Habit produces the plastic character making man both universal and individual.
Evidence
Man, who forms himself in order to become a substantial individuality, represents the paradigmatic instance of this movement whereby substance is self-differentiated. Habit has helped man to acquire the ‘plastic character’, making him at once ‘universal and individual’. This is exemplary for the way spirit’s universality, in its different moments, acquires concreteness and actuality through its incarnation in those individual forms. Thus in Hegel, the notion of an ‘individual’ does not merely apply to man, but ultimately can apply also to a nation, an artistic epoch, a philosophy, or a moment of the ‘substance-subject’. Subjectivity is not a reality existing in advance of the process whereby it becomes self-differentiated: each of its moments emerges from an independent interpretation of its own being. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 596
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines the ‘plastic character’ - habit forging individuality that is simultaneously universal and singular - the core plasticity concept the reader seeks.
- XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s brain-work project: plasticity as the formation of concrete individuality through habitual repetition, mirrored in neural plasticity as synaptic habituation. — connects to: Plastic individuals become what they essentially were and wanted to be; Habit is the plastic operation rendering the body fully pervious; Plasticity is the mutual informing of universal and particular in the exemplary individual — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 237 (+6 more)
- DEEPTHINKING: The claim that subjectivity is not prior to its self-differentiation but emerges interpretively has profound consequences for any theory of identity or self-formation.
Broader Connections
- Plasticity is the mutual informing of universal and particular in the exemplary individual
#expands(0.85) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 237 - Man’s habit-forming power exemplifies spirit’s incarnation in time.
#expands(0.82) - Habit is an intentionally-produced alteration that defines how humans acquire form
#expands(0.80) - Habitus is a permanent character trait whereas habits are changeable
#qualifies(0.80) — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 953 - Habit transforms contingent acts into essential determinations of being.
#expands(0.78) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 601 - A defining habit can characterize a person economically
#epitomizes(0.70) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 372