translated “practice” rather than “habit”, while Kant’s critique of Angewohnheit is indeed directed at habit, not at practice. (In fact, Kant invokes a distinction between habit and “free aptitude” that resonates with my distinction between habit and practice.4) David Hume’s positive appraisal of habit, on the other hand, really was of habit, rather than of practice. When we read both Descartes and Spinoza closely, we find that their epistemological critiques of habit are complemented by an appeal to practice – understood as both the method and the process of philosophical enquiry itself – which functions as a corrective to habit: here, practice deliberately turns the mechanism of habit against itself. For example, Spinoza’s Ethics employs the geometrical method to dismantle bad cognitive habits: the collective habit of superstitious belief, and the random associations of ideas that ground errors of imagination. The Ethics seeks to overcome these habits by reordering readers’ minds according to the logical and causal sequence inherent in God (or Nature) itself. Reading the Ethics, which continually directs its reader back over its threads of argument, demands a repetition of these heavily weighted lines of thought. This active repetition constitutes a philosophic practice, a spiritual exercise, an intellectual discipline.5 In this chapter I hope to show that drawing the distinction between habit and practice will be illuminating as we read the history of philosophy with the question of habit in mind. As we shall see, however, this distinction is neither binary nor impermeable. Having delineated a concept of practice, we must make further distinctions within this concept, to discern significantly different kinds of practice. And among these, we can identify cases where practice gradually, perhaps imperceptibly, turns into habit.

16.1 The Concept of Habit As I suggested above, practice can be construed as a species of habit, and the etymology of the English word ‘habit’ gives us an insight into both concepts. ‘Habit’ comes from the Latin habere, ‘to have,’ and corresponds to the Greek hexis: both words signify having and holding, acquisition and possession, which suggest the duration or persistence of a certain relation over time.6 And the various uses of the English ‘habit’ – to denote the way a crystal or a plant grows; a pattern of animal behaviour, such as a way of finding food and shelter; a psychological pattern of human thinking and affect; a physiological posture or bearing; a frequently-occurring and recognisable form of expression, such as a gesture or a figure of speech; and a uniform mode of dress, like a monk’s habit or a riding habit – all have in common the notion of shape or form. In each case, ‘habit’ indicates a shape or pattern of growth, a particular way of moving through space and time – a particular way of moving through the world. Considered very generally, habit signifies the holding of a specific form over a stretch of time.7 From this very provisional definition, we may proceed to an analysis of habit understood primarily as a mode of human activity – though of course habit is not confined to human life, and perhaps (as William James argued) not even to organic life. In my book On Habit I 221

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identified three conditions of habit-acquisition: repetition, receptivity to change, and resistance to change (2014: 11–13, 17–21). Insofar as human beings are ‘creatures of habit,’ we are subjects of repetition: beings who are formed and ordered by repetitions occurring both outside and within ourselves. We are modified by our own movements, as well as by our experiences and encounters.8 In Difference and Repetition, Gilles Deleuze put his finger on the basic question of habit: how does repetition make a difference to us? But while Deleuze, following Hume, focuses on the way repetition produces a modification “in the mind,” we need to remember that our bodies as well as our minds are formed by the repetitions we contemplate, experience, and enact.9 This formation is facilitated by two contrary conditions: receptivity to change, and resistance to change. We acquire habits only because we are susceptible to influence, because we are modifiable; yet the persistent, enduring force of habit testifies to our resistance to change. We might regard these two conditions as transcendental: I am not making empirical claims about how habit operates, but asking how any being must be constituted in order for repetition to make a difference to it, and thus to be capable of habit. This is not to deny that we can regard receptivity and resistance as physiological characteristics. The intriguing combination of receptivity and resistance that conditions habit-acquisition is captured by the relatively modern concept of plasticity, the capacity to take on and hold a certain form, which in the 20th century became a key term in neuroscience. William James defined plasticity as “the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once,” and argued that “the phenomena of habit in living beings are due to the plasticity of the organic materials of which their bodies are composed” (James, 1984: 126).10 Yet receptivity and resistance are not limited to physiology or biology: a person’s attitude, for example, might be described as more or less receptive or resistant to a certain idea or influence, or to change in general. So habit gives form to desire. Habits are specific, particular ways of expressing (and meeting) a desire or a need. For example, we all have a general desire for food, which through custom has been channelled into a desire for food at certain times of day – at lunchtime, for instance. This is often particularised further into a habit of eating certain things for lunch, perhaps going to a certain café and ordering a certain sandwich, and even sitting at a certain table in the café. Similarly, we may have a general desire for love and attention which, through the relationships we form with other people, becomes particularised as a desire to be loved (and indeed, to be loved in certain ways) by a specific person. Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time offers a forensic phenomenology of such amorous habit, which shows how within a person’s life a universal human desire can be particularised, through habit, in very determinate (and determining) ways.11 Habit, then, is a process of formation and a way of being. The concept of habit has four cornerstones: desire; repetition; receptivity; resistance.

16.2 The Concept of Practice By “practice” I mean the repetition of an activity with the aim of cultivating a certain capacity and proficiency. Clear-cut examples of practice include a musician practicing her instrument, and an athlete training for a competition. As I suggested above, practice can be considered a species of habit, which is a broader category of repeated action. Yet practices are habits we deliberately cultivate, rather than lapse into accidentally, and this difference has effects so significant that practice might be contrasted with habit. Practice tends towards development and growth, while habit – at least in some cases, and certainly in the case of addiction – is a contraction of a person’s sphere of activity and experience. We might say that although the 222

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acquisition of habit requires that repetition makes a difference to the agent, once a habit sets in its repetitions no longer make any difference, while the repetitions of practice, by contrast, are productive of change. Having drawn this conceptual distinction between habit and practice, we can see that in real life it may be porous, so that practice morphs into habit. For example, in learning to drive a car the different elements of this skill must initially be practiced deliberately and with effort; once a certain level of proficiency is reached the activity becomes habitual and effortless, no longer a matter of cultivation. Practice shares with habit the fundamental idea of form, or formation, and it also shares its four conceptual cornerstones: desire, repetition, receptivity, and resistance. Practice, like habit, requires a combination of receptivity to change and resistance to change, and in the case of practice this requirement is acknowledged, if only implicitly. The practitioner engages in repeated practice because she regards this as a viable means of acquiring a desired proficiency: she knows that the practice will make a difference to her, and thus she understands that her nature is modifiable, receptive to change. She also expects this difference to have some duration, like the difference you make to the ground when you walk across a muddy field, rather than being totally ephemeral, like the difference you make to the surface of a lake when you throw a stone into it. That is to say, she believes that if she practices today, the difference this makes will last until tomorrow, and that any proficiency she acquires will not simply evaporate as soon as she ceases practicing. This expectation testifies to her tacit grasp of her resistance to change. However, the four conceptual cornerstones are configured differently in habit and in practice. A person acquires a habit when her desire for a particular object (and for the experience produced by this object) leads to the repeated pursuit of that object (and of that experience). This repetition produces within her a modification, such as a strengthened inclination and a diminished effort in the activity in question; this modification signifies the acquisition of a habit. But she has not directly willed the repetition itself, nor did she desire the resulting modification: her continuing desire for the particular drove her repetition, and the resulting habit is simply its unintended consequence. For example, a couple of years ago I got into a habit of having my lunch at the Fleet River Bakery, a few minutes’ walk from my university building in central London. Most often I ordered a grilled cheese sandwich, because the first time I did this I enjoyed it, and found myself wanting the same thing at subsequent lunchtimes. Though I chose to go to the bakery and to order the cheese sandwich on each occasion, I did not decide or even wish to become a frequent customer at Fleet River, nor did I decide or wish to repeatedly or habitually eat a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. This structure is even clearer in the case of addiction: people do not intend to become alcoholics, or heavy smokers, but their desire for one particular drink or cigarette – specifically, the next drink or the next cigarette – generates repetition, which produces modifications, including a condition of physical and psychological dependency. In practice, by contrast, a person does desire a certain modification of herself, and she explicitly wills repetition as a means to this end. For example, she wants to be a safe, proficient driver, or a better-performing athlete, or a more accomplished musician, and with this goal in mind she undertakes a regime of practice. She may or may not want to undertake the particular activity on any given occasion: she might dread the next driving lesson, be tempted to skip today’s training session, or not feel like practising her scales again. But such immediate inclinations are, in the case of successful practice, subsumed under the longer-term goal of cultivation. It is, indeed, a common phenomenon of practice to feel resistance to the particular, yet overcome this resistance with the desired outcome in mind. This is why practice, unlike habit, requires discipline – though of course breaking a habit often requires discipline. 223

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This brings us to another difference between habit and practice. Though both habit and practice rest on the twin conditions of receptivity and resistance to chance, in each case the balance between receptivity and resistance shifts in different ways. In habit, receptivity has the upper hand at the outset: we find ourselves effortlessly, unintentionally modified by our own actions. Having acquired a habit, however, we may encounter a deep resistance to changing it. Over time, habits can carve deep grooves into our existence, both inwardly and outwardly, and they can narrow down the range of possible actions open (or apparently open) to us. For example, once established in my habit of going to the Fleet River Bakery at lunchtime and ordering my grilled cheese sandwich, it might not occur to me to try a new place for lunch; similarly, my habit of cycling a particular way to work may prevent me from considering alternative routes. This restriction is one of the great benefits of habit: by imposing certain limits, narrowing our range of possibilities, habit saves us the time and energy it would take to contemplate, weigh up, and choose between all the options available in every situation. Yet sometimes, most obviously in the case of severe addiction, this blessing becomes a curse. An addict’s life is narrowed to a single habit, a single channel, carved by the repetition of an absolutely determinate particular, which subsumes all her other desires, orders her days, and dominates her interactions with others. This existential contraction makes addiction pathological, beyond its physical effects: life becomes a closed loop, allowing no scope for freedom or growth. In practice, by contrast, resistance predominates at the outset. It often takes considerable effort to persist in practice and cultivate the intended capacity. Over time, however, this process yields continuing development and growth, so that receptivity to change – at least within the area of one’s life related to the practice – becomes the dominant condition. Putting habit and practice alongside each other shows how desire, receptivity and resistance are configured differently in each case. While habit and practice are both formations of desire, habit accomplishes a contraction of desire to concrete particulars, whereas practice allows desire to evolve, mature, and be refined – and the particularities of practice may vary and shift in the course of this process.

16.3 Three Kinds of Practice So far I have shown that habit and practice share a conceptual basis. I have also drawn some distinctions between them, suggesting that habit and practice involve different formations of desire. I have established that practice, unlike habit, is oriented by a desire for the expected outcome of the practice, understood as a modification within the practitioner produced by her repeated activity. I will now attempt a further clarification of the concept of practice by identifying three different kinds, which I call skill practice, art practice, and spiritual practice. The distinction between these three kinds of practice is more a matter of how the activity is undertaken than what the activity consists in. Having said this, some concrete examples may help to illustrate the threefold classification. Driving a car is an example of a skill practice. Ballet dancing is an example of an art practice, but this category is not limited to the process of creating works of art in the familiar sense – dances, paintings, poems and so on. Art practices belong to the art of living, understood broadly as the human pursuit of the good life, which may include artistic, ethical, and intellectual activities, not least philosophy. Spiritual practice, likewise, might be conceived as an entire way of life. However, meditation and prayer provide concrete examples of spiritual practices. Conceptually speaking, there is a hierarchy among these three kinds of practice: art practice incorporates skill practice, and spiritual practice incorporates features of both skill practice and 224

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art practice. In real life the lines between these three kinds of practice may not be hard and fast, but nevertheless I think this threefold conceptual distinction is productive. All practice is oriented by a desire for an outcome, and subsumes the repetition of particular activities as a means to this end. However, the three kinds of practice conceive their goal or outcome differently. Skill practice is oriented by a desire for a determinate goal, clearly specified in advance. Once this goal is attained, the practice is complete. Perhaps, as in the example of learning to drive a car, practice then morphs gradually into habit, as repetition of the activity takes on a new significance: at some (possibly indiscernible) point, I am no longer practicing driving – I am just driving. Art practice, by contrast, is oriented by desire for an end that is to some extent indeterminate and open-ended. This gives art practice a provisional, uncertain character. These practices are clearly goal-oriented, and often deeply devoted to a sense of the good, yet the precise contours of this good cannot be specified in advance. Cultivating the virtues of parenthood is an excellent example of this kind of practice, as are the creative and intellectual arts. Art practice is what the American philosopher Talbot Brewer calls a “dialectical activity” (2009: 37–67): the practitioner’s activity and her conception of the good develop in tandem, each shifting in response to the other. Spiritual practice shares with art practice this indeterminacy of goal. Indeed, spiritual practice is often characterised by a radical indeterminacy. A Buddhist, for example, may orient her practice towards an ideal of formless enlightenment, which cannot be represented in any image or described in any language. In his famous work The Proslogion, St Anselm orients his spiritual (and philosophical) practice towards a God whom he affirms to be infinite, “greater than can be thought,” and “beyond all things.”12 Spiritual practice is further distinguished from art practice by a more expanded sense of agency. For example, religious practitioners often understand the agency at work in their lives to have its source beyond themselves: the good to which their spiritual practice aspires is not envisaged simply as a not-yet-realised and not-quite-specified ideal, but as an already-active power. This allows us to see the desires grounded in this good as reciprocal rather than unilateral, cosmic as well as individual. Furthermore, although spiritual practice is, like all practice, structured teleologically, a goal-directed mentality and its accompanying ideals of progress and attainment may have limited applicability in this context, and may even become counter-productive. Indeed, the loosening of this mentality is frequently experienced as one of the fruits of spiritual practice, and as a sign of a deepening, maturing understanding. The desire at work in both art practice and spiritual practice can be described as an infinite desire. In the first place, “infinite” here means simply non-finite, indeterminate: an infinite desire is an open-ended aspiration or longing for something that cannot be fully specified. This entails at least a degree of apophaticism, not only about the ‘object’ of the desire, but also about what it would be to attain this object, and through the course of practice there is the perpetual possibility that the practitioner’s grasp of her goal will need to be revised. Talbot Brewer argues that this kind of indeterminacy is a fundamental feature of ethical life, and we find a similar argument put forward by another contemporary moral philosopher, Jonathan Lear. Like Brewer, Lear proposes a revisionist Aristotelian account of the good life that accommodates the fact that, as Brewer argues, human life, even at its best, is marked by a continuous awakening to the good, not full apprehension of it. Lear (2011) has drawn on Socratic and Kierkegaardian philosophies to outline a concept of ethical irony that involves “aspiring” to an elusive, indeterminate ideal.13 Both Lear and Brewer are, I think, trying to make sense of what I’m calling infinite desire.

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16.4 Conclusion To conclude, I’d like to return, very briefly, to the contrasting views of habit expressed by key figures in history of philosophy, in order to consider how the clarification of the concepts of habit and practice I’ve just attempted might illuminate this tradition of reflection on habit. To take one significant example, the distinction between habit and practice is instructive when we consider the divergence between Kant’s insistence that habit can never be moral, and Aristotle’s claim that habit – or, rather, practice – is the basis of moral life. Insofar as habit arises involuntarily from immediate inclinations, we can see why Kant – who thinks that freedom is grounded in rational end-setting, and that only free activity so conceived can be moral – argues that habitual actions have no moral worth. By contrast, Aristotle’s discussion of virtue makes it clear that the good life is the outcome of long-term ethical practice: it requires the cultivation of virtues – generosity, courage, wisdom – which may not be natural inclinations, and are certainly not the “path of least resistance” for us to take. Aristotelian virtue is teleologically oriented to the good, and requires effort to reach this telos: it is a practice, not a habit. But it is not enough to distinguish between habit and practice. We must ask the further question: what kind of practice is at stake in, for example, Aristotelian virtue? Is this a matter simply of skill practice; or of skill practices nested within art practice; or of skill practices nested within an art practice that is, in turn, situated within spiritual practice? According to Ravaisson, Aristotelian virtue “is first of all an effort, and wearisome. It becomes something attractive, and a pleasure, only through practice, as a desire that forgets itself, until gradually it draws near the holiness of innocence. In this way a second nature is formed.” This remark suggests that Ravaisson conceives virtue as a skill practice – the kind of practice that, once it is mastered, shifts by imperceptible degrees into habit. On this view, moral life is rather like driving a car: difficult to get the hang of, and initially counter-intuitive, yet eventually spontaneous, enjoyable, and so easy that it becomes “second nature.” But is the moral life really like this? Does it consist in mastering techniques, or attaining a certain level of performance, and then gliding along in autopilot? Ravaisson’s De l’habitude makes it clear that this is not the whole story. Human virtue turns out to be a participation in an agency, which he calls “grace,” that goes beyond the narrowlycircumscribed individual “agent” posited by many contemporary moral theorists and philosophers of action. This is not surprising, given Ravaisson’s debt to Schelling, and Schelling’s debt to Spinoza. Here we find an account of habit, and of skill practice, situated within a broader field that exhibits at least some of the features of what I have called spiritual practice. What is really interesting about Ravaisson, however, is his refusal to separate nature and grace. According to De l’habitude, the ease and spontaneity produced by habit, and by skill practice, are themselves intimations of grace. Nature’s assistance in our aspiration towards the good, through the natural mechanism of habituation, can be conceived as “prevenient grace”: a divine assistance given in advance, to set us on course towards the good, before we can properly understand what this good consists in.14 We do not need to invoke God – or the Platonic and Spinozist metaphysics that compete for Ravaisson’s attention in De l’habitude – to consider ethical life beyond the relatively narrow confines of skill practice. Contemporary philosophers such as Lear and Brewer, while operating within a broadly naturalistic Aristotelian framework, want to problematise this kind of account by arguing that human flourishing is not so straightforward. In my own terminology, they consider it to be an art practice, not a skill practice. If they are right, there is something reductive not only about seeing the moral life as a matter of habit, but also in conceiving it as skill practice – as a simplistic Aristotelianism might have it. Margaret Hampson, in her 226

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contribution to this volume and in other work, has shown that Aristotle himself conceived ethical practice as the discovery of a good that cannot be adequately conceived in advance of the practice.15 Hampson’s account of Aristotelian virtue effectively situates the challenges and benefits of acquiring skill practice within a broader framework – that of art practice – that accommodates the richer kinds of learning involved in moral growth and maturation. We can see that habits, including those cultivated by skill practice, make life easier, and thus we can perhaps concede that moral habits make the moral life easier. But perhaps moral theory should concentrate more on helping us to understanding why being a good human being is so difficult – why it is, as Kierkegaard put it, “a task for a whole lifetime.” This is what Brewer and Lear both point to, without recourse to a theological doctrine, and I think their views are compelling. Further investigation of the blurry borderline between skill practice and art practice might enable us to make better sense of the ideal of authenticity, another important theme in the modern discourse on habit.

