Body & Society: The Question of Habit in Theology and Philosophy: From Hexis To Plasticity

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The Question of Habit in Theology and Philosophy: From Hexis to Plasticity

Clare Carlisle Body & Society 2013 19: 30 DOI: 10.1177/1357034X12474475 The online version of this article can be found at: http://bod.sagepub.com/content/19/2-3/30
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Article
Body & Society

19(2&3) 3057
The Question of Habit in Theology and Philosophy: From Hexis to Plasticity

Clare Carlisle
Kings College London, London, UK
The Author(s) 2013

Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1357034X12474475 bod.sagepub.com
Abstract This article examines medieval and early modern theologies of habit (those of Augustine, Aquinas and Luther), and traces a theme of appropriation through the discourse on habit and grace. It is argued that the question of habit is central to theological debates about human freedom, and about the nature of the Godrelationship. Continuities are then highlighted with modern philosophical accounts of habit, in particular those of Ravaisson and Hegel. The article ends by considering some of the philosophical and political implications of the preceding analysis of habit. Keywords freedom, habit, habitus, Hegel, Ravaisson, theology
In her 2004 book What Should We Do with Our Brain?, Cathe rine Malabou explores questions of freedom and empowerment in response to contemporary neuroscience. What especially interests Malabou is the way in which the concept of plasticity suggests a non-mechanistic form of materialism (see Malabou, 2008: 338). If our actions and thoughts shape our brains by forging and strengthening neural pathways, then we are free to constitute our own materiality. And, of course, this freedom brings with it responsibility, as the title of Malabous book implies. If our brain is in part essentially
Corresponding author: Clare Carlisle, Kings College London, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS, UK. Email: clare.carlisle@kcl.ac.uk http://www.sagepub.net/tcs/
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what we do with it, this has ethical and political implications: responsibility in the double movement of the receiving and the giving of form (Malabou, 2008: 30). This idea challenges the mind body dualism that runs through our philosophical tradition. If we are responsible for our embodiment, we should not, like Plato, Descartes or Kant, regard our thinking, willing selves as confined by our bodies, nor as separate from them. Likewise, we cannot separate the natural from the cultural: if the brain is in some way a self-cultivating organ, which culture would correspond to it, which culture could no longer be a culture of biological determinism, could no longer be, in other words, a culture against nature? (Malabou, 2008: 30). For Malabou, raising these questions involves an ideological critique of fundamental concepts of the neurosciences (2008: 82). In particular, she argues that the concept of plasticity is mistaken for an idea of flexibility that is by no means politically neutral: this is, in fact, a requirement of capitalism, which demands a docile workforce that is endlessly pliable and adaptable to the fluctuating conditions of the market. Asserting that many descriptions of plasticity are in fact unconscious justifications of a flexibility without limits (2008: 13), Malabou draws attention to a neglected aspect of plasticity: resistance to change as well as receptivity; the power to create and impose form as well as the capacity to be formed. While flexibility is predominantly passive, plasticity combines both passivity and activity, adaptability and determination. However, the idea of plasticity that has become central to neuroscience over the last few decades (see Hebb, 1949; Konorski, 1948) echoes a much older and more everyday notion: habit. Plasticity is not habit, but it is a condition of habit. And a long tradition of philosophical reflection on habit suggests that it exhibits the supposedly radical properties that Malabou attributes to her own concept of plasticity. Our capacity to acquire habits testifies to this plasticity insofar as it rests on the twin conditions of receptivity and resistance to change. If we could not be modified by our actions, by others actions, and by our environment, then these could not produce habits in us. And if we were not to some degree resistant to change, we would be affected and modified continually: we would not repeat ourselves, as we do through our habits. The fact that we, both as individuals and collectively, are creatures of habit at once explains why it can be hard to change, and indicates that it is always possible to do things differently.
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Body & Society 19(2&3)
This ambivalence concerning habit has provoked extended philosophical debate about the relationship between habit and freedom, and, concomitantly, about the ethical significance of habit. As many philosophers have recognized, habit is central to our embodiment. For some, such as Kant, this places habit on one side of a dualism between the mind and the body, and between freedom and necessity. Several post-Kantian thinkers, including Hegel and the French spiritualists and phenomenologists, such as Ravaisson and MerleauPonty, have challenged this view by arguing that the phenomenon of habit demonstrates that freedom and intelligence inhabit the body. These philosophical debates provide an important background not only to the more explicitly political questions raised by Malabou, but also to the deployment of conceptions of habit and habitus in the social sciences. In this article, however, I