Habit generates continuity, selfhood, and foresight in animals

Evidence

Habit is what gives a being the impression of its existence as something continuous, and this Hegel calls the ‘impression of selfhood’. Habit makes it possible to retain the changes that occur and to expect that they will recur. Invoking the past and the future, habit brings becoming to life. In return, the individual feels the weight of its own existence. The animal is already the subject of such a mechanism. Thus we can recognize in the animal an elementary form of seeing what is coming, of the voir venir. Need, appetite, desire, the accumulation of such retentions and expectations, are themselves proof of the fact that the animal is concerned to ensure the perpetuation of its own life. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 537

Categorization

• DEFINE: Habit as retentional-expectational structure produces the ‘impression of selfhood’ — definition of habit’s constitutive role in subjectivity.
• XREF: This proto-temporality of habit (retention and expectation) connects to Malabou’s later claim that temporal synthesis is itself plastic rather than fixed. — connects to: Habit itself precedes humanity and belongs already to animal existence

Broader Connections

• Habit itself precedes humanity and belongs already to animal existence #expands (0.95)