Notes 1 See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1103a; Kant (2007: 261). 2 For a discussion of the epistemological significance of habit for Descartes, Spinoza, and Hume, see Carlisle (2014: 41–58). 3 See Carlisle (2014: 82–3, 98, 104–8). 4 “An aptitude (habitus) is a facility in acting and a subjective perfection of choice. But not every such facility is a free aptitude (habitus libertatis); for if it is a habit (assuetudo), that is, a uniformity in action that has become a necessity through frequent repetition, it is not one that proceeds from freedom, and therefore not a moral aptitude” (Kant, 1996: 535). See also Kant (1996: 515–16). 5 See Carlisle (2021, chapter 2). 6 See Carlisle (2014: 18–20). 7 See Carlisle (2014: 13–17). 8 On the concept of repetition, see Deleuze (1994) and Carlisle (2013). 9 Gilles Deleuze (1994: 70). 10 See Carlisle (2014: 21–7). 11 See Carlisle (2014: 82–90). 12 Anselm, Proslogion, pp. 97, 99 (§15, §20). 13 See also Carlisle (2017b). 14 Ravaisson (2008: 71). 15 See Hampson (2021; and in the present volume).

References Aristotle (1907) De Anima. Translated by Hicks, R.D. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Aristotle (2000) Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Crisp, R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brewer, T. (2009) The Retrieval of Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carlisle, C. (2013) ‘The Self and the Good Life’, in Adams, N., Pattison, G. and Ward, G. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Theology and Modern European Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carlisle, C. (2014) On Habit. London: Routledge. Carlisle, C. (2017a) ‘Habit, Practice, Grace: Towards a Philosophy of Religious Life’, in Ellis, F. (ed.) New Models of Religious Understanding. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 97–115. Carlisle, C. (2017b) ‘How to Be a Human Being in the World: Kierkegaard’s Question of Existence’, in Gron, A., Rosfort, R., and Soderquist, K.B. (eds) Kierkegaard’s Existential Approach. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 113–130. Carlisle, C. (2019) ‘Spiritual Desire and Religious Practice’, Religious Studies, 55 (3), pp. 429–466. Carlisle, C. (2021) Spinoza’s Religion: A New Reading of the Ethics. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Deleuze, G. (1994) Difference and Repetition. Translated by Patton, P. London: Athlone.

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Clare Carlisle Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1996) What Is Philosophy? Translated by Burchell, G. and Tomlinson, H. New York: Columbia University Press. Derrida, J. (1983) Dissemination. Translated by Johnson, B. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hampson, M. (2020) ‘The Learner’s Motivation and the Structure of Habituation in Aristotle’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie. doi: 10.1515/agph-2019-0053. Hume, D. (1975) Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Bigge, S. and Nidditch, P. (eds.) Third edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. James, W. (1984) Psychology: Briefer Course. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 126. Kant, I. (1996) Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, in Gregor, M. (ed.) Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. (2007) Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Translated by Louden, R.B., in Zöller, G. and Louden, R.B. (eds.) Immanuel Kant: Anthropology, History and Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lear, J. (2011) A Case for Irony. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Pickstock, C. (2014) Repetition and Identity: The Literary Agenda. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ravaisson, F. (2008) Of Habit. Translated by Carlisle, C. and Sinclair, M. London: Continuum, p. 71.

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17 HABIT-FORMATION: WHAT’S IN A PERSPECTIVE? Will Hornett

Some of the most famous and influential parts of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception (1945/2012)1 are the passages in which he discusses habit. In them, he makes two related claims: 1 2

Forming a habit constitutively involves a change in the habit-bearer’s perspective; There are two perspectival changes constitutive of habit-formation: new opportunities for action are both made available to, and salient for, the habit-bearer; the items the habit-bearer is habituated to using become incorporated into their body schema.

The basic idea behind (1) is that when someone forms a habit, their doing so is intimately linked to their subjective perspective on things, and that habit-formation somehow alters this perspective. (2) is Merleau-Ponty’s gloss on how a person’s perspective is altered by habitformation. I think that (1) is a keen insight, and will argue that it is very plausible in light of considerations about the force of habit. However, I will argue that Merleau-Ponty’s case for (2) rests on a serious mistake: he wrongly conflates habit with skill. Therefore, although (1) is a claim about habit-formation, it is primarily shaped by considerations of skill-acquisition. This undermines his account considerably. However, rather than try to develop a better case for (2), which my argument gives us reason to be sceptical of, I will argue for a different view of the matter: 3

The change in a person’s perspective constitutive of their forming a habit of doing something, A, in certain sorts of contexts, C, is that the person comes to be, and feel, familiar with A-ing in C.

The idea is that the correct account of how (1) is true must appeal to the fact that particular courses of action, in particular sorts of contexts, become familiar to a habit-bearer through the process of habit-formation, and this familiarity is revealed by the habit-bearer’s experience of those courses of action in those contexts as being familiar. Therefore, the aims of DOI: 10.4324/9781315186436-22

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this paper are twofold. The first is to shed light on both an important insight and significant mistake in Merleau-Ponty’s work. The second is constructive, in that I will develop a view that builds on Merleau-Ponty’s insight and elucidates important features of habit and habit-formation. The paper is split into three sections. In Section 1, I argue that there is ample textual support that (1) and (2) are Merleau-Ponty’s own claims, and I argue that there are powerful considerations in favour of (1). In Section 2, I show that Merleau-Ponty wrongly collapses the intuitive distinction between habit and skill, and that recognising this undermines (2). In Section 3, I motivate and defend my solution, (3), which has habit-bearers’ familiarity with courses of action at its centre.

17.1 Merleau-Ponty on the Habit-Bearer’s Perspective To begin with, it will be helpful to explain what (1) means. The idea is that a part of what it is for someone to form a habit is for some feature of their subjectivity to alter: they may gain a new sensitivity to already existing facts, or to those facts’ practical salience; there may be shifts in what they attend to or care about; or they may gain new reasons or motives for action. (1) says that habit-formation constitutively involves some such change in a person’s point of view. It may be helpful to compare this with more familiar views, for example, John McDowell’s (1979) discussion of virtue-acquisition. McDowell’s idea is that acquiring a virtue like kindness constitutively involves an alteration in the newly-kind person’s point of view on the world and what is required of them (McDowell, 1979, pp. 331–332). Certain facts, such as that a stranger needs help, now stand out to them as reasons to do things; their perceptual experience has a new epistemic status, perhaps ‘gilded and stained’ with peculiarly moral phenomenology.2 McDowell is therefore articulating a view of virtue-acquisition analogous to the view of habitformation in (1). When we look at the Phenomenology, it is clear that Merleau-Ponty endorses (1). He begins his first major discussion of habit by saying that: Every mechanistic theory [of habit] runs into the fact that the learning process is systematic: the subject does not weld individual movements to individual stimuli, but rather acquires the power of responding with a certain type of solution to a certain form of situation. […] Situations and responses resemble each other in the different cases much less through the partial identity of elements than by the community of their sense. (2012:143, emphasis added) Here, Merleau-Ponty is claiming that habit-formation involves linking certain kinds of behaviours to certain sorts of situations, such that those situations elicit the related behaviours. Alice may have a habit of running in the morning; Sally may have a habit of biting her nails when she is bored; Bert may have a habit of singing in the shower. In each case, there is what one is in the habit of doing and the types of contexts in which one’s habit is manifested.3 Merleau-Ponty’s thought is that these linkages between types are not to be found in descriptions of environments and actions specified in an extensional vocabulary whose terms have no cognitive significance for the habit-bearer. Rather, the linkages between types is found in the ‘community of their sense’; in some shared meaning certain types of contexts and certain types of action have for the habit-bearer. Partly constitutive of habit-formation is a change in the agent’s perspective on the meaning or practical significance of the context and what one does in it. 230

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Next, Merleau-Ponty says that: The body, as has often been said, ‘catches’ (kapiert) and ‘understands’ the movement. The acquisition of the habit is surely the grasping of a signification, but it is specifically the motor grasping of a motor signification. (2012: 143–144) Here, Merleau-Ponty connects the forming of a habit to the understanding of the thing one has become habituated to doing, and says that habit-formation involves a special, practical grasp of a practical significance. The claim that habit-formation is the understanding of a kind of practical meaning clearly commits Merleau-Ponty to (1), since gaining such an understanding counts as a change in the habit-former’s perspective. Finally, in a discussion of perceptual habits, Merleau-Ponty says that “the analysis of motor habit as an extension of existence continues, then, into an analysis of perceptual habit as an acquisition of a world. Reciprocally, every perceptual habit is still a motor habit, and here again the grasping of a signification is accomplished by the body” (2012: 154). This is further evidence that Merleau-Ponty thinks that habit-formation constitutively involves changes to a person’s perspective on things; their coming to grasp the significance of activities and situations they have become habituated to.4 So there is good textual support for thinking Merleau-Ponty believes (1). But the thesis is also very plausible. For one thing, habit is at the centre of a rag-bag of broadly ‘dispositional’ kinds of mental property, including (amongst other things) virtues, vices, and character traits. It is eminently plausible that acquisition of each of these other properties constitutively involves changes to one’s perspective. Virtues make one sensitive to the moral salience of facts; a vice like arrogance makes one overconfident in one’s own abilities; a character trait such as shyness puts one in a state of emotional vulnerability, making social situations intimidating and offputting. In each case, it is natural to think that an analogue of (1) is true. But if habit is at the centre of, and conceptually connected to, this class of properties, it would at least be rather strange if it were the odd one out in not constitutively involving a change in the habit-bearer’s perspective. Further, and more importantly, the existence of the force of habit requires thinking that habit-formation constitutively involves changes in one’s perspective.5 The force of habit is a psychological phenomenon which, somewhat like desire, draws habit-bearers to do what they are in the habit of doing. For example, think of Bert, who has a habit of sitting in a particular armchair in the evening. He could sit on the sofa, but he is drawn by force of habit to his usual seat. The other options are relegated from consideration by the force of habit; only the armchair occupies Bert’s thought about where to sit. And if someone else sits there, then Bert may feel the distinct dissatisfaction that accompanies not be able to do what one usually does. Even if the sofa is more comfortable, the force of Bert’s habit implicates the small pleasures that come with sitting where he usually does, and the small pains of not being able to. If anything is constitutively involved in habit-formation, it is the force of habit. And that is a feature of the habitbearer’s perspective and practical orientation.6 However, once we accept (1), a question arises: exactly how does one’s perspective change when one forms a habit? Indeed, this is just the question Merleau-Ponty poses: “The acquisition of the habit is surely the grasping of a signification, but it is specifically the motor grasping of a motor signification. But what exactly does this mean?” (2012: 144, emphasis added). Immediately after asking this, Merleau-Ponty proceeds to one of the most famous passages in the Phenomenology, where he discusses the way that a woman with a feather in her hat “senses where the feather is, just as we sense where our hand is”, thereby avoiding damaging it passing 231

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through doorways, and the way that someone who possess “the habit of driving a car” can pass through a lane “without comparing the width of the lane to that of the fender, just as I go through a door without comparing the width of the door to that of my body” (2012: 144). Further, he discusses how a blind person becomes habituated to using their cane (2012: 144), and how “the power of habit” is drawn on in typing (145), playing an instrument (146–147), and dancing (148). The fact that this extended passage immediately follows Merleau-Ponty’s question indicates that we might find his answer in it. And when we study the passage, a plausible interpretation of his answer emerges: the twofold change in a person’s perspective constitutive of their forming a habit is (a) new opportunities for action are both made available to, and salient for, them; (b) the items the habit-bearer is habituated to using become incorporated into the habit-bearer’s body schema. That is, Merleau-Ponty believes (2). I will now unpack this interpretative claim. The immediate lesson Merleau-Ponty wants us to draw from considering the be-hatted woman, the driver, and the cane-using blind man is that when we have learned to use tools like hats, cars, and canes, our grasp of their spatial proportions, and the spatial properties of their movements, is not intellectual. The driver need not compare the width of the fender with the width of the lane; the woman need not judge the distance between her feather and the door frame; getting used to a cane “has nothing to do with” comparing it’s length with the distance of the goal to be reached (2012: 144). Instead, Merleau-Ponty thinks that our grasp of the spatial dimensions of these items is the same as our grasp on the spatial dimensions of one’s own body, which is accomplished by the body schema. This Merleau-Ponty argues, is an essentially practical rather than theoretical way of grasping the body’s spatial structure (2012: 142–143; 155; 172).7 This is (2b). A related lesson Merleau-Ponty wants us to learn is that new opportunities for action become both available and salient to a habit-bearer. The driver can enter a lane and “see that ‘I can pass’” (2012: 144). And when one gets used to a cane, what one does is try to touch objects with it, and find out from this exercise what the reach of the cane is, which provides one with the ability to tell which objects are within reach (2012: 144; 153–154). Further, Merleau-Ponty thinks that since one need not know the exact location of each key to be a habituated typist, a part of what it is to be so habituated is to have a “motor-space [which] stretches beneath my hands” whereby the locations of the keys are understood practically, rather than known theoretically (2012: 145). Therefore, one has a sense of how to type the word one is reading in the manuscript even without the theoretical knowledge of the keys’ locations; the opportunity for action is open, available, and salient to one given one’s project of typing the manuscript and one’s habit. Again, the idea that the appearence of new possibilities for action, and their salience, is what marks out a habit-bearer’s subjectivity crops up in Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the organist who practices on an unfamiliar organ before recital: During the rehearsal – just as during the performance – the stops, the pedals, and the keyboards are only presented to him as powers of such and such an emotional or musical value, and their position as those places through which this value appears in the world. (2012: 146–147) The sense of ‘powers’ that seems most appropriate here is the sense in which the stops, pedals, and keyboards represent possibilities for the organist’s musical expression; opportunities relevant to his playing music. Merleau-Ponty’s idea is that partly constitutive of the organist’s habit is that he both has these opportunities, and that they appear to him as such. 232

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Finally, there are Merleau-Ponty’s remarks on phantom limbs: At the same moment that my usual world gives rise to habitual intentions in me, I can no longer actually unite with it if I have lost a limb. Manipulable objects, precisely insofar as they appear as manipulable, appeal to a hand that I no longer have. (2012: 84) Although Merleau-Ponty here speaks of ‘habitual intentions’, he is arguing that partly constitutive of having a habit is for certain things to appear manipulable to one, where manipulability is the property something has in virtue of which it is possible to manipulate it. Once again, Merleau-Ponty is connecting having a habit with possibilities for action and their salience. The sad irony of the phantom limb is that the changes to a person’s perspective that are constitutive of their having a habit often persist even after the amputation of a limb, so that items like pencils and mugs of tea appear manipulable even though they are not. The forgoing suggests that Merleau-Ponty thinks that (2) is true. Therefore, there is substantial textual evidence that Merleau-Ponty accepts both (1) and (2). I have also argued that (1) is very plausible, and therefore an answer to how habit-formation alters one’s perspective must be given. However, in the next section, I will argue that Merleau-Ponty’s own view is seriously undermined by a significant mistake.

