Habit is the organism’s lifelong effort to synthesize internal and external differences into unity.

Evidence

Auto-differentiation assumes a measurable length of time between the living being’s originary principle and its ultimate end, an ‘action lying in the middle between its first and last stage’. The organic being is characterized by its effort in maintaining its own unity through the synthesis of differences: the difference between the organism and its environment and the difference between the heterogeneous elements which make up the organism. Such an effort is nothing less than habit itself: from the beginning to the end of the organism’s life, habit is busy applying its power from the inside, fulfilling the individual development of the organism’s faculties. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 500

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines habit as auto-differentiation’s unifying effort — the core plasticity concept via Hegel.
• XREF: Connects to Malabou’s brain work: habit as the organism’s plastic self-maintenance maps onto neural plasticity as life-long reconfiguration. — connects to: Habit is the organic being’s effort to maintain unity through synthesizing differences; Habit produces the plastic individual as a unity of soul and body — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 582

Broader Connections

• Habit is the organic being’s effort to maintain unity through synthesizing differences #corroborates (0.95)
• Habit produces the plastic individual as a unity of soul and body #expands (0.75) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 582