Habit makes the soul regain a second nature

Evidence

Habit is the process whereby the contingent becomes essential. Man can ‘present the genus’to the degree that habit is the unforeseen element of the genus. Habit, then, appears as the future of the undifferentiated genus. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 601 (#expands, via linked claim)

Habit makes teleological accomplishment possible, yet renders that achievement null and void. Once the end is reached, the subject disappears: ‘it is the habit of living which brings on death, or, if put quite abstractly, is death itself’. What fulfils, destroys. Living is exhausting, and building the mechanisms of body and spirit also brings exhaustion. That is why the motions of body and spirit must be channelled into the shape of habit. For it is habit that draws the line between using and exhausting one’s forces; it offers leisure in the midst of carrying on, establishes a reservoir of potential energy to guarantee that the individual can continue. Yet at the very moment that habit awakens and restores, it puts to sleep. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 610 (#expands, via linked claim)

Habit allows the soul to appropriate a certain content without losing itself or becoming immersed in that content, but also without being indifferent to it: neither within the soul nor outside it. Moving between the inside and the outside, between ‘interior’ and ‘exterior’, the soul establishes its ‘rational liberation’: ‘Thinking, too, however free … no less requires habit and familiarity (Geläufigkeit) (this impromptuity or form of immediacy), by which it is the property of my singular Self.’ — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 578 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Habit etymologically converts having into a way of being — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 384; Habit elevates time to a second power enabling nature’s transition into spirit — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 485; Adaptation itself is a theoretical activity combining contemplation and exercise — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 512 (+8 more)

Related

• Habit both restores vitality and sedates the subject it sustains (similarity 0.91)
• Through habit the soul regains a nature it natively lacks. (similarity 0.90)
• Habit enables the soul to hold content without immersion or indifference. (similarity 0.89)
• Habit is spirit’s reduction of nature into possessable logical determinations (similarity 0.88)
• Habit etymologically converts having into a way of being (similarity 0.87)
• Habit enables the reversibility of psychic and physical attributes. (similarity 0.86)
• Habit transforms contingent acts into essential determinations of being. (similarity 0.86)
• Habit transforms natural into spiritual nature and grounds ethical life itself (similarity 0.86)
• Habit elevates time to a second power enabling nature’s transition into spirit (similarity 0.86)
• Habit’s reversible soul-body translation constitutes the Self and awakens consciousness. (similarity 0.86)
• Habit is an intentionally-produced alteration that defines how humans acquire form (similarity 0.86)
• Habit is the process whereby contingent determinations become essential (similarity 0.85)
• Man’s habit-forming power exemplifies spirit’s incarnation in time. (similarity 0.85)
• Habit produces the plastic individual as a unity of soul and body (similarity 0.84)
• Habit’s simplification costs spirit a sacrificial alienation of itself. (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• Habit both restores vitality and sedates the subject it sustains #expands (0.85) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 610
• Habit transforms contingent acts into essential determinations of being. #expands (0.85) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 601
• Habit enables the soul to hold content without immersion or indifference. #expands (0.80) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 578
• Repeated bodily practices form the self rather than merely express it #expands (0.80) — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 1022
• Habit is the organic being’s effort to maintain unity through synthesizing differences #expands (0.75)
• Modern Western rootlessness is learned as second-nature habit #exemplifies (0.75)