17.2 A Problem for Merleau-Ponty In this section, I will argue that Merleau-Ponty conflates habit and skill, and that this seriously challenges his account of habit-formation. I will proceed in three steps: firstly, I argue that Merleau-Ponty collapses the natural distinction between habit with skill; secondly, that this is a mistake; thirdly, that this mistake undermines (2). We can see that Merleau-Ponty’s collapses the intuitive distinction between habit and skill by reflecting on his examples. For instance, he talks of “learning the habit of a certain dance” (2012: 143) and of drivers as people “with the habit of driving a car” (2012: 144). But these are odd choices for a discussion of habit. What one learns in learning a dance, say the tango, is how to tango. It at least seems possible for someone to learn how to tango, and yet not be in the habit of tangoing. For example if they went to a few classes and picked up the basic steps, retain the ability, but rarely dance. And ‘the habit of driving a car’ is not something that obviously applies to all drivers. Intuitively, the phrase picks out a habit that people who like to go out for casual drives have, but not all drivers have that habit. We see something similar in the fact that Merleau-Ponty introduces his discussion by saying that when someone forms a habit they acquire “the power of responding with a certain type of solution to a certain form of situation” (2012: 143). But again, intuitively, this looks like a description of the formation of an ability to do something, a skill which one can exercise in coping with certain kinds of situations. However, one can acquire a skill of A-ing without forming a habit of A-ing. So, whilst we naturally distinguish between habit and skill as two different kinds of thing, Merleau-Ponty seems to see no distinction here. He treats what we would usually think of as skills under the rubric of ‘habit’, and sees no problem in talking about habit-formation as the acquisition of ‘a power of responding with a certain type of solution to a certain form of situation’, which we would usually reserve for describing skill-acquisition. What seems to be a genuine difference in kind is treated as no difference at all. 233

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Now, collapsing or denying intuitive distinctions is not in itself wrong. However, doing so requires justification, especially when the distinction seems robust as it does here. Therefore, the burden of proof is on Merleau-Ponty to argue that we should not distinguish between habit and skill. Unfortunately, though, there is no evidence of an argument in his text. This gives it the air of a mistake, and, as such, something we have prima facie reason to reject.8 However, Komarine Romdenh-Romluc has defended Merleau-Ponty’s treatment by arguing that he can capture the intuitive distinction without recognising a difference in kind. She argues that we can think of habits and skills as lying on a spectrum on which habits are the result of a greater quantity of repetition than skills. Therefore, it may be the case that “I have knitted a sufficient number of times to be a skilled knitter, but I do not knit enough to be in the habit of knitting” (Romdenh-Romluc, 2013: 13). The intuitive difference between habit and skill, Romdenh-Romluc claims, can be captured by this quantitative difference. Therefore, Merleau-Ponty can have his cake and eat it: he can treat habit and skill in the same way and respect our intuitions. But this cannot be right. Firstly, it is false that all habits involve a greater quantity of repetition than skills. Some skills take a thousand hours to acquire, whilst some habits may take minutes. Think of the difference between acquiring the skill of flying a plane, as opposed to the habit of mispronouncing a new friend’s name. Secondly, the intuitive distinction is not purely quantitative, so cannot be captured in the suggested way. One of the non-quantitative aspects of the distinction is that skills are evaluatively gradable whereas habits are not (Douskos, 2019b). For Alice to be a more skilled runner than Bert is for Alice to be a better runner than Bert. However, to be more habituated to running is not to be better at running – it is to have a stronger tendency to run. Further, the intuitive distinction commits us to the existence of a force of habit, but no force of skill. As I argued earlier, the force of habit can be thought of as a psychological force, somewhat like a desire, which draws one to do the habitual thing. However, there is no analogue in the case of skill; there is no psychological force which plays a role in maintaining one’s skill by drawing one to exercise it over again. Many people have what athletes and musicians call ‘motivation’ or ‘passion’ which drives them to improve. However, it is a sadly familiar truth that someone can be incredibly skilled and yet lack the drive to improve themselves. So where habit comes packaged with the force of habit, there is no force of skill. This leads on to the final aspect of the distinction between habit and skill which is not quantitative. Habits figure in explanations of why people act, when they do so habitually, whereas skills do not. In general, this explanatory point is quite clear: if asked why I make silly faces at babies in the park, I may refer to a habit of doing so; I could not refer to a skill of doing so.9 Similarly, to the question ‘Why do you always play the Take Five melody whenever you pick up a guitar?’, my answer will be ‘I have formed a habit’. My guitar-playing skill has no particular explanatory role in explaining why I play that tune when I pick up the guitar. The role it plays is helping explain how it is possible for me to play anything difficult on the guitar at all. Without the skill, I could not play the Take Five melody, but it is not the skill which explains why I play that melody when I do. Rather, it is a precondition of any explanation of why I play anything on the guitar. And that means it is a pre-condition of the explanation of why I play that melody, where the latter explanation appeals to my habit. This explanatory point is connected to the one about the force of habit: since the force of habit is a motivational force, its operation is part of the explanation of why habit-bearers do what they do, when they act out of habit. The force of habit therefore partly accounts for why we see an explanatory difference between habit and skill. 234

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I think these arguments show that the intuitive distinction cannot be captured quantitatively as Romdenh-Romluc suggests. However, they are also powerful positive reasons to think there is a significant qualitative difference between habit and skill which cannot be ignored – they are different in kind. So Merleau-Ponty is not right to collapse the intuitive distinction; rather, he is mistakenly conflating two things which must be given different accounts.10 This is obviously a difficulty in itself. However, it also causes a significant problem for Merleau-Ponty’s account of habit in (2), according to which the perspectival change constitutive of habit-formation has to do with the availability of new possibilities and the incorporation of tools into the body schema. The problem is this: once we have the distinction between habit and skill firmly in mind, we can see that Merleau-Ponty’s discussion applies much more appropriately to skill-acquisition than it does to habit-formation. It is totally right to say that part of what it is to acquire a skill is to develop one’s sensitivities to practically relevant features of the environment so that they become salient to one. This is one of the reasons that accounts of skill inspired by Merleau-Ponty have enjoyed such traction in recent debates (Dreyfus, 2002, 2007; Romdenh-Romluc, 2011, 2013). Indeed, it is common ground between virtually all contemporary accounts of skill precisely because it is rightly seen as an essential component of the phenomenon.11 Further, Merleau-Ponty’s idea that becoming a skilled tool-user involves incorporating the tool into one’s body schema is also a central part of recent research on tool-use and bodily cognition (de Vignemont, 2007, 2018; Maravita & Iriki, 2004). Because he does not recognise the distinction between habit and skill, Merleau-Ponty makes use of these insights about skill in his account of habit. But viewed naively, this is just the ascription of skill’s properties to habit on the basis of a mistaken identity claim. Thought of this way, Merleau-Ponty is like someone who wrongly thinks Lois Lane is Superman and who, when trying to describe Lois, says she can fly. Merleau-Ponty takes habit as his subject, and proceeds to an acute analysis of skill, before stating the result as a conclusion about habit. Since this is how he arrives at (2), the support for that view is significantly weakened. Why should we think that (2) correctly characterises habit-formation when the argument for it depends on mistakenly identifying habit with skill? But we must be careful. This argument undermines (2), but does not give us grounds for actually rejecting it. Rather, it leaves us with no positive reason to believe it. Perhaps there are independent reasons for accepting it which do not rely on conflating habit with skill. Rather than considering this possibility, given I have undermined (2)’s basis without showing that it is false, I propose to simply put it to one side and withhold judgement. In lieu of arguing against it, then, I propose to argue for a different view of the perspectival change constitutive of habit-formation, one which centres on the fact that habit-bearers are and feel familiar with their habitual courses of action. This view is not incompatible with (2). If one had independent reasons for believing (2), one could easily combine them. So the view I will defend in Section 3 is not strictly speaking an alternative to Merleau-Ponty’s. However, it is my hope that it will render (2) unnecessary, and so apt for rejection. Despite this hope, officially my position from here on in is one of agnosticism about (2)’s truth.

17.3 Familiarity and Habit-Formation I have argued that Merleau-Ponty’s account of the change in a person’s perspective constitutive of their forming a habit is weakened by the fact that his argument for it depends on the wrongful conflation of habit with skill, and that this suggests we may benefit from looking for a different account of the relevant perspectival shift. 235

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In this section, I want to motivate and defend such a view. What we need to do is identify something which changes in agents’ perspectives whenever they form a habit, and which has plausible claim to being partly constitutive of habit-formation. Now that we are starting from scratch, it may not be obvious what feature of habit-bearers’ perspectives may play the role. However, I think that one feature is quite distinctive: in forming a habit, one becomes familiar with doing what one is forming the habit of doing, and one becomes familiar with doing it in the contexts in which usually does it. Moreover, typically, one will come to feel that A-ing in that type of context is familiar to one. Therefore, I want to suggest the following account of habit: 3

The change in a person’s perspective constitutive of their forming a habit of doing something, A, in certain sorts of circumstances, C, is that the person comes to be, and feel, familiar with A-ing in C.

I think (3) is a powerful and elegant account of the perspectival change constitutive of habitformation, but to see this requires thinking carefully about the nature of familiarity. Therefore, I will discuss a number of aspects of familiarity which allow it to play the role that (3) gives it.12 Firstly, I will start with a distinction. There is a difference between something’s being familiar and it’s seeming, looking, sounding, or feeling familiar. For something to be familiar to someone, they must have engaged with it somehow: to be familiar with London, one must have walked its streets and drunk in its pubs; to be familiar with a person, one must have spent some time getting to know them. Familiarity is gradable, so that I can be more familiar with London than Athens, and less familiar with jazz than blues. Also, although one can become familiar with something or someone in a number of different ways, some of these have a certain priority. I am a little familiar with Naples having read Elena Ferrante’s wonderful (2015) novels, but my familiarity with it is both far less extensive than Ferrante’s herself and has a different source. Similarly, a spy may become familiar with their target. But their familiarity is different from, and more degraded than, the familiarity the target’s friends have with them. This suggests that there are proprietary ways of becoming familiar with different types of items, and that familiarity admits of something like Bertrand Russell 1911) distinction between knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance. On the other side of the distinction, there is the feeling of familiarity. The feeling of familiarity is connected to perceptual recognitional quite generally. Matthew Ratcliffe nicely brings this out in an example of a person who notices someone smiling and waving at them in the street. Seconds later it dawns on them that it is a close friend: “[T]he whole experiential structure changes and takes on an air of familiarity as the face’s significance is registered; ‘It’s him!’ Without that sudden reorientation, perhaps he would remain unfamiliar, unrecognised” (Ratcliffe, 2004: 39). These cases where recognition washes over one are a nice way to bring out the distinctive phenomenal character of the feeling of familiarity, however there is no reason to think they are the only cases. Instead, it is plausible that it mostly sits in the background of experience, making that to which we are repeatedly exposed seem normal, and making things which deviate from the norm come to seem alien or strange. The distinction between being and feeling familiar with something invites the question of how they are related. Now, experience may mislead, as Ratcliffe’s example shows: a familiar person may remain unrecognised. And in déjà vu, an unfamiliar scene may appear familiar. However, despite the existence of bad cases, it is most plausible that the feeling of familiarity typically serves to reveal which things are familiar; in feeling a familiar thing to be familiar, we ‘register its significance’ (where ‘register’ is naturally understood as factive). The existence of 236

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bad cases should not undermine the claim that the feeling can and does reveal the familiar, just as the fact that an excellent basketball player misses some free-throws does not undermine the claim that they can and do often succeed (McDowell, 2010: 245). Now, my discussion of what’s involved in being familiar with something suggests that familiarity with A-ing in C is constitutively connected to habit-formation. This is because the proprietary way one becomes familiar with A-ing in C is the same as the way one forms a habit of A-ing in C: one A-s (typically repeatedly) in instances of the context-type C.13 Therefore, whenever one has formed a habit, it is necessary that one also has become familiar with doing the habitual thing in the relevant type of context. So there is a necessary connection between the habitual and the familiar. Moreover, this connection mediates a connection between the habitual and the feeling of familiarity, since the feeling of familiarity serves to reveal what is familiar under that aspect. This strongly supports (3) because it means that the view identifies a perspectival change which bears a constitutive connection to habit-formation, which is exactly what we need. Now, it should be clear enough that when one becomes familiar with something and comes to feel familiar with it, this is a change in one’s perspective. After all, the claim that something comes to feel or look familiar is explicitly couched in terms of a person’s experiential point of view. And if I am right that the feeling serves to reveal what is familiar, then one’s familiarity with something is also implicated in a perspectival shift. However, it may seem that what has really changed in one’s perspective is that one now has experiences which reveal things as being familiar, and that actually becoming familiar with something should not be thought of as a change in one’s perspective, but rather a change in the world which one’s perspective opens onto. But I want to resist this because I think that being familiar with something has an intimate connection with certain kinds of ‘practical knowledge’, such that it too counts as an aspect of one’s perspective. Indeed, Merleau-Ponty himself makes this connection nicely: When I move about in my house, I know immediately and without any intervening discourse that to walk toward the bathroom involves passing close to the bedroom, or that to look out the window involves having the fireplace to my left. […] For me, my apartment is not a series of strongly connected images. It only remains around me as my familiar domain if I still hold ‘in my hands’ or ‘in my legs’ its principal distances and directions, and only if a multitude of intentional threads run out toward it from my body. (2012: 131–132)14 This passage connects one’s knowledge of the house’s layout, one’s knowledge of how to get around it, and one’s familiarity with it. The connection with knowledge is perfectly apt: a part of what it is to be familiar with the house is to know how to get around it with ease, find what one needs, and so on. This connection with knowledge indicates that becoming familiar with something is itself a change in one’s practical knowledge, and therefore one’s perspective. There is a further indication of this: what I am familiar with is my home’s layout, where this is adequately described only by mentioning the items that make it up by employing a vocabulary of terms which I myself recognise as applying to the room, such as ‘desk’, ‘sofa’ and ‘window’.15 There is, however, a way of describing my home’s layout which uses the vocabulary of physics, which describes the arrangement of atoms, electrons, and forces. It is plausible that these are descriptions of the same thing: the house’s layout.16 However, in saying I am familiar with the layout, we cannot mean I am familiar with the arrangement of atoms, electrons, and forces. That is not how my home is presented to me, and I know nothing of it. Therefore, we must say I am familiar with my home’s layout as the spatial and functional 237

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arrangement of items like desks, sofas and windows, and not as the arrangement of atoms and forces. But this is an intension-introducing-‘as’, since the case shows that ‘S is familiar with the F’ is a referentially opaque context from which we cannot infer that ‘S is familiar with the G’ even if the F is the G.17 Now, this suggests that ‘S is familiar with the F’ describes the thing which is F as having a particular cognitive significance for S – that S is familiar with it as an F. This explains why we cannot substitute ‘the G’ into the sentence salva veritate. Therefore, for something to be familiar to S, it must have a cognitive significance for them as being of some particular kind. For example, the layout is familiar as the spatial and functional relations between furniture; a person is familiar as a friend. Therefore, although there is a distinction between being familiar with something and experiencing it as familiar, it is not only the experience which forms part of one’s perspective on the world; becoming familiar with things is also a change in one’s perspective, since it makes those things cognitively significant. This is important because it means that (3) really identifies two different, but systematically related, ways in which habit-formation changes one’s perspective. The final thing I want to argue in support of (3) is that it gives us an elegant account of the force of habit. If so, this is an especially attractive feature because the existence of the force of habit was one of the things that made (1) plausible in the first place. It seems to be a sort of psychological motivational force which draws people to do the habitual thing in relevant types of context. Therefore it is the result of a shift in the habit-bearer’s perspective, and one that is distinctive to habit-formation. Since we are trying to say what the change in a person’s perspective constitutive of habit-formation is, and this is the result of such a change, it would be especially promising if (3) could give us an account of the force of habit. My case for the claim that it does begins by arguing that being familiar with doing something gives one a reason to do it, and that the feeling of familiarity reveals this reason. Clare Carlisle has best described the connection between being familiar with doing something and having reasons for doing it.18 As she says, there is a “sense of comfort, safety and ease that is engendered by familiarity” which contributes to “[insulating] us from the threat of the unknown” (Carlisle, 2006: 23). Carlisle argues that this is why “even during a week away one finds a regular haunt: the café one returns to each morning […]. In combining the novel with the familiar they […] make one feel at home in a new place” (Carlisle, 2014: 78). The point is that there is a kind of safety and ease in doing what we always do – the familiar paths through places we often find ourselves in are well-trodden, and, in contrast with courses of action that we are unfamiliar with, are vouched for by one’s own history. Take one of Carlisle’s examples. When I am away on a trip, because I go to the same café each morning I know what it’s like there and what to expect. There are other cafes, and I can see that they seem nice. But they are places that I could be surprised by, and so represent something of a risky alternative to my consistent haunt. Therefore, my familiarity with my usual place grounds a reason to go there – the reason is that it is familiar to me. If the fact that A-ing is familiar to S is a reason for S to A, then if S feels that A-ing is familiar, S’s experience reveals a fact which is a reason for S to A. But as Carlisle is at pains to point out, the experience of A-ing’s being familiar is not affectively neutral: it is often the sense that A-ing would be the easiest, safest option; that it would be ‘homely’. Putting these two things together, we can see that the feeling of familiarity reveals a reason in a peculiarly motivational light, the kind of light that could make the revealed fact a motivating reason for S.19 In this respect, the feeling of familiarity is somewhat like other emotions. If Sally fears a bear, then the bear seems dangerous to Sally, and its dangerousness is presented in an affectively 238

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loaded way, such that it has a motivational role for Sally: her fear presents her reason to run as a reason to run (Poellner, 2016). The same thing can be said of the feeling of familiarity: it presents S’s reason for A-ing as a reason to A.20 This is what provides the account of the force of habit. Since being familiar with doing something gives one a reason to do it, and the feeling of familiarity reveals this reason as a reason, feeling that doing something is familiar thereby draws one to do it because it presents one with a reason for action as such. This captures the idea that the force of habit is a psychological phenomenon which motivates one to act, and it does so by identifying the force of habit with the feeling that the habitual thing is familiar to do. This promises to elucidate the ‘inner structure’ of the force of habit, something we have little independent grasp of, in terms of the notions of familiarity and the feeling of familiarity with the habitual course of action. Further, it explains why the force of habit exerts a motivational influence on habit-bearers: it presents them as having a reason to act, the reason is presented in an affectively loaded way, and therefore the reason is typically motivationally potent. Therefore, the force of habit can figure in explanations of why someone with a habit of A-ing in C A-s habitually in an instance of C: it does so because it is the presentation and appreciation of a reason for action, and that reason explains why the agent A-s. This is what allows habits and the force of habit to figure in explanations of why habit-bearers act when they do so habitually. I think that the arguments in this section significantly support the view that (3) gives the correct account of the perspectival change constitutive of habit-formation. I have argued that both familiarity and the feeling of familiarity are constitutively connected to habit-formation and that they are both aspects of a habit-bearer’s perspective. Further, I have argued that they give us an elegant account of the force of habit, which also elucidates how and why habits have the explanatory role they do. This makes (3) a powerful account of the particular way that habit-formation changes one’s perspective.

