Habit alters a being’s internal potentiality, not merely its outward states.

Evidence

Ravaisson, commenting on this passage, argues: ‘Habit does not simply introduce mutability into something that would otherwise continue without changing; it suggests change within a disposition, within its potentiality, within the internal character of that in which the change occurs, which does not change.’ — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 495

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• XREF: Clarifies habit/hexis as alteration of potentiality, echoing Aristotle’s conserving alteration already tracked in this book.

Related

• Ravaisson saw habit as change occurring within an unchanged internal disposition (similarity 0.89)
• Habit transforms contingent acts into essential determinations of being. (similarity 0.85)
• Habit is the organic being’s effort to maintain unity through synthesizing differences (similarity 0.84)
• Habit unites change with the preservation of its modifications. (similarity 0.84)
• Habit, following Aristotle, is an alteration that does not corrupt but forms spirit. (similarity 0.83)
• Habit is the process whereby contingent determinations become essential (similarity 0.83)
• Habit is an intentionally-produced alteration that defines how humans acquire form (similarity 0.83)
• Habit converts imposed external constraint into self-chosen desire for what is (similarity 0.82)
• Habit collapses the gap between ideal aim and its actual realization (similarity 0.82)
• Habit functions paradoxically as both a force of death and of life (similarity 0.82)
• Habit is spirit’s reduction of nature into possessable logical determinations (similarity 0.82)
• Aristotle defined habit as aptitude for change plus preservation of modification (similarity 0.82)
• Habit is the plastic operation rendering the body fully pervious (similarity 0.81)
• Habit abolishes the partition between interior and exterior (similarity 0.81)
• Habit converts learned subjection into free action (similarity 0.81)