want to take this historical contextualization a further step back, by surveying some pre-modern discussions about the role and significance of habit in human life. For thinkers such as Augustine, Aquinas and Luther, philosophy was inseparable from theology and here the problem of habit concerned the limitation of our freedom not simply by our own bodies but by the divine power on which all finite things depend. Thus the debate about habit and freedom has been transformed as conceptions of human autonomy have shifted from a primarily religious cultural context to a primarily philosophical and scientific one. This means that we have forged new, and specifically modern, habits of thinking. In order to reflect on such habits, and gain some critical purchase on assumptions that normally lie hidden from view and condition reflection itself, these theoretical transitions and their practical implications need to be brought explicitly into focus. And, as we shall see when we consider this history of habit, a theme that persistently re-emerges is having and holding: temporal relations of ownership and belonging that underpin individual and collective identities. Theologies of Habit: from Aquinas to Luther The question of what is at stake, theologically as well as philosophically, in the question of habit may be approached through reflection on the different accounts of habit offered by the 13th-century theologian Thomas Aquinas and the 16th-century theologian Martin
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Luther. These accounts represent contrasting responses to the Aristotelian moral tradition, which centres on the idea that virtue consists in habit, understood as a disposition to choose, to act and to feel in certain ways.1 For Aristotle, moral virtue can be defined as a state (hexis) involving rational choice (Aristotle, 2000: 31/Nicomachean Ethics 1106b), and here hexis denotes a stable, relatively long-lasting quality, in contrast to a more transient state (diathesis) such as being hot or cold (see Aristotle, 1963: 24/Categories 8b269). More than this, however, a hexis is constitutive of the person, insofar as it has become through length of time part of a mans nature and irremediable or exceedingly hard to change (Aristotle, 1963: 24/Categories 8b269). The noun hexis derives from the verb ekhein, to have: as an enduring having, the process by which a hexis develops is one of acquisition, appropriation, assimilation. As Claudia Baracchi explains:
a certain activity is transferred from the outside to the inside, as it were. Someone learning takes something in and makes it [her] own . . . in the case of habituation or education, acting in a certain way is not enough: a certain inner modality or awareness accompanying the outward action is needed. (Baracchi, 2008: 117)
This Aristotelian conception of virtue as hexis, and thus as an acquired nature, or a second nature, was taken up by Roman thinkers, who translated hexis as habitus from the verb habere, to have. Cicero, for example, offers a much-quoted definition of virtue as a habit of the soul conforming to the mode of nature and of reason. Thomas Aquinas discussion of virtue and habit in the Summa theologiae reflects his effort to synthesize Christian theology and pagan and especially Aristotelian philosophy.2 On the question of habit, this meant reconciling a classical tradition in which habit was foundational and constitutive for the good life, with a Christian tradition that had a largely negative view of the role of habit. The most influential thinker within this latter tradition was Augustine, who criticized the classical account of virtue as habit for several reasons. First, Augustine thought that virtues acquired by the persons own efforts would always be attended by pride in this accomplishment, and thus would be inherently sinful even though they appeared, more superficially, to be virtuous. His own view was that genuine
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virtue depends on divine grace, since all the virtues are forms of caritas, the love of God that human beings can share in only if it is given as a divine gift. In The City of God Against the Pagans, Augustine argues that classical philosophers such as Cicero display a wondrous vanity in seeking to achieve blessedness by their own efforts (Augustine, 1998: 919). Second, from a more psychological perspective, Augustine regarded habit as a bondage of the will, a force by which old desires persist even after the radical changes brought about through conversion and repentance processes which, it should be noted, themselves require divine grace. He offers a vivid description of habits fearful power in his Confessions:
The rule of sin is the force of habit (consuetudo), by which the mind is swept along and held fast even against its will. . . . I was held fast, not in fetters clamped upon me by another, but by my own will, which had the strength of iron chains. . . . [For desire had grown from my will] and when I gave in to desire habit was born, and when I did not resist the habit it became a necessity. . . . These two wills within me, one old, one new, one the servant of the flesh, the other of the spirit, were in conflict and between them they tore my soul apart. (Augustine, 1961: 164)3
