Habit resists dating because it is a memory without recollection of origin

Evidence

Habit is a mode of presence that cannot be reduced to the present time of the now. In this way it is temporally unique. For I can easily say that at a certain moment I possess this or that knowledge, this or that talent, without at that moment making use of it. But everything which is, so to speak, held within me, can also at any moment have a different outcome, falling outside this fragile slice of a ‘now’, or of an instant. It is impossible to give a date to habit. Habit is a memory which, like all memory, has lost the recollection of its own origin. We never know exactly when habit began or when it actually ceases to exist. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 484

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that habit is a memory whose origin is necessarily forgotten, and thus undatable, is a dense philosophical insight resisting one-line summary — it joins time, self, and the unconscious of the body.
• XREF: Echoes the reader’s brain-plasticity work: neural habits persist beyond awareness of their formation, a somatic memory without origin. — connects to: Habit’s relation to what one has resists infinite regress of having; Habit etymologically converts having into a way of being — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 384; Habit is the preservation of a first modification without repetition of the modification — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 502 (+6 more)
• DEFINE: Defines habit’s peculiar temporality — present yet undatable, a presence irreducible to the now.

Broader Connections

• Habit’s relation to what one has resists infinite regress of having #expands (0.85)
• Habit is the preservation of a first modification without repetition of the modification #expands (0.85) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 502
• Habit etymologically converts having into a way of being #corroborates (0.80) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 384
• Habit is an intentionally-produced alteration that defines how humans acquire form #corroborates (0.80)
• Human habit conceals its own habitual character, whereas animal habit does not #corroborates (0.75) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 551
• Memory poetically completes the past self with a plenitude of being #qualifies (0.75)
• Habit is the organic being’s effort to maintain unity through synthesizing differences #expands (0.75)
• Habit converts learned subjection into free action #corroborates (0.75) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 404