17.4 Conclusion I have tried to show that Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of habit contains a deep tension: it is structured by both a fundamental insight and a significant mistake. The insight is that partly constitutive of habit-formation is a change in the habit-bearer’s perspective, understood very broadly. However, Merleau-Ponty’s own view of the nature of this change is made problematic because his case for it depends on a conflation of habit with skill. This leaves us with the task of making good on the insight, which I have tried to do by providing an account of the perspectival change that is rather different from Merleau-Ponty’s, an account posed in terms of habit-bearers’ familiarity with habitual courses of action and the feeling of familiarity that reveals it. I have argued that this elucidates the force of habit, habit’s explanatory role, and that there is a constitutive connection between habit and familiarity. Although this view is not Merleau-Ponty’s own, I think it has something of the same spirit: it articulates the fact that habits are not brutely external to habit-bearers’ own perspectives in terms of one of the many ‘intentional threads’, familiarity, which ties habit-bearers to the world.21

Notes 1 All unaccompanied are to the (2012) edition. 2 See Audi (2010), Dancy (2010), and McDowell (1985). 3 See Douskos (2019a) for discussion.

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Will Hornett 4 This is even clearer when we remember that the sense of ‘world’ in the passage is broadly Heideggarian – to acquire a world is to grasp the systematic practical and normative relations between aspects of one’s environment (Heidegger, 2015: 115–122). See (Merleau-Ponty, 2012: 115, but especially 2012: 131–132). 5 Talk of ‘the force of habit’ is riddled throughout the literature (Brett, 1981; Carlisle, 2006, 2014; Douskos, 2018; Owens, 2017; Pollard, 2003, 2006; Ryle, 1970). My discussion is intended to capture what is meant by the phrase. 6 Merleau-Ponty’s own arguments for (1) are rather different. They occur in the first two sections of The Structure of Behaviour (1963), which he alludes to at (2012: 143). I have chosen not to defend (1) with Merleau-Ponty’s own arguments because, if I am right that he systematically conflates habit and skill, it is likely that his own arguments for (1) suffer the same problem. Therefore, it would be dialectically inappropriate for me to rest my case for (1) on those arguments. 7 See Gallagher (1986, 1995) and Halák (2018) for discussion. 8 It has been suggested to me by an anonymous reviewer that this way of putting things is somewhat anachronistic, because much of the philosophical work Merleau-Ponty would have been educated on also treats habit and skill either in the same, or very similar ways, for example, Félix Ravaisson (1838/ 2008), Albert Lemoine (1875), and Maine de Biran (1802/1970) (although see Sinclair (2019, Chapter 2) for a reading of Ravaisson on which the distinction between habit and skill is marked fairly clearly). The suggestion is that, even if it is right to distinguish habit from skill, there was not a clear intuitive distinction in Merleau-Ponty’s own time, so, in a way, there was no intuitive distinction for him to collapse. Now, this explanation of why Merleau-Ponty says what he does is likely correct, and that somewhat softens my charge against him: we are all philosophers of our time. However, it is worth noting along with Douskos (2017) that many contemporary discussions of habit still make the same conflation. So it is not as if the distinction is more prevalent among, or obvious to, contemporary philosophers than it was to MerleauPonty. The key is to recognise that the distinction between habit and skill has remained unintuitive to philosophers, even though it is an integral (and, I have argued, completely appropriate) part of our ordinary thought about agency. 9 This runs against Christos Douskos’s (2019b, 2019a) claim that skills can figure in explanations of why people act. I do not have space to respond to Douskos’s arguments here, so I will simply register my disagreement. 10 Although Merleau-Ponty is often presented as discussing skills, for example in Romdenh-Romluc (2013), Sachs (2014: 102), Dreyfus (2002) and Morris (2012: 66), the point I am making is that he conflates habit with skill. Mark Sinclair comes the closest to making this point when he argues that “Merleau-Ponty is so little concerned with the nature of acquired habits that it can even be said that his reflection on l’habitude motrice is not really a discussion of habit. It is merely a reflection on skill acquisition” (Sinclair, 2019: 85). 11 For example, see Bäckström and Gustafsson (2017), Douskos (2019a, 2019b), Fridland (2013, 2014, 2017, 2019), Pavese (2016), Ryle (1970), Small (2017), and Stanley and Williamson (2017). 12 Now, Merleau-Ponty does mention familiarity in passing during his discussions of habit (2012: 145–146; 153), and it does appear in other places in the Phenomenology (in often illuminating ways as I will turn to later). See for example (2012: 131–132; 201; 288; 293–294). However, I do not think there is any evidence that Merleau-Ponty holds the view I am advocating here, even if he does see that familiarity plays some role in habit. 13 The minimal requirement on both habit-formation and familiarity-formation is that one have A-ed in C at least once before. I can become familiar with calling my new friend Sue ‘Sally’ after doing it only once, and thereby form a habit of doing so. However, it is typically the case that some degree of repetition is required for habit- and familiarity-formation. Thanks to an anonymous referee for asking me to clarify this. 14 See Heidegger (2015: 143–144), and Wittgenstein (1958: 182) for similar passages. 15 Thanks to Matt Cull for a helpful discussion of the following argument. 16 To clarify: this is not the claim that they are descriptions of the same thing because desks and windows are atoms and forces. That is false. The latter plausibly constitute the former, and constitution is not identity. Rather, the claim is that there are two descriptions of the room’s layout, one in an everyday practical vocabulary, and one in the vocabulary of physics. For if atoms and forces constitute desks and windows, then, given that desks and windows form the room’s layout, so do the atoms and forces. See Johnston (1992, 2006) for very sophisticated discussions of related issues. 17 See Golob (2014) for extensive discussion of the ‘a as b’ structure of intentionality.

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Habit-Formation: What’s in a Perspective? 18 Carlisle seems not to distinguish between being and feeling familiar, but I intend to use her claims to make a point about the former. Amelie Rorty also nicely describes familiarity’s reason-grounding force at (Rorty, 1980: 210). 19 For discussion of motivating reasons, see Alvarez (2010) and Dancy (2000). See Döring (2007) for a link between motivating reasons and affective experience. 20 Now, Carlisle somewhat neglects the fact that the familiar can feel stale, monotonous, or boring. This can make it seem like it is only when the familiar is presented in a broadly positive light that it can attract one to act. But I think that is wrong. Whatever the exact affective ‘valence’ of an experience of familiarity with a course of action, the experience reveals a reason to do that thing, and reveals it as a reason just in virtue of representing it as familiar. So the motivational light I spoke of is not to be found in the particular affective quality of any given feeling. Rather, it is found in the type of feeling it is and that it represents courses of action as familiar. 21 I want to thank Andrea Blomkvist, Komarine Romdenh-Romluc, and an anonymous reviewer for reading drafts of this paper and making comments which have improved it very much. I also want to thank Helen Steward for many very helpful discussions on this material, and Matt Cull for helping me work through an argument in Section 3. I have benefited greatly from presenting this material at the Sheffield Philosophy Graduate Seminar and the Northern Phenomenology Network. Finally, I need to thank Tyler Haddow, who I met at the BSHP Habit in the History of Philosophy conference, and whose paper inspired me to pursue and develop the account I offer here.

References Alvarez, M. (2010) Kinds of Reasons: An Essay in the Philosophy of Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Audi, R. (2010) ‘I—Robert Audi: Moral Perception and Moral Knowledge’, Aristotelian Society Supplementary, 84 (1). Bäckström, S. and Gustafsson, M. (2017) ‘Skill, Drill, and Intelligent Performance: Ryle and Intellectualism’, Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy, 5(5). doi: 10.15173/jhap.v5i5.3205 Brett, N. (1981) ‘Human Habits’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 11(3), pp. 357–376. Carlisle, C. (2006) ‘Creatures of Habit: The Problem and Practice of Liberation’, Continental Philosophy Review, 38, pp. 19–39. Carlisle, C. (2014) On Habit. New York: Routledge. Dancy, J. (2000) Practical Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dancy, J. (2010) ‘II—Jonathan Dancy: Moral Perception’, Aristotelian Society Supplementary, 84(1). De Biran, P.M. (1970) The Influence of Habit on the Faculty of Thinking, vol. 3. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. de Vignemont, F. (2007) ‘Habeas Corpus: The Sense of Ownership of One’s Own Body’, Mind & Language, 22 (4), pp. 427–449. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0017.2007.00315.x de Vignemont, F. (2018) ‘Peripersonal Perception in Action’, Synthese. doi: 10.1007/s11229-018-01962-4 Döring, S.A. (2007) ‘Seeing What to Do: Affective Perception and Rational Motivation’, Dialectica, 61(3). Douskos, C. (2017) ‘Pollard on Habits of Action’, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 25(4), pp. 504–524. doi: 10.1080/09672559.2017.1355406 Douskos, C. (2018) ‘Deliberation and Automaticity in Habitual Acts’, Ethics in Progress, 9(1), 25–43. doi: 10.14746/eip.2018.1.2 Douskos, C. (2019a) ‘The Spontaneousness of Skill and the Impulsivity of Habit’, Synthese, March, 1–24. doi: 10.1007/s11229-017-1658-7 Douskos, C. (2019b) ‘The Varieties of Agential Powers’, European Journal of Philosophy, 27(4). Dreyfus, H.L. (2002) ‘Intelligence Without Representation – Merleau-Ponty’s Critique of Mental Representation The Relevance of Phenomenology to Scientific Explanation’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 1 (4), 367–383. doi: 10.1023/A:1021351606209 Dreyfus, H.L. (2007) ‘The Return of the Myth of the Mental’, Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 50(4). Ferrante, E. (2015) The Neapolitan Novels Boxed Set. New York: Europa Editions. Fridland, E. (2013) ‘Skill Learning and Conceptual Thought: Making a Way Through the Wilderness’, Contemporary Philosophical Naturalism and Its Implications, pp. 77–100. doi: 10.4324/9780203068274 Fridland, E. (2014) ‘They’ve Lost Control: Reflections on Skill’, Synthese, 191 (12), pp. 2729–2750. doi: 10.1007/s11229-014-0411-8

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Will Hornett Fridland, E. (2017) ‘Skill and Motor Control: Intelligence All The Way Down’, Philosophical Studies, 174 (6). Fridland, E. (2019) ‘Longer, Smaller, Faster, Stronger: On Skills and Intelligence’, Philosophical Psychology, 32 (5), pp. 759–783. doi: 10.1080/09515089.2019.1607275 Gallagher, S. (1986) ‘Body Image and Body Schema: A Conceptual Clarification’, Journal of Mind and Behavior, 7(4). Gallagher, S. (1995) ‘Body Schema and Intentionality’, in Bermudez, J.L., Marcel, A.J. and Eilan, N. M. (eds.) The Body and the Self. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Golob, S. (2014) Heidegger on Concepts, Freedom and Normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Halák, J. (2018) ‘The Concept of ‘Body Schema’ in Merleau-Ponty’s Account of Embodied Subjectivity’, in Andrieu, B., Parry, J., Porrovecchio, A. and Sirost, O. (eds.) Body Ecology and Emersive Leisure. New York: Routledge. Heidegger, M. (2015) Being and Time. Translated by Macquarrie, J. and Robinson, E.Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing Johnston, M. (1992) ‘Constitution Is Not Identity’, Mind, 101 (401). Johnston, M. (2006) Hylomorphism. Journal of Philosophy, 103 (12). Lemoine, A. (1875) L’habitude et l’instinct: études de psychologie comparée. Germer Baillière. Maravita, A. and Iriki, A. (2004) ‘Tools for the Body (Schema)’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8 (2), 79–86. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2003.12.008 McDowell, J. (1979) ‘Virtue and Reason’, The Monist, 62 (3). McDowell, J. (1985) ‘Values and Secondary Qualities’, in Honderich. T. (ed.), Morality and Objectivity. New York: Routledge. McDowell, J. (2010) ‘Tyler Burge on Disjunctivism’, Philosophical Explorations, 13 (3), pp. 243–255. doi: 10.1080/13869795.2010.501905 Merleau-Ponty, M. (1963) The Structure of Behavior. Boston: Beacon Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012) Phenomenology of Perception. New York: Routledge. Morris, K. (2012) Starting With Merleau-Ponty. London: Bloomsbury Continuum. Owens, D. (2017) ‘Habitual Agency’, Philosophical Explorations, 20 (115), pp. 93–108. doi: 10.1080/13 869795.2017.1356358 Pavese, C. (2016) ‘Skill in Epistemology II: Skill and Know How’, Philosophy Compass, 11 (11). Poellner, P. (2016) ‘Phenomenology and the Perceptual Model of Emotion’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 116 (3). Pollard, B. (2003) ‘Can Virtuous Actions Be Both Habitual And Rational?’, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 6 (4), pp. 411–425. Pollard, B. (2006) ‘Explaining Actions with Habits’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 43 (1), 57–69. Ratcliffe, M. (2004) ‘Interpreting Delusions’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 3 (1), pp. 25–48. doi: 10.1023/b:phen.0000041899.08813.38 Ravaisson, F. (2008) Of Habit. Translated by Carlisle, C. and Sinclair, M. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Romdenh-Romluc, K. (2011) ‘Agency and Embodied Cognition’, Proceedings of the Aristotelean Society, 111 (1), pp. 79–95. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9264.2011.00299.x Romdenh-Romluc, K. (2013) ‘Habit and Attention’, in Jensen, R.T. and Moran, D. (eds.) The Phenomenology of Embodied Subjectivity, Springer, pp. 3–21 Rorty, A.O. (1980) ‘Akrasia and Conflict’, Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 23 (2), pp. 193–212. Russell, B. (1911) ‘Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 11. Ryle, G. (1970) The Concept of Mind (4th ed.). Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin. Sachs, C.B. (2014) Intentionality and the Myths of the Given. New York: Routledge. Sinclair, M. (2019) Being Inclined: Felix Ravaisson’s Philosophy of Habit. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Small, W. (2017) ‘Agency and Practical Abilities’, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 80, pp. 235–264. doi: 10.1017/s1358246117000133 Stanley, J. and Williamson, T. (2017) ‘Skill’, Noûs, 51 (4). Wittgenstein, L. (1958) The Blue and Brown Books. New York: Harper & Row.

