Total habituation to life extinguishes the very striving that constitutes vitality

Evidence

Habit murders man. And it does so just as surely as it makes man live. If habit collapses the distance that divides the aim from its realization, if it makes accomplishment a real fact, it is also a force of death which, once the aim is achieved, puts the individual to death: … Human beings even die as result of habit – that is, if they have become totally habituated to life, and spiritually and physically blunted, and the opposition between subjective consciousness and spiritual activity has disappeared. For they are only active in so far as they have not yet attained something and wish to assert themselves and show what they can do in pursuit of it. Once this is accomplished, their activity and vitality disappear, and the loss of interest which ensues is spiritual or physical death. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 608

Categorization

• XREF: This mirrors the earlier claim that maturation into universality is achieved only at the cost of vitality — habit here consummates that dialectic into literal death.