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18 HABITS IN PERCEPTION: A DIACHRONIC DEFENCE OF HYPERINFERENTIALISM Cathy Legg

18.1 Introduction Philosophers have long puzzled over the human capacity to perceive, which from a number of perspectives can appear rather wondrous. How exactly do our finite and frail bodies manage to absorb so much useful information from our surroundings? Lately, many philosophers have imagined that an obvious naturalistic answer to this question goes something like this: “Perception clearly just consists in some kind of causal impact on the sense-organs. What else could it be?” Yet, if we take as our paradigm of causation—as have many able philosophers—David Hume’s example of one billiard ball pushing a second into motion, we might argue that there is significantly more going on in perception than such efficient causal action and reaction. Perception appears to be a very special kind of causation (if it even is a kind of causation), insofar as it involves discriminatory conceptual filtering. For instance, the same visual scene has been notoriously described as presenting to the interested viewer both rabbits and undetached rabbit parts (Quine, 1960). Yet, in most cases we—who are interested in rabbits, and not so interested in undetached rabbit parts—manage to perceive the rabbit and not the rabbit parts. To use terminology that has recently become influential in certain philosophical circles, we can say that what we perceive appears to consist in not merely a “given”, but some kind of “taken”. This terminology provides an entry point into certain discussions in Pittsburgh School Philosophy,1 which will feature prominently here. One of the most widely pursued debates concerning perception in modern philosophy pits a view known as representationalism or representationism against a view known as relationism, presentationism, or direct realism. The former claims that perception is mediated by some kind of state, which—as the name suggests—“re-presents” what we perceive, in a manner we can understand. This state is generally thought to fulfil its representational function through its intrinsic properties. (Much philosophical ink has been spilled over how this might occur, which we will bypass for now.) One virtue of representationalism is that the state’s mediation of our perception straightforwardly allows for the fact that we sometimes perceive erroneously. As Fred Dretske puts it: “[t]he world needn’t contain [certain properties] in order to be represented as containing them” (Dretske, 2003: 71). In contrast, relationism claims that our perception is immediately shaped by real-world objects, through being—as the name suggests—somehow DOI: 10.4324/9781315186436-23

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directly related to them. Accordingly, this view has trouble accounting for perceptual error. Yet, representationalism’s postulated “veil” of representations lying between perceiver and perceived objects risks creating a profound scepticism concerning whether we can really know that our perception corresponds to reality. This dispute stretches back at least as far as the early modern period, where John Locke’s representationalism was contested by Thomas Reid’s relationism.2 A further, related, philosophical trade-off is that whereas representationalism easily accounts for how perception involves general concepts, it struggles to provide a robust account of the perception of particular objects, whilst relationism has the reverse problem. Of course, it might seem obvious that a viable philosophy of perception must show how the mind manages to synthesise both general concepts and particular objects into a coherent understanding of immediately present reality. But this synthesis’ exact nature and functioning is still subject to considerable discussion. Yet whilst considerable philosophical energy has been expended on this debate, one assumption held by both sides has gone almost entirely unquestioned3 – that perception is an affair best understood synchronically. In other words: perceiving should be understood as an event. This assumption arguably relies on a broadly Cartesian picture of perception as some kind of immediate apprehension of so-called ‘external objects’, which will be critically evaluated below. Moreover, these perceptual ‘events’ are understood to occur at a distinct, ‘beginning’ stage in cognition. To be more specific, we may reference Pittsburgh School terminology again by stating that perception has been influentially conceptualised as a language-entry move, whereby the presence of ‘non-linguistic entities’, such as cats and tables, is encoded in the perceiver’s conceptual scheme for future reference. This move is understood to be followed by some kind of ‘intra-linguistic inference’, followed by the language-exit move that is action (Brandom, 2000; Sellars, 1954). So, for instance, imagine that I visually perceive a ripe apple. The standard picture postulates that first my eyes take in a scene containing a red, round object, which I recognise as meriting the predicate “apple” (language-entry move), then I inferentially connect this predication with current feelings of hunger, and my belief that apples are edible and delicious. Eventually, I grasp the apple and eat it (language-exit move). By contrast, I shall argue that perception can only be properly understood diachronically, as crucially structured and rendered meaningful by certain special kinds of habit. There has recently been an upswell of interest by Peirce scholars in his concept of habit, and how it might be mobilised in theorising cognition.4 But as none of these accounts appear to have explicitly thematized perception5, it is hoped that this discussion will be useful.

18.2 From “Strong” to “Hyper” Inferentialism in Perception In this section I scope out some background to the current discussion in my prior research. I’ve done much philosophical work in pragmatism, focussing particularly on Charles Peirce’s original version. In the mid-2000s, I became interested in Robert Brandom’s contemporary project of analytic pragmatism, an important plank of which is a view known as inferentialism (Brandom, 1994, 2000, 2002, 2006, 2007). Brandom explicates inferentialism by claiming that modern philosophers have viewed representation as the most fundamental notion in language and cognition – thus, meaning is understood to ‘bottom out’ in singular terms which pick out objects, and predicates which pick out those objects’ properties and relations. These ‘semantic building blocks’ are then supposed to be combined into truth-apt sentences. (“One then explains what it is for sentential constellations of those representing elements to be true in terms of set-theoretic inclusion relations among the various represented items.” (Brandom, 2007: 651). Only then is inference explicated as occurring between these antecedently-given sentential 244

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representations. Brandom urges that this order should be up-ended, so that inference is the foundational notion: The idea is to understand propositional contents as what can both serve as and stand in need of reasons, where the notion of a reason is understood in terms of inference. So propositional contentfulness is taken to be a matter of being able to play the role both of premise and of conclusion in inference. (Brandom, 2007: 654) What that means in practice is that the entire meaning of a concept such as cat should be understood to consist in potential inferences such as, “If this is a cat then it is not a dog” and, “If this is a cat then it grew from a kitten” (Brandom, 2000; 2007), rather than any putative reference to ‘feline objects in the world’. Brandom claims that in this way inferentialism beneficially upholds the place of human agency in human meaning-making, as judging is something that we do, which involves holding one another responsible across a range of ‘norms of assertion’ (Brandom, 2000; 2006), within a “game of giving and asking for reasons” (Brandom, 2007: 655). Is the representationalism that Brandom here repudiates the same view as the representationalism we just saw defined against direct realism in philosophy of perception? The two might appear to converge for early modern philosophers such as John Locke and David Hume. These thinkers are representationalist in both senses, insofar as they understand cognition, including perception, to be fundamentally composed of ideas, which they conceive to be both mediating (i.e. non-direct – the first sense of ‘representational’) and simple (i.e. noninferential – Brandom’s second sense of ‘representational’).6 But the two distinctions can clearly come apart. It is possible to conceive of a perception which is unmediated but noninferential. (Perhaps the touch of velvet might be an example.) Conversely, it is possible to conceive of a ‘re-presentation’ which is both mediatory and inferential, and this appears to be Brandom’s own position on perception (Brandom, 1994:234-5). As a Peirce scholar, it struck me that Brandom’s inferentialism had a great deal in common with Peirce’s early pragmatist critique of intuition in a series of papers published in the 1860s in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy.7 These are sometimes referred to as Peirce’s “anti-Cartesian papers” (e.g. Haack, 1982), because he there sought to scope out his pragmatism through correcting certain wrong turns that he attributed to Descartes at the birth of modern philosophy. More specifically, Peirce claimed that “certain faculties” that Cartesian philosophers “claimed for man”8 are not actually in us. These faculties are all envisaged to encompass various forms of intuition, and by denying all of them, Peirce sought to draw to a close an entire tradition of epistemology prosecuted through introspection. I explored this comparison in a paper entitled “Making it Explicit and Clear” (Legg, 2008a). I found the comparison to be fruitful, insofar as Peirce defined the key term ‘‘intuition’’ as ‘‘premiss not itself a conclusion’’ (Peirce, 1992: 12) – that is, an uninferred statement. In these early papers, Peirce’s main support for his radical denial that intuition should be granted any role in epistemology lay in establishing that we cannot ‘intuit’ whether a given cognition is delivered via intuition or via inference. He argued for this claim through a combination of phenomenological and empirical considerations (Legg, 2008a: 113–5), and concluded that every thought is an inference. I noted, however, that an apparent sticking point for both Brandom’s inferentialism and Peirce’s early pragmatism lay in their account of perception – especially how they theorise simple and apparently primitive sensations such as the colour red. Perceptions of such sensations seem 245

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difficult to theorise as inferences, particularly the first time they are apprehended. Surely there must have been a first event of ‘learning what it’s like to see red’9, which must have constituted some kind of noninferential perceptive moment? I dubbed this a qualia objection to inferentialism (Legg, 2008a: 109–111). Brandom has grappled with this problem. He concedes that there must be a ‘first input moment’ for sensations such as red, and describes our cognition as accordingly constituted not entirely by inferential relations. Rather, he claims, the meanings of concepts which refer to so-called ‘primitive sensations’ are established through reliable dispositions to respond differentially to stimuli – “RDRD” for short (Brandom, 2000: 48; 2007: 653–4). He describes himself as thereby offering a ‘two-ply’ theory of perception, inspired by his reading of Sellars, which is: …the product of two distinguishable sorts of abilities: the capacity reliably to discriminate behaviorally between different sorts of stimuli, and the capacity to take up a position in the game of giving and asking for reasons. (Brandom, 2002: 349) Steven Levine remarks that Brandom thereby seeks to “epistemically neutralise senseimpressions” (Levine, 2012: 134). We shall return to this insight below. Brandom does attempt to mitigate this apparent weakening of his inferentialism, however, by claiming that the RDRD-sourced component of our cognition must be ‘‘inferentially articulated’’. He defends a strong inferentialism, which holds that inferential articulation is sufficient for the existence of conceptual content, whilst the weak inferentialist holds that it is merely necessary. In other words, the strong inferentialist holds that “there is nothing more to conceptual content than its broadly inferential articulation” (Brandom, 1994: 131; 2000: 28–9, 2007: 656–7). But Brandom’s use of the qualifier ‘broadly’ is crucial here, as he also acknowledges the possibility of a hyperinferentialism, lying to the other side of his strong inferentialism, which holds that “the inferential connections among sentences, narrowly construed, are sufficient to determine the contents they express” (Brandom, 2007: 656; my emphasis; Macbeth, 2010: 210). By ‘narrow’, here, he means restricted to the ‘intra-linguistic inference’ outlined above – that is, containing no language-entry or language-exit moves. So, for example, according to this account of hyperinferentialism, the meaning of “This apple is red” would be understood to include a license to infer, “This apple is coloured”, but not to include recognising the apple as red (language-entry move), nor grasping and eating it (language-exit move). Brandom deprecates hyperinferentialism, arguing that it only properly applies to logical vocabulary, failing to account for “vocabulary that has observational uses that are essential to its meaning….” (Brandom, 2007: 658). But in my exploration of Brandom’s strong inferentialism, two things particularly struck me. Firstly, hyperinferentialism seemed attractive insofar as it made the task of accounting for meaning via inferential articulation more consistent and thoroughgoing, if it could be made to work. For instance, how is Brandom to integrate RDRD ‘sensory outputs’ into his conceptual space of reasons, when the two are apparently so different from one another?10 Secondly, I believed I could make a plausible case that Peirce held a form of hyperinferentialism. For instance, in the anti-Cartesian papers Peirce appears to argue that even the most basic sensations contain inferential structure, analysing color-perception as a kind of abduction or hypothesis: A sensation of color depends upon impressions upon the eye following one another in a regular manner and with a certain rapidity … Accordingly, a sensation is a simple 246

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predicate taken in place of a complex predicate; in other words, it fulfils the function of a hypothesis. (Peirce, 1992: 42; cited in Legg, 2008a: 119) But what about the first thought of red? Where does it come from? It seemed that Peirce had an answer to that too, in a creative analogy with an inverted triangle gradually dipped into water, where the triangle point’s entry into the water represents the mind’s beginning to think of red. Peirce notes that, mathematically speaking, there is no ‘first moment’ that the triangle point hits the water, because for any horizontal cross-section of the triangle – representing the mind’s already thinking of red – another horizontal cross-section may be found which is ever so slightly closer to the apex (i.e. earlier): To say … that ‘‘there must be a first’’ [cognition of a given object] ‘‘is to say that when that triangle is dipped into the water there must be a sectional line made by the surface of the water lower than which no surface line had been made…But draw the horizontal line where you will, as many horizontal lines as you please can be assigned at finite distances below it and below one another. For any such section is at some distance above the apex, or it is not a line. Let this distance be a. Then there have been similar sections at the distances 1/2a, 1/4a, 1/8a … So it is not true that there must be a first’’. (Peirce, 1992: 27; cited in Legg, 2008a: 117–8)11 This, then, is the early Peircean view of cognition that I presented in (Legg, 2008a); let us call it Naïve Perceptual Hyperinferentialism. The view is hyperinferentialist in that it views cognition as entirely comprised of inferences – thus it would seem it must also be ‘narrow’ in Brandom’s sense of not including language-entries or exits. As I presented this view in various philosophical fora, I found it being robustly challenged, both as a successful philosophical account of perception, and as a full account of Peirce’s contributions to the philosophy of perception, given that it is drawn so much from his early work. In the next section, I will examine two challenges to the view itself. After that, I will present an apparently considerably more complex account of perception developed by Peirce around 1902-3. I will consider some challenges to the later view, then defend it by clarifying the role played by habit in it – and in Peirce’s understanding of cognition more generally – as embodying all signification that is symbolic, as opposed to iconic or indexical. This will then enable a fuller assessment and defence of hyperinferentialism than I was able to offer in 2008.

18.3 Challenges to Naïve Perceptual Hyperinferentialism This early Peircean account might seem subject to at least two major objections. First: it is excessively rationalist. The success or otherwise of inference would appear to be governed by rational principles. Is reason really the only faculty we wish to award a role in perception? Many philosophers have found it self-evident that the sensorium’s rich variety outruns any possible conceptual understanding, so perception must – at least in part – be felt rather than merely understood. Accordingly, inferentialist brands of pragmatism have been accused of “an experience problem”12. For instance, Paul Redding (Redding, 2014) imagines a tie which he perceives to be a particular shade of blue and, following McDowell (2005; 2009), he charges that Brandom’s inferentialism cannot do justice to his perception of the tie’s precise blue color, given that our range of blue concepts is necessarily finite (“Perceptual experience, it might be 247

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said, is more fine-grained than what is actually captured by any general concept…” (Redding, 2014: 668)). Redding goes on to claim that perceptual experiences enjoy a kind of determinacy (‘singularity’ in Kant’s terminology), which supports a “different kind of truth” than can be theorised via Brandomian inferential articulation. He goes so far as to say that it is this level of determinacy which distinguishes “the actuality of things” (using Kantian terminology again) from a ‘possibility of things’ which is ‘merely propositional’. The distinction is evident, he claims, in the way that actual things support further determination and precisification, whilst merely possible ones do not: …there seem to be important distinctions to be made between my actual blue tie and its differently coloured possible alternatives. While it makes sense to ask the further question concerning my actual tie as to its particular shade of blue, it does not make sense to ask an analogous question about my possible yellow one. (Redding, 2014: 15) Actual things support further determination insofar as they can be directly pointed to or indicated. Redding points out that linguistically we use demonstrative ‘de re’ locutions for this purpose – such as ‘that tie’ – whereas possible things may only be referred to, or known, through the entire ‘de dicto’ propositions that have been constructed to describe them. So is Peirce’s pragmatism also guilty of such an “experience problem”? One might suspect so from famous quotes such as this: No present actual thought (which is a mere feeling) has any meaning, any intellectual value; for this lies not in what is actually thought, but in what this thought may be connected with in representation by subsequent thoughts; so that the meaning of a thought is altogether something virtual. (Peirce, 1992: 42) Secondly, it seems that Naïve Perceptual Hyperinferentialism might plausibly be charged with irrealism. For instance, McDowell has influentially criticised inferentialism for neglecting the contribution of a world beyond the mind in delivering so-called “empirical content” to cognition, thereby producing an epistemological “frictionless spinning in the void” (McDowell, 1994b: 11, 18, 42, 50).13 Redding makes essentially the same point regarding his blue tie and the distinction between de re and de dicto locutions. He argues that in assimilating de re to de dicto belief, naïve inferentialism loses a robust sense that a demonstrable world exists beyond the game of giving and asking for reasons (Redding, 2014: 9). Analogously, then, when Peirce claims (above) that “the meaning of a thought is altogether something virtual”, how is he not invoking a tissue of inferences in place of a real world? Arguments such as these eventually led me to explore Peirce’s later, more complex, theory of perception in a number of papers (Legg, 2014b; 2017; 2018). The next section will summarise some of this work.

18.4 Peirce’s 1902–3 Theory: Percept, Perceptual Judgment, and Percipuum Peirce’s later theory of perception is most fully presented in a manuscript from 1902 known as “Perception and Telepathy”, although other sources exist.14 Peirce’s thought developed a great deal from the late 1860s to this point. Of particular note is that whereas in Peirce’s early career he sought to follow Kant in founding his philosophical system in categories of logic, by 1902–3, 248

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he has begun to explore a distinct prior role for phenomenology, expressed in his three categories of firstness (quality), secondness (reaction) and thirdness (mediation).15 The later theory is built around a distinction between a percept and a perceptual judgment, which are united in a percipuum. I will now briefly explain these three elements. Firstly, the percept should be understood as entirely non-cognitive. One might wonder how something entirely non-cognitive could intelligibly convey information about the world. Peirce’s answer is that the percept has insistency. “I am forced to confess that it appears”, he claims (Peirce, CP 7.620). In order to so compel his thinking, the percept does not need to fulfil any representational function – it simply “obtrudes”: [The percept] obtrudes itself upon my gaze; but not as a deputy for anything else, not ‘as’ anything. It simply knocks at the portal of my soul and stands there in the doorway (Peirce, CP 7.619). The percept also cannot fulfil any representational function because of its singularity – in our earlier Kantian sense. It is an individual which is perfectly determinate in every respect. (“The percept…is so scrupulously specific that it makes this chair different from every other in the world; or rather, it would do so if it indulged in any comparisons.” Peirce, CP 7.633). Peirce explicitly links the percept to his phenomenological categories by noting that it partakes of firstness insofar as it forces us to acknowledge a “positive qualitative content” (Peirce, CP 7.623), and it partakes in secondness or reaction due to its obtrusive (“vivid”) impact on us, and insofar as relations of duality can be discerned within it (Peirce, CP 7.625). Moving on, percepts are understood to causally trigger perceptual judgments. This is a completely different animal to the percept. For instance, it possesses subject-predicate structure, which the percept lacks (Peirce, CP 7.631). Relatedly, by contrast to the singularity of the percept, the perceptual judgment is to at least some degree general. Notably, though, in the first instance this generality takes a special, ‘pictorial’ or ‘iconic’ form, which Peirce likens to a multiply-exposed photograph: Let us consider, first, the predicate, ‘yellow’ in the judgment that ‘this chair appears yellow.’ This predicate is not the sensation involved in the percept, because it is general. It does not even refer particularly to this percept but to a sort of composite photograph of all the yellows that have been seen (Peirce, CP 7.634). To return to Peirce’s categories, this pictorial or iconic generality corresponds to firstness because it constitutes a kind of sui generis quality or appearance, although in fact it has been formed by distilling a range of relevantly similar previous experiences (Hookway, 2002). But this pictorial generality also forms the basis for a nascent thirdness, or conceptual generality – we shall learn more about this below. The categorial alignments made so far enable us to see some of Peirce’s semiotics at work in his theory of perception. During this period, he advanced a unique theory of propositional (or more broadly, in his own terminology, dicisign) structure, as consisting in an icon which is fused to an index in order to enable something to be said about something. Iconic and indexical signs may be broadly understood as ‘pictures’ and ‘pointers’, respectively: [I]t has been found that there are three kinds of signs which are all indispensable in all reasoning; the first is the diagrammatic sign or icon, which exhibits a similarity or analogy to the subject of discourse; the second is the index, which like a pronoun 249

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demonstrative or relative, forces the attention to the particular object intended without describing it (Peirce, CP 1.369). We can observe this “particular double structure” (Stjernfelt, 2014; 2015; 2016) of icon fused to index in Peirce’s discussion of perceiving the yellow chair above. He claims that the perceptual judgment, “This chair is yellow”, indexes the percept de re (a dimension of meaning whose importance we saw Redding noting) through the demonstrative “this chair”, while at the same time affixing an icon of yellowness to it. Thus we can say that the percept in some sense ‘lies in’ the perceptual judgment, but only at the end of an index or pure pointer. We might understand this as a Peircean ‘language-entry move’: the perceptual judgment which I have translated into “that chair is yellow” would be more accurately represented thus: “☞ is yellow,” a pointing index-finger taking the place of the subject (Peirce, CP 7.645). When we examine any given perception purely synchronically, all we see is that a percept causally triggers a perceptual judgment, whilst not providing any of its content because, crucially, the perceptual judgment indexes rather than describing or copying the percept.16 But across time, a set of sufficiently similar perceptual judgments may be understood to interpret a set of sufficiently similar percepts, through the repetition and growth of the perceptual judgments themselves into a set of stable habits, such as habits of identifying objects as ‘having’ certain colours. Peirce’s evolutionary semiotics then explains how these habits are forced to continually grow and develop, under the constant dual pressure of both lived experience and the corrections of a language-using community, until the end-result is a full-blown scheme of general concepts. I previously described this process as follows: …over time our constant causal triggers from percept to perceptual judgment gradually become enmeshed in an ever more smooth and predictable network of habits of association between certain kinds of percepts and certain kinds of perceptual judgments. How this occurs is best explicated in the broader framework of Peirce’s pragmatist theory of meaning, whereby belief consists in nothing but habits of expecting certain experiences in certain circumstances, and acting to bring about desired future experiences in that light. (Legg, 2018: 129) This process of perceptual judgments interpreting percepts, by means of diachronic habits of judging, is what Peirce calls the percipuum (Peirce, CP 7.643). We can now account for this crucial third term in Peirce’s theory of perception within his semiotic theory, as follows. When the secondness of an index and the firstness of an icon fuse into a dicisign, this fusion itself creates that thirdness known as a symbol. This symbolic signification is what enables a dicisign or Peircean proposition to transmit general information, and as such, to enter the space of reasons. Such is the distinctive role of symbols, as opposed to indices whose role is to force an existential connection with actual worldly objects, and icons which Peirce at times enigmatically refers to as a ‘pure dream’ (Legg, 2008b: 226). Returning to our example of perceiving “That chair is yellow”, we may note that the generality of the ‘yellowness’ of the initially affixed icon, that when viewed synchronically counts as merely pictorial, transmutes into the properly conceptual, symbolic generality of the predicate ‘…is yellow’ precisely through the repetition of sufficiently similar judgments of yellowness across time and space. Thus when Peirce defines the symbol (alongside 250

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the definition of icons and indices cited above), he explicitly states that it consists in nothing but a habit of associating ideas: …[the symbol] is the general name or description which signifies its object by means of an association of ideas or habitual connection between the name and the character signified (Peirce, CP 1.369). The next section will explicate more of the cognitive architecture which Peirce sees as underlying this crucial identification.

18.5 Cognitive Underpinnings of Symbol as Habit We’ve just seen Peirce state that the habit which creates a symbol consists entirely in an association of ideas. In the case of judgments (including perceptual judgments), this takes the form of associating relevantly similar icons to relevantly similar indices across time. Some valuable further investigation into this process is provided in Aaron Massecar’s paper “Peirce’s Interesting Associations”. Massecar notes that, for Peirce, association is the only power that exists within the intellect (Massecar, 2012: 193), but it may be analysed into still more basic components. First comes interest, then attention, and it is attention that actually drives and shapes the process of idea-association that births habits of further like associations (Massecar, 2012: 194). Massecar also notes that the process of attention may be understood logically on the model of a hypothesis which reduces a certain manifold of experience to unity. A simple example of such a hypothesis would be, “The world contains things which are yellow”. Such a hypothesis creates a habit of noticing yellow things when they appear and, by predicating yellowness of them, associating them with other things which appear to be yellow. In this way, the attention may be understood to subsume a disparate variety of feelings under a single general sign which should be understood as an active “[rule] for organising and interpreting feelings as representations” (Massecar, 2012: 194). This subsumption process is how the abstraction of a general concept from experience actually happens, and how it may be understood to be not a ‘given’ but a ‘taken’ – noted in our introduction as a desideratum in philosophy of perception. Massecar also explains that unpicking this cognitive architecture shows how, although at one level of analysis the many varied instantiations of any general concept are understood to be united by resemblance, at a deeper level, resemblance itself can be analysed simply as a brute inner compulsion to associate: To say that two things are alike does not mean that two things have an affinity for one another; rather, to say that two things are alike is to say that we have connected them because of some compulsion to do so. (Massecar, 2012: 198) In other words, Peirce ultimately understands that all symbolic thought bottoms out in an “unmediated association between feelings”. In fact, this is exactly what one should expect from ‘unthinking’ habit: The firstness of a particular experience can call upon the firstness of another experience without mediation or otherness being present. In fact, it is specifically this

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process of one feeling calling upon another feeling without mediation that constitutes a habit—a habitual connection exists where there is no thinking required. (Massecar, 2012: 198) Once established, these associations are understood to spread through cognition (both individual and communal) according to Peirce’s Law of Mind, which is essentially a law of habittaking. (“Now the generalizing tendency is the great law of mind, the law of association, the law of habit taking”. Peirce, CP 7.515, c.1898). It should also be noted that symbols qua habits do not merely repeat in more or less identical fashion – rather, they grow in a literal evolutionary sense (Nöth, 2010: 2014). Thus, for instance, as colour concepts have been repeatedly used by humans, they have been significantly refined and developed. For example, in decorating my kitchen I might endeavour to replicate the “gratitude” which Van Gogh claimed to capture in the three yellow shades he used for his famous sunflower paintings. We have noted that once the symbolic level of signification is reached, we achieve generality in the usual ‘philosophical’ or conceptual sense. This means that our perception of the chair as yellow, despite current philosophical intuitions about the primitiveness of ‘qualia’, is not a de novo affair. For instance, the fact that we choose to group a dark gold object with a pale lemon one as ‘the same colour’ – rather than with a mustard brown one which is objectively closer on the colour wheel – betrays the presence of human conceptual lineaments entrained in us through education. Properly understanding this entrainment, as I would urge that Peirce shows us how to do, has crucial philosophical implications. One of the most important, in my view, is that the supposedly mysterious passage ‘into the space of reasons’ from the causal order – and the corresponding jump in creaturely intelligence from “sentience” to “sapience” (Brandom, 2000: 157–8; 1994: 4–6) – might finally cease to constitute the giant inexplicable gulf that it has across the modern era, along with its attendant mind-body puzzles and anxieties, and its socalled ‘problem of intentionality’ (Nöth, 2010). In place of mind-bending philosophical mystery, we now have a highly original account of how the unique ‘pictorial’ generality of firstness scaffolds the development of the unique ‘conceptual’ generality of thirdness.17 Interestingly – particularly given Brandom’s explicit use of Kant to reinforce the reasons-causes schism (Brandom, 2006) – Peirce saw his own schismbridging account as already nascent in Kant’s notion of schemata, in the way that a Kantian schema lies Janus-faced between pictorial and conceptual – immediate and predicable – meaning: …the Iconic Diagram and its Initial Symbolic Interpretant taken together constitute what we shall not too much wrench Kant’s term in calling a Schema, which is on the one side an object capable of being observed, while on the other side it is a general.18 To sum up, then, at first glance this later, more complex, Peircean theory of perception might seem much more satisfactory than Naïve Perceptual Hyperinferentialism. By newly theorising a non-cognitive percept, and relating it to a perceptual judgment which lies inside the space of reasons, the theory might be argued to incorporate an a-rational, phenomenological component to perception, and thereby do proper justice to experience, as philosophers such as Redding require. We might put the point in more Brandomian terms by stating that Peirce’s later theory of perception incorporates not merely concepts and their inferential articulation, but intuitions too. So may we conclude that Peirce has now moved beyond hyperinferentialism? This will prove a deeper question than might initially appear. It will be addressed below, but first I will explore some prima facie criticism of this later theory by Mats Bergman. 252

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18.6 Bergman’s Criticisms of Peirce’s 1902–3 Theory of Perception In an exceptionally rich discussion of representationalism and relationism (which he calls representationism and presentationism) in Peirce’s philosophy of perception, Bergman argues that Peirce slides between these views somewhat incoherently across his career (Bergman, 2007). First Bergman argues that in Peirce’s early ‘anti-Cartesian’ period, he clearly held representationism, for in this period, Peirce’s hyperinferentialism prevented him from positing direct reference to singular objects. As we saw earlier, Peirce then held that there is no ‘first cognition’ of any external object, only an infinitely dense series of inferences which tend towards an ideal limit of direct engagement. Thus, in this early view, it is singularity that should be regarded as ideal, in direct contrast to Redding’s earlier characterisation of it as the key to concrete actuality. (“The singular object, which is construed as the ideal boundary of cognition, is denied immediate reality.” (Bergman, 2007: 61)). In concert with the earlier critique of Naïve Perceptual Hyperinferentialism as irrealist, Bergman concludes that Peirce’s entire early philosophy constitutes a problematic “semiotic idealism”, in which “all realities are nominal, significative, and cognitive (W 2:181 [1868])” (Bergman, 2007: 62), which fits with Peirce’s understanding of truth as an ‘idealised’ final end of inquiry. Bergman claims this view is problematic because of its profound lack of real secondness – “the direct clash between ego and non-ego” (Bergman, 2007: 64). He argues (as have many other scholars) that Peirce later amends this lack, particularly from the mid-1880s, and consequently, by the crucial 1902-3 period, Peirce was closer to presentationism. This was particularly evident in a new countenancing of immediate perception (Bergman, 2007: 70). At this point, Bergman argues, Peircean percepts should be understood as “objects that are not signs”. Semiotic idealism is thereby repudiated, along with hyperinferentialism: …I take presentationism to assert that there is an element of bruteness in experience that cannot be known in the proper sense of the word; it must be experienced, and any description of such experience will be false of it. Thus, the presentationist position is nothing more or less than an affirmation of the independence of secondness and a rejection of full-scale inferentialism and intellectualism. (Bergman, 2007: 82) But Bergman suggests that Peirce never successfully worked out a consistent version of the new view, which can be seen in a lingering ambivalence in his discussion of the percept – whether it is “of the nature of a sign”, or should be considered identical to the perceived thing itself. Therefore: Only two paths are possible: either we contend that Peirce’s assertion that the percept is not a sign is confused, or else we must explain how the percept can be said to be both semiotic and non-semiotic. (Bergman, 2007: 71) Bergman notes some late quotes where Peirce apparently says that the percept is semiotic after all. Particularly notable is this passage, where Peirce appears to claim that perception consists in ‘representations all the way down’: …the object of an ordinary proposition is [a] generalization from a group of perceptual facts. It represents those facts. These perceptual facts are themselves abstract 253

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representatives, through we know not precisely what intermediaries, of the percepts themselves; and these are themselves viewed, and are,—if the judgment has any truth,—representations, primarily of impressions of sense, ultimately of a dark underlying something, which cannot be specified without its manifesting itself as a sign of something below. There is, we think, and reasonably think, a limit to this, an ultimate reality like a zero of temperature. But in the nature of things, it can only be approached, it can only be represented… (MS 599:36–37 [c. 1902], cited in Bergman, 2007: 76) Bergman deprecates Peirce’s invocation here of a “dark underlying something”, claiming that the percept is more adequately characterised as “the object as it is directly experienced, as in an outward clash” (Bergman, 2007: 78). To sum up, then, Bergman diagnoses Peirce as holding an early, hyperinferentialist theory of perception which is consistent but problematically idealistic, then shifting to a later, nonhyperinferentialist theory which mitigates the idealism at the cost of theoretical inconsistency. I will now argue that this package can be made more coherent than Bergman suggests, because both the spectre of idealism, and the apparent incoherence he attributes to Peirce’s account of the percept, arise from taking an overly synchronic perspective.

18.7 The Temporally Structured Percipuum Peirce’s triadic semiotics allows for simultaneous presentation and representation in perception. To fully understand how this works, we need to study how Peirce theorises a certain temporal structure within perception. The presentation side of the equation consists in the percept. Peirce writes: We know nothing about the percept…excepting that we feel the blow of it, the reaction of it against us, and we see the contents of it arranged into an object … (Peirce, CP 7.643). But the percept triggers the perceptual judgment which, in its affixing of an icon to the percept, may be understood to represent the percept: But the moment we fix our minds upon it and think the least thing about the percept, it is the perceptual judgment that tells us what we so “perceive” (Peirce, CP 7.643; c.f. also CP 2.141, c 1902). So far, we remain in the synchronic perspective, in which the perceptual judgment simply consists in an icon ‘unthinkingly’ associated to an index which has causally triggered it. At this point, we might seem to simply be theorising ‘a bit of both’ – some presentation and some representation – juxtaposed, as it were, in the percipuum. As such, there might appear to be little difference between this later Peircean theory of perception and Brandom’s strong inferentialism, whereby certain primitive sensory responses are understood to intertwine with conceptual inferential articulation, like threads in a two-ply yarn. However, in Peirce’s view lies significant further epistemological depth. We have already noted that from the diachronic perspective, in the context of stable cognitive habits, the Peircean perceptual judgment can be understood to interpret its percept. In fact, this happens in such a manner that the percipuum unifies percept and perceptual judgment into one cognizable thing. 254

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This unification is importantly different than Brandom’s mere juxtaposition. It is enabled by a kind of temporal-epistemic structure within the perceptual moment itself, which is analysable as a kind of “moving temporal window”19, within which each new perception enters at the “front end” in the form of an anticipation (which Peirce calls the antecipuum), just as the most recent falls back into memory (which Peirce calls the ponecipuum).20 For example, imagine that I perceive a ball flying through the air. My perception of the ball’s dynamic motion consists in simultaneous: i) prediction of where the ball is heading next (antecipuum), ii) seeing where it is now, and iii) recording where it has just been (ponecipuum) (Peirce, CP 7.648). All of this prediction happening alongside direct observation renders perceptual judgments subject to constant just-in-time correction, as the predictions are or are not satisfied. Sometimes such correction merely reflects that the things perceived are themselves changing. But over and above this, a kind of sense-making is continually taking place within the perceptual moment, which may equally step in and correct the perceptual judgment. Thus, for instance, I might see someone in the distance carrying an object to which my perceptual judgment affixes the iconic schema ‘football’. However I then see the object thrown, and its motion is unexpected, contradicting the ‘composite photograph’ which constitutes my sedimented memory of perceiving footballs fly through the air. I do recall that pattern of motion elsewhere, though. Upon bringing that schema to mind, I realise that the object is a frisbee. Henceforth I affix that iconic schema to the object, and my perceptual judgment has changed. Here we see how the percept – understood as incoming sensory impressions possessed of both qualitative character and insistency – can correct the perceptual judgment, thereby crystallising a newly unified object in the perceiver’s mind. All of this brings perception out of the classical empiricist realm of brute impression, and into the rationalist realm of sense-making, so that we can now see how perception is not a separate event – a discrete ‘language-entry move’ – but rather is continuous with the rest of cognition. But Peirce astutely points out that perceptual sense-making can also proceed in the reverse direction; perceptual judgments may equally correct percepts. He references the well-known example of sitting in a stationary train looking out the window at a train that begins moving, and somehow perceiving that his own train is moving, even though he knows that it is not. He notes how, although his perception of his train’s (apparent) motion might seem entirely sensational, the addition of new information, in the form of a perceptual judgment that the wheels on the train next door are turning, somehow manages to alter the very ‘qualia’, as his mind rationally re-interprets the whole scene: …that moving train that appears stationary will not move however one may try to force it to do so. Yet if one only looks down and watches the wheels turn, in a very few seconds it will seem to start up (Peirce, CP 7.647). But isn’t it problematic to imagine that we might ‘correct our own percepts’ rationally? Isn’t this abolishing the prospect of a fully mind-independent world, and playing into the hands of semiotic idealism again? Here I believe that it is important to draw a distinction, however apparently hair-splitting, between the percept and the thing perceived. Although both are ‘noncognitive’, they are not identical; thus, correcting a percept should not be understood to change the thing perceived. The percept is our immediate experience of the thing perceived. It does not lie ‘inside’ perception, although, as we saw in our earlier discussion of indexicality in perceptual judgment, neither does it lie entirely ‘outside’. Rather, by means of the percept, the thing perceived hovers on the boundary of cognition. This is in fact just what we should expect (Hausman, 1990). Although this experience, due to its insistency, cannot be denied, there is much scope for it to be reinterpreted in the context of the entirety of our thinking and feeling, 255

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only part of which is spotlighted by our attention at any given time. As such, I submit that the “dark underlying something” descriptor, which Bergman so deprecated, is in fact very apt, but if we read closely, we see that here Peirce is not describing the percept but the thing perceived. Returning now to the concepts of presentation and representation (and their respective ‘-isms’ in philosophy of perception), we may observe that in Peirce’s theory of perception, presentation does not simply ‘sit alongside’ representation (a la Brandom), but the two are constantly engaged in a process of mutual correction, driven by an overall sense-making present in the perceptual moment, which unifies them into an intelligible object. But this sense-making is essentially diachronic, as it draws on the entirety of established habits of judging, and we must hope that over time it will pull our perceptions ever-closer to reality. This new understanding offers another answer to Bergman’s charge of semiotic idealism. In order to avoid the charge, Bergman required that the percept not be “of the nature of a sign” – but what exactly does that mean? If we were to try to understand the percept as a kind of symbol, that would indeed likely produce an epistemic ‘frictionless spinning in the void’. But what if the percept constitutes one end of an index? What if it serves as an icon? We might respond that it doesn’t matter if the percept is of the nature of a sign, if that sign participates in a stable feedback loop with some “external permanency…on which our thinking has no effect”, as Peirce elegantly framed the realism question in his early paper “The Fixation of Belief” (Peirce, CP 5.384, 1877). The only option Bergman considered other than the percept being of the nature of a sign was the percept being identical with the object perceived. But in that case, we have no account of how we can apparently correct the percept, as noted above. Bergman arguably falls into a false dichotomy here.

18.8 Conclusions Does Peirce’s mature pragmatist philosophy of perception have an “experience problem”? I submit that it does not. A non-cognitive element is present in the form of the percept, along with a perceptual judgment which lies in the space of reasons, and a principled account of how the two combine and even manage to correct one another. In this way, Peirce’s triadic semiotics allows him to theorise simultaneous presentation and representation in perception, without self-contradiction. Habit is crucial to this account, insofar as Peirce understands propositional content to consist in symbolic signs which are general habits of associating certain icons with certain indices. By means of such habits, and the way they ‘sediment’ iconic schemata in working memory, a perceiver’s entire conceptual apparatus is brought to any perceptual moment. This process’ essentially diachronic nature arguably offers a Peircean answer to Sellars’ “Myth of the Given”, which Sellars himself described as a problem whereby philosophers “take givennness to be a fact that presupposes no learning, no forming of associations, no setting up of stimulus-response connections” (Sellars, 1997: §6, 20).21 Of course, Brandom also claims to resolve the Myth of the Given, by means of his inferentialism. But by flinching at hyperinferentialism, and falling back on merely ‘strong’ inferentialism he, as Levine remarks, seeks to “epistemically neutralise sense-impressions”. Although Brandom criticises hyper-inferentialism for its supposed ‘narrow’ reach across merely intra-linguistic inference, and praises his own semantics for also including language-entry and language-exit moves, he theorises both kinds of move as non-inferential. But we have shown how a Peircean hyperinferentialism does include language entry-moves, qua indices to percepts. Moreover, the Peircean theory gives these non-cognitive inputs a real epistemic role in both constructing and correcting perceptual judgments, unlike Brandom’s 256

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RDRD, which appear to merely sit alongside inferential articulation.22 In this way we might observe that, ironically, Brandom’s is the ‘narrower’ inferentialism. Accordingly, we can go further and note that hyperinferentialism is not an impediment to recognising genuine secondness, as Bergman claimed – but is precisely required by it. Pace Bergman’s request for percepts to consist in “objects that are not signs”, secondness cannot lie inside cognition; cognition ‘would not know what to do with it’. In other words, secondness cannot be represented symbolically, by definition, insofar as a symbol consists in a stable habit. So if secondness is to have a genuine epistemic role, it must somehow hover at the boundary of cognition and impede its flow of inferences in some noticeable way. In other words, it must ‘obtrude’. This is precisely the role with which Peirce endows the percept. But this insight was arguably already present in Peirce’s early anti-Cartesian papers, for instance in his analogy of the boundary between a descending triangle being in and out of the water as an ideal limit which is essentially unrepresentable, and where he theorised sensation as a “hypothesis” which is substituted for a “complex predicate” through our own powers of attention. As such, I would urge that the difference between Peirce’s early and late theories of perception has been greatly overstated. May I suggest that the name Mature Perceptual Hyperinferentialism is available for the later theory, for those who appreciate that Peircean neologisms never win any baby contests.

Notes 1 Here, I mainly discuss Robert Brandom. Elsewhere, I have traced some implications of debates explored here for the work of Wilfrid Sellars and John McDowell (Legg, 2017, 2018). 2 For recent defenses of representationalism, see Harman (1990) and Dretske (2003). For recent defences of relationism, see Martin (2004), Travis (2004), and Brewer (2007). 3 Husserl is an honorable exception in his discussion of “retention” and “protention” (Husserl, 2014). It would appear that future comparative work between him and Peirce on these matters could be fruitful. 4 A noteworthy example is the edited collection West and Anderson (2016). 5 For example, in the edited collection on habit in Peirce cited above, there is no entry for perception in the index, though see (Wilson, 2017). 6 For instance, see Hume, “When I shut my eyes and think of my chamber, the ideas I form are exact representations of the impressions I felt; nor is there any circumstance of the one, which is not to be found in the other” (Hume, 1739-40/1978, 3 – section 1, I, i). 7 “Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man”, ‘‘Some Consequences of Four Incapacities’’, and “Grounds of Validity of the Laws of Logic: Further Consequences of Four Incapacities.” From these titles, one can see how the papers form a connected series. 8 By which Peirce apparently meant ‘man’ in the sense of ‘human’, nevertheless it is worth interjecting the remark: (sic). 9 An issue famously adumbrated in the analytic philosophical tradition in (Jackson, 1982). 10 Others have asked this. See for instance, “While in action (and perception) normatively governed content and causal response dispositions are somehow coupled, there is a gulf between them that cannot be bridged” (Levine, 2012: 129). See also (Levine, 2015; McDowell, 1997; 2005). 11 See also (Bergman, 2007: 60–61). 12 See also (Koopman, 2007; Levine, 2012). 13 It’s worth noting the way in which McDowell here assumes that to gain cognitive purport beyond one’s individual mind, one has to go beyond inference, as only there lies “the empirical”. This assumption will be critiqued below. 14 For instance, Peirce’s 1903 Harvard public lecture series, reprinted in (Peirce, 1997). 15 Discussion of the three most basic categories occurs repeatedly in Peirce’s texts. A particularly wellworked out presentation from the current period of discussion (1903) is (Peirce, 1998: 147, 160 and 271 for Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness respectively). 16 I discuss in detail this divergence from classical empiricism, and its philosophical implications, in (Legg, 2014b; 2017; 2018).

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Cathy Legg 17 Such an account is arguably not entirely unknown elsewhere, for instance in the work of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson on “embodied cognitive structures” that was taken as inspiration by Francisco Varela to develop a so-called sensorimotor enactivist account of cognition (Varela, 1999: 15). But that is a story for another time. 18 The manuscript is one of the drafts for Peirce’s 1906 paper “Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism”. It is cited in (Stjernfelt, 2000: 362). For insightful further discussion of this passage, see the Stjernfelt paper, and also (Rosenthal, 1988). For a valuable overall analysis of Peirce’s use of Kantian schemata in his philosophy, see (Hookway, 2002). 19 This is not a physical, metric structure so much as an analytical one, as pointed out by Sandra Rosenthal (Rosenthal, 1994: 53). 20 I discussed this temporal structure further in (Legg, 2014b) and (Legg, 2017). My understanding owes a great deal to (Rosenthal, 1994; 1988). 21 I discuss this connection further in (Legg, 2018: 131). 22 The status of language-exit moves in Peirce’s hyperinferentialism is another really interesting question, which this paper has insufficient room to discuss, but for an extended argument that under pragmatism, action does not in fact represent a ‘language-exit’, see (Legg & Black, 2020).

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Habits in Perception Legg, C. (2018) ‘Peirce and Sellars on Nonconceptual Content’, in Corti, L. and Nunziante, A. (eds.) Sellars and the History of Modern Philosophy. London: Routledge, pp. 119–137. Legg, C. (2017) ‘Idealism Operationalized: How Peirce’s Pragmatism Can Help Explicate and Motivate the Possibly Surprising Idea of Reality as Representational’, in Hull, K. and Atkins, R.K. (eds.) From Icons to Logic: Peirce on Perception and Reasoning. New York: Routledge, pp. 40–53. Legg, C. (2014a) ‘Charles Peirce’s Limit Concept of Truth’, Philosophy Compass, 9 (3), pp. 204–213. Legg, C. (2014b) ‘‘Things Unreasonably Compulsory’: A Peircean Challenge to a Human Theory of Perception: Particularly with Respect to Perceiving Necessary Truths’, Cognitio, 15 (1), pp. 89–112. Legg, C. (2008a) ‘Making it Explicit and Clear: From ‘Strong’ to ‘Hyper-‘Inferentialism in Brandom and Peirce’, Metaphilosophy, 39 (1), pp. 105–123. Legg, C. (2008b) ‘The Problem of the Essential Icon’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 45 (3), pp. 207–232. Legg, C. and Black, J. (2020) ‘What Is Intelligence For? A Peircean Pragmatist Response to the Knowinghow, Knowing-that Debate’, Erkenntnis, pp. 1–20. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-020-00301-9 Levine, S. (2015) ‘Norms and Habits: Brandom on the Sociality of Action’, European Journal of Philosophy, 23 (2), pp. 248–272. Levine, S. (2012) ‘Brandom’s Pragmatism’, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 48 (2), pp. 125–140. Macbeth, D. (2010) ’Inference, Meaning, and Truth in Brandom, Sellars, and Frege’, in Weiss, B. and Wanderer, J. (eds.) Reading Brandom. New York: Routledge, pp. 207–222. Martin, M.G.F. (2004) ‘The Limits of Self-Awareness’, Philosophical Studies, 120 (1–3), pp. 37–89. Massecar, A. (2012) ‘Peirce’s Interesting Associations’, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy, 48 (2), pp.191–208. McDowell, J. (2009) Having the World in View: Essays on Kant, Hegel, and Sellars. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press. McDowell, J. (2005) ‘Motivating Inferentialism: Comments on Making It Explicit (Ch. 2)’, Pragmatics and Cognition, 13 (1), pp. 121–140. McDowell, J. (1997) ‘Brandom on Representation and Inference’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 57 (1), pp. 157–162. McDowell, J. (1994a) ‘The Content of Perceptual Experience’, The Philosophical Quarterly, 44 (175), pp. 190–205. McDowell, J. (1994b) Mind and World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Noë, A. (2004) Action in Perception. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Nöth, W. (2016) ‘Habits, Habit Change, and the Habit of Habit-Change According to Peirce’, in West, D. and Anderson, M. (eds.) Consensus on Peirce’s Concept of Habit: Before and Beyond Consciousness. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, pp. 35–63. Nöth, W. (2014) ‘The Growth of Signs’, Σημειωτκή-Sign Systems Studies, 42 (2–3), pp. 172–192. Nöth, W. (2010) ‘The Criterion of Habit in Peirce’s Definitions of the Symbol’, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 46 (1), pp. 82–93. Peirce, C.S. (1992) Essential Peirce, vol. 1: Selected Philosophical Writings (1867–1893) (EP1), in Houser, N. and Kloesel, C. (eds.). Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Peirce, C.S. (1998) Essential Peirce, vol. 2: Selected Philosophical Writings (1893–1913) (EP2), in Houser, N. and Kloesel, C. (eds.). Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Peirce, C.S. (1997) Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking: The 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism. Turrisi, P.A. (ed.). Albany: State University of New York Press. Peirce, C.S. (1931-1958) Collected Papers (CP), vols. 1-8. Hartshorne, C., Weiss, P. and Burks, A. (eds.). Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Quine, W.V.O. (1960) Word and Object. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Redding, P. (2014) ‘An Hegelian Solution to a Tangle of Problems facing Brandom’s Analytic Pragmatism’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 23 (4), pp. 657–680. Redding, P. (2010) Analytic Philosophy and the Return of Hegelian Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rosenthal, S. (1994) Charles Peirce’s Pragmatic Pluralism. Albany: SUNY Press. Rosenthal, S. (1988) ‘Peirce’s Pragmatic Kantianism: Towards New Epistemic Foundations’, Philosophie et Culture: Actes du XVIIe Congrès Mondial de Philosophie, 2, pp. 948–952. Sant’Anna, A. (2018) ‘Perception Pragmatized: A Pragmatic Reconciliation of Representationalism and Relationalism’, Philosophia, 46, pp. 411–432. Sellars, W. (1997) Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Introduction by Rorty, R. and a Study Guide by Brandom, R. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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INDEX

active habits 93–4 active power 90 activity: concept 45–6; contribution of 46; prior engagement in 45 act of reasoning, Descartes on 67–73 adikein see unjust actions Agamben, G. 183, 188, 190 Allen, R. C. 76 Amstell, S. 208, 211 Annas, J. 47n7 Anscombe, E. 154 antecipuum 255 Anticipation 168 Arango, A. 138 Archelaus 15, 16, 18 Arendt, H. 141 Ariew, R. 70 Aristotle 5, 184; about nature of habituation 38–40; on activity concept 45–6; disambiguating EN II 1, 1103a15–17 28–31; on embryonic development 200; on ethos and ethismos (habit, habituation) 37–46; ethos and ethismos in Nicomachean Ethics 41–3; on ethos in Eudemian Ethics 40–1; and ethos in teaching in NE 10.9 43–5; on habituation as guided practice 22–33; α-model, appeal of 31–3; on virtue, full virtue, phronêsis 23–4; virtue acquisition, models of 24–5; virtue ethics of 220–1; virtue of character, defining 25–8 Armstrong, D. M. 132n14 Arrian 53, 62n32 artificial associations in moral education 80–2 art practice 224–5 askçsis (training) 14, 18–9 aspiration 153, 161, 162 Associationism 169

Athenian Assembly/law court 15 Augustine of Hippo: Confessions by 185; on habit and prayer 185 Augustinian mysticism 183 Avital, E. 196 Azouvi, F. 188 bad habits 57, 58 Baillet, A. 72 Barney, R. 46n2, 49n34 Barron, A. B. 204 beliefs 59 Bellantone, A. 190 Bergman, M. 253; on Peirce’s theory of perception 253–4 Bergson, H. 169, 170; on habit and time 166–177 Besse, Ludovic de 186 Biran, P. M.de 172, 188, 189 Bird, A. 200 Blumenberg, H. 70 Bochenski, J. 69 Boerhaave, H. 78 boldness 90 boulçsin (wish) 13 Bourdieu, P. 192 Bourgault, S. 192 Boutroux, E. 173, 175 Bradley, F. H.: fictions 126–8; habit, disposition and tendency 125–6; against habit hypothesis 124; on habits and prediction of actions 130–2; moral danger of habits 128–130; supporting habit hypothesis 121–4 Brandom, R. 244, 245, 246 Breen, K. 183 Brewer, T. 225, 226

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Index Brinton, L. J. 209, 214, 215 Brown, L. 35n13, 36n24 Buckingham, H 76, 84 Burkhardt, R. 199 Burnyeat, M. 35n19 Burrows, R. 186 Bussman, H. 209 Butler, J. 172; Analogy of Religion by 93; Sermon on Human Nature by 94; on will and double law of habit 93–5 Callard, A. 153, 161, 162 Callicles–Socrates debate 13–9 Caminada, E. 147n8 Capek, J. 154 Carey, N. 200 Carlisle, C. 90, 184, 187, 189, 190, 238 Carman, T. 164n6 Carnage, film by Simon Amstell 208, 211–3 Carter, E. 55 Cartesian Linguistics 72 Cartesian psychophysiology 91 Cassan, E. 68 Catana, L. 4 Categories, by Aristotle 56 Certeau, M.d. 186 Chomsky, N. 72 Christian morality 76–86 Christian mysticism 183–4 Chrysippus 52, 54 Chung, E. 203 Cicero 53 Cleanthes 54 Coleman, C. 183, 187 Coleridge, S. T. 77 communal vocations 140 compassion 193 contemplation 186 contrary habit 55–7 Corrigan, J. 184 coutume 67 craft (technç): features of 17; procurement of 13, 14, 17–8 culture 116n9 Curzer, H. 44 cynicism 57

Descartes: on act of reasoning 67–73; Discourse on the Method 67, 71; Meditations by 184; on philosophy 220 desire 221, 225 Dewey, J. 2, 209, 210, 215 Dias, B. G. 203 diathesis 56 Di Basilio 48n22 discipline 107 discourse ecology model: habit and habitat 208–10; lexico-political 210–2; overview 207–8; reshaping world 215–7; reversals in objective arrangements 212–5 disposition 90; Bradley’s account of 125, 132n14; and mechanism of association 126 DNA methylation 202 Donohoe, J. 135, 136 double law of habit 93–5 Dretske, F. 243 Dreyfus, H. 153, 156 dynamin (power) 13, 17–8 Egger, V. 175 emotional responses 46 Epictetus on habituation 51–61; contrary habit 55–7; on negative influences 57–8; noncognitive training 58–61; progress towards wisdom 53–4; training students 51–3 epigenetics 200–4; see also Darwin’s theory ethical agency 17, 19 Ethics 27, 29, 31, 32 ethismos: Aristotle on 37–46; in Nicomachean Ethics 41–3; see also habituation ethos: Aristotle on 37–46; in Eudemian Ethics 40–1; in Nicomachean Ethics 41–3; and teaching in NE 10.9 43–5 Eudemian Ethics 35n18, 40–1 external moral habit 113

D’Arcy, A. 211 Darwin’s theory: epigenetics 200–4; habits and instincts in 197–8; transformational to variational view of evolution 198–200 Davidson, D. 154 decision (prohairesis) 22 deduction 69 Deleuze, G. 220, 221; on habit and time 166–177 deliberation 24

familiarity and habit-formation 235–9 Fénelon, F. 187 firstness (quality) 249 force of habit 229, 239 free acts 176 free will 83, 85, 96 French spiritualism 183 friendship 109 full virtue 23–4 Gassendi, P. 72 Gaukroger, S. 71 Gay, J. 80 generational vocations 140 Giardini, F. 186 Glassman, R. B. 76, 84 Good sense 67

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Index grace: arrival of 187; concept of 189; habit and, French spiritualism 187–191; operating 185; receiving 185, 186; vs. works 186 grammaticalisation 210 Grant, A. 38, 41 grounding of character 109–12 Guattari, F. 220 guided practice: Aristotle on 22–33; β model 25; examples 24n10; see also habituation Guyon, J. 186 Haack, S. 245 habit: action, and Merleau-Ponty 154–6; in Ancient Philosophy 4–5; Aristotle’s account 37; of art, Reid on 98–100; in Charles Darwin’s work 196–204; Christian mysticism and 183–4; contemporary perspectives on 8–10; dispositional account of 121–132; disposition and tendency 125–6; double law of 93–5; and early modern philosophy 5–6; in Eudemian Ethics 40–1; in Hartley’s reconciling project 76–86; importance in Christian mysticism 183; involuntary 90–3; mechanical, and habits of art 98–100; Merleau-Ponty’s account of 156–61; and modern philosophy 7–8; moral danger of 128–30; moral value of 112–4; in neural vibrations 78–9; in Nicomachean Ethics 41–3; philosophy of 1–3; and prediction of actions 130–2; and skill, difference 234; and teaching NE 10.9 43–5; of thinking well 67–73; voluntary 90–3, 100–01 habit-acquisition, conditions of 221 habit and practice: concept of habit 221–2; concept of practice 222–4; kinds of practice 224–5; overview 220–1; philosophy, defined 220 habit and will: in British philosophy 89–101; David Hume on 95–6; Dugald Stewart on 100–01; George Turnbull on 93–5; Joseph Butler on 93–5; in Locke’s philosophy 90–3; Thomas Reid on 98–100; William Porterfield on 96–8 habit-formation: familiarity and 235–9; Merleau-Ponty on habit-bearer’s perspective 230–3; mistakes by Merleau-Ponty 233–5; overview 229–30 habit hypothesis: against 124; support for 121–4 habits in perception see hyperinferentialism, diachronic defence of habitual impulses 60 habituation 158; Aristotle on, as guided practice 22–33; Aristotle’s account 37–45; Bradley on 123; defined 14; Epictetus on 51–61; and institution 138; and institution of vocational tasks 137–9; nature of 38–40; need for 29; in Nicomachean Ethics 41–3; non-rational model of 23, 27; to partisans of regimes 14–5; practical virtues, promoting 29; quasi-definition by Aristotle 39; Socrates on 13–9 Hadot, P. 183, 191, 192 Hampson, M. 47n8; on Aristotelian virtue 226–7 happiness, true 85

Hartley, D.: artificial associations in moral education 80–2; on Christian morality and usual course of nature 76–86; in materialist determinism 82–5; on mechanical nature of habits 100–01; mental habits on moral behaviour 79–80; neural vibrations doctrine of 78–9; Prayers and Religious Meditations by 81 Harvey, W. 200 Hatch, R. B. 83 Hausman, C. 255 Heijmans, B. T. 203 Heinämaa, S. 135 Hellenistic philosophy 185 hereditary habits 197 Histone modifications 202 Hookway, C. 249 Hughes, J. 176 humankind, categories of 53 Hume, D. 3, 168, 169, 170; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by 96; on force of habit 170–2; on habit and will 95–6 Hume-Bergson amalgamation 168 Hupolêpsis 22, 35n16 Husserl, E. 73, 167; Cartesian Meditations by 139; The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology by 134; on phenomenological vocation 134–147; see also phenomenology as vocation hyperinferentialism, diachronic defence of: Bergman on Peirce’s theory of perception 253–4; challenges to naïve perceptual hyperinferentialism 247–8; cognitive underpinnings of symbol 251–2; overview 243–4; Peirce’s theory of perception 248–251; percipuum, temporarily structured 254–6; strong to hyper inferentialism 244–7 impulses 59, 60 inheritance 140 instincts 98; in Darwin’s theory 197–8 institution and habituation 138 intellectual habit and moral education 105–114; see also Kant, I. intergenerational responsibility 203 intuition 69 involuntary habits 90–3 Inwood, B. 40 Jablonka, E. 196, 200 Jacobs, H. 135, 139, 140 James, W. 1, 222 Jones, T. 163 Kambouchner, D. 70 Kant, I.: Anthropology 105; on epigenetics 201; on freedom 226; on grounding of character 109–12; on intellectual habit 105–14; Kantian

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Index autonomy 114–5; Metaphysics of Morals by 111, 112; on moral education of children 106–9; on moral value of habit 112–4; Pedagogy by 105 Kierkegaardian philosophy 225 kineisthai 40 Klüver, H. 76, 80 Kneale, M. 69 Kneale, W. 69 knowledge 35n19 Kotva, S. 190 Kraut, R. 36n21 Laertius, D. 54 language use 72, 73, 82, 207 Lear, J. 225, 226 learning (mathçsis) 14, 18–19 Lee, M. 152 Legg, C. 250 Lemoine, A.: on repetition 174; on time 174 Levine, S. 246 Lewontin, R. 198 lexicalisation 210, 214 Lickliter, R. 203 Linguists 209 Locke, J. 72, 80; An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by 90; on voluntary/involuntary habits 90–93 Lockwood, T. 184 Lohmar, D. 139 Loidolt, S. 136 Lorenz, H. 36n22 Louden, R. 117n16 Lovejoy, A. 178n11 Lupica, D. 213 Malikail, J. 192 Manier, E. 199 Marcus Aurelius 62n32 Marno, D. 183 Massecar, A. 251 materialist determinism 82–85 Matthews, P. H. 209 Matthews, S. G. 202 McDowell, J. 230, 237, 247 Meacham, D. 139, 141 mechanical habits 98–100 Meditations 184 Meloni, M. 203 mental habits on moral behaviour 79–80 mere aptitude 113 mere intellect (γ) model 25 mere repetition (α) model 25; appeal of 31–33 Merleau-Ponty, M. 135; on bodily knowledge 158–9; on conception of habit 156–61; habit, action, and 154–6; on habit-bearer’s perspective 230–3; mistakes by 233–5; on nincorporation

157; Phenomenology of Perception by 154; on situational spatiality 157–8 Merton, T. 187 meson/mesotês distinction 35n13, 36n25 moral aptitude 113 moral behaviour, mental habits on 79–80 moral education: artificial associations in 80–2; of children 106–9 moral habituation 37, 44, 46n2 morality: by Bradley 122 moral value of habit 112–4 Moran, D. 139 Moss, J. 23, 36n25, 39 motor habit 231 Müller, J. 197 Mulligan, K. 142 Murdoch, I. 183, 187, 192, 193 Murphy, G. 76, 80 Musonius Rufus 57, 58, 61n5 naïve perceptual hyperinferentialism 247, 253 Nenon, T. 142 neologisms 209 neural vibrations 78–9 neuter instincts 199 Newton’s theory of vibrations 78 Nicomachean Ethics 22, 23, 29, 41–43 Nielsen, K. M. 47n10, 48n33 non-cognitive training 58–61 non-wise person 53, 57 Nuchelmans 71 Ospovat, D. 199 parallelism 84 partisan (hetairos) 14–5, 19 part-time dualism 84 passive habits 93–4 passive meditation 186 passive power 90 passivity of mind 185 Pawley, A. 214 Peirce. C.: theory of perception 248–51, 252 perception 164n6, 243; and telepathy 248 perceptual judgment 249 percipuum 249 Peripateticizing Stoics 54 personal acts 153 pharmakon 220 phenomenalism 127 phenomenology: defined 140 phenomenology as vocation: habituation and institution of vocational tasks 137–9; overview 134–7; periodical alteration/irrecoverable transformation 144–7; vocational time 139–41;

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Index volitional grounds of decisions/commitments 141–4 phenomenology of perception: habit, action, and Merleau-Ponty 154–6; Merleau-Ponty on habit 156–61; overview 152–4; personal acts, habit and aspiration 161–4 Phillips, D. I. 202 Philo of Alexandria 18 philosophical vocations 144 philosophy, defined 220 philosophy of habit 1–3 phronêsis 23, 34n6 physical education 107 Pickstock, C. 191 Pierre Coste 72 Plato: Apology 23e4–5 16; Gorgias 509c6–d6 4, 13–9; see also Socrates pleasure 109 Plutarch 53, 55 political craft 17, 18 political vocations 147n1 politics: of language use 207; Socrates on 13–19 Politics VII and VIII 29, 32, 33 pollakis 49n30 Polus 13, 17, 18 ponecipuum 255 Porterfield, W.: on pervasiveness of will 96–8; A Treatise on the Eye by 96 power (dynamin): procurement of 13, 14, 17–8 practical knowledge 237 practical wisdom 22, 34n8 practice 29; art practice 224–5; concept of 222–4; skill practice 225; spiritual practice 225 prayer manuals 186 Prendiville, J. G. 185 presentationism 253 preternatural states 79 Priestley, J. 76, 78 primitive sensations 246 principled self 122 Principles of Philosophy, by Descartes 73 prudence 22, 24, 27, 33n3 punishment: Socrates on 16 Pythagorean Golden Verses 59 Quietism 186, 187 Quine, W. V. O. 243 Radford, E. J. 203 Ratcliffe, M. 236 Ravaisson, F. 172, 173, 187, 189, 190; virtue as skill practice 226 receptivity 222 recurrent (habitual) thoughts 197 Redding, P 247, 248 redintegration 126

reflexive philosophy 187 regime (politeia) 14, 15 Reid, T. 77, 171, 244; Active Powers of Man by 98; on mechanical habits and habits of art 98–100 reinstitution 139 relationism 244 religion and habit 183–4 repetition 222; and continuity 190; and instant 174; mechanism of 46 representationalism 243, 245 representationism 253 resistance 222 Ressler, K.J. 203 Richards, R. 197, 199 Rink, T. 106 Risse, W. 69 RNAs, non-coding 202 Robinson, G. E. 204 Rodis-Lewis, G. 70 Romdenh-Romluc, K. 156, 234, 235 Russell, B. 193, 236 scholastic logic 70 Scott, D. 36 scriptures 81, 82 secondness (reaction) 249 secular morality 193 Seinsollen 142, 148n15 self-control 113 self-realization 132n1 Sellers, W. 256 semiotic idealism 256 Seneca 59 Sextius 59 shame, limited use of 108 Simmons, K. 109 Simplicius 54 Sinclair, M. 173, 190 skill 156; acquisition 43, 233; practice 225 social epigenetics 203 social habits and language use 207 Socrates: on habituation and politics 13–9; on learning and training 18–9; on procurement of power and craft 13–4, 17–8; on virtues 34n6; see also unjust actions Socratic intellectualism 14 Somers-Hall, H. 170 speech, phenomenon of 71 Spinoza 220 spiritual exercises 184 spiritual life, Christian mysticism and: habit and contemplative turn 191–3; habit and grace, French spiritualism 187–91; habit and prayer, Augustinian mysticism 185–7; philosophy of religion 183–4 spiritual practice 225

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Index spiritual tranquillity 191 Stewart, D. 166; on voluntary habits 100–01 Stjernfelt, F. 250 Stoic Scala naturae 55 Syder, F. H. 214 Tava, F. 141 teaching 30, 31, 43–5 tendency 2, 171; in 19th-century France 172–4 testiness 90 thirdness (mediation) 249 Thomas of Aquinas 185 thoughtfulness 114 time: Bergson’s account of 168; Lemoine on 174; linear conceptions of 166; as living-present 168; nature of 167; passive synthesis 168; in 19thcentury France 172–4 training 14, 18–9, 51–3 tranquillity 185 transcendental empiricism 176 transcendental idealism 148n19 transcendental phenomenology 134 Traugott, E. C. 209, 214, 215 true judgments 68 true politics 17 Tschirnhaus 72 Turnbull, G.: on will and double law of habit 93–5 Underhill, E. 186 unjust actions (adikein) 13; doing what is unjust 16; not committing 15–6; not suffering from 14–5; suffering from 13 unthinking habit 113 Veenendal, M. V. E. 203 vibrationism 79, 86n7

vibratiuncles 82 virtue 23–24, 42, 56; described by Augustine 185 virtue acquisition 23, 31, 42, 230 virtue acquisition models 24; guided practice (β) model 25; mere intellect (γ) model 25; mere repetition (α) model 25 virtue of character 22, 37; defined by Aristotle 25–28 virtue of thought 30, 37 vocation: defined by Husserl 137, 140 volitional intentionality 136 voluntary habits 90–3, 92, 100–01 Waddington, C. H. 201 Wallace, D. F. 160, 161 Watson, D. 209, 210 Weil, S. 183, 192, 193 will: and double law of habit 93–5; and habit, in 18 century British philosophy 89–101; habit and 95–6; pervasiveness of 96–8 Williams, B. 106 Williams, J. 176 Wilson, A. B. 76 wisdom 53–4, 57 wish (boulçsin) 13 Witherington, D. C. 203 Wotton, W. 72 Wright, J. 199 Xenophon 17 Yehuda, R. 203 Zeno 60

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