For Augustine, then, habit represented not the form of the good life, but, on the contrary, an obstacle to the kind of virtue to which Christians aspire. Using the concept of habit to explain human sinfulness enabled Augustine to correct the dualism of Manichean theology, according to which all material things i.e. bodies are evil, and all spiritual things i.e. souls are good.4 This dualistic view undermines the Christian belief in a good God as the source of all life. Augustine argues that the soul is ensnared and degraded not by its body but by habit. Even though this process is described in the Confessions as a kind of bondage, the origin of evil has nevertheless been attributed to human agency and desire. Thus, in place of the Manichees cosmic battle between matter and spirit, Augustine envisages a psychological battle between two wills, two forces of desire one of the flesh and the other of the spirit. Aquinas retains Augustines insistence that, for every Christian, the good life is dependent on divine grace, and he follows Augustine in according the central role to the God-given virtue of charity. However, he also retains the classical concept of habitus, albeit in a
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modified form. In the Summa theologiae his discussion of virtue is prefaced by a discussion of habitus, and this section of the text (Ia2ae hereafter ST qq.4954) is now known as the treatise on habits. Here, in defining habit Aquinas makes a very strong link between habit and the will, citing the commentary on Aristotles De anima by the 12th-century Islamic scholar Averroes: a disposition (habitus) is something which a man can exercise in action at will (Aquinas, 1964: 1617/STq.49a.3). There is, of course, a continuity here with Aristotles definition of virtue as a habit of choosing in the right way, but whereas Aristotle mentions choice to invoke a certain kind or class of habits, Aquinas qualifies the concept of habit as such with reference to the will. This makes habit a specifically human category: Aquinas insists that animals cannot acquire habits (see Aquinas, 1964: 325/STq.50a.3). Similarly, within the human being, habits belong to the soul and not to the body, and moreover habit is confined to certain powers of the soul. In this way, Aquinas distances himself from Ciceros conception of habit as a second nature: those characteristics acquired from frequent usage (consuetudo), by mere repetition, should not properly be called habits (see Aquinas, 1969: 33/ STq.56a.5).5 However, just as it is important to note that Aquinas conception of habit is qualified by his emphasis on the will, so we should appreciate that his conception of the will is qualified by his emphasis on habit. This means that Aquinas would reject the modern idea, often implicit in utilitarian, existentialist and decision-based ethical theories, that each choice can be conceived as a distinct rational calculation (or as a distinct non-rational leap). As Simon Oliver argues, for Aquinas:
human acts form a life which is not a succession of discrete states: it is a continuous motion towards the universal end in being, truth and goodness. . . . The motions of mans soul may be collected to form what Aquinas calls habits, [which] are qualities and accidents of a special kind which lie at the heart of the nature of a being and therefore come closest to entering into [its] essence and definition. (Oliver, 2005: 58)
In habit, the common-sense (and perhaps specifically modern) distinction between an agent and her acts begins to break down. Habit is constitutive of both person and work, unifying these in what Oliver here calls a life: a thoroughly temporal existence that, at least for
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Aquinas following Aristotle is oriented to a determinate end. That is to say, human lives are oriented diachronically towards concrete goals, and oriented morally by a conception of the good. Having insisted that habit and, consequently, virtue is essentially related to the human will, Aquinas goes on to emphasize that the kind of virtue to which Christians aspire depends on a habitus that is bestowed by God. This is known as an infused virtue, as opposed to the acquired virtue of which the pagan philosophers write. In defining virtue, Aquinas appeals not to Aristotles Ethics, but to Peter Lombards Sentences, then the standard textbook of Christian theology: Virtue is a good quality of the mind, by which we live rightly, of which no one makes bad use, which God works in us without us (Aquinas, 1969: 11/STq.55a.4). But having cited with approval this Augustinian formulation, Aquinas indicates that it would be more appropriate to replace quality with habitus. What is at stake in this substitution? As we have seen, Aristotle distinguishes the category of hexis from that of diathesis insofar as the former is longer-lasting and more stable, and, crucially, has become natural that is, through a process of appropriation has become constitutive of a persons way of being. Aquinas wants the God-given virtue of charity, from which all other genuine virtues follow, to be understood as a habit in precisely this sense because the alternative is Lombards view, which Aquinas regarded as ridiculous (Kent, 2002: 120), that human acts of charity arise from the souls being moved directly by the Holy Spirit. This latter doctrine implies that a persons charitable acts may be entirely contrary to her own nature and inclinations, and thus may bear no relation to her character, will, state of mind and so on. As Kent explains:
If charity is not something created in the soul if it is not a habit inclining the human agent to act from the love of God, not a second nature, albeit divinely produced, so that acts of charity continue to run counter to the individuals inclinations how could such acts ever be done easily, promptly, and with pleasure? How could acts of charity even be considered voluntary? If the person experiences no internal alteration but instead is moved by God to act contrary to her nature, how is she any more the cause of her own behaviour than a rock is the cause of its own behaviour when God snatches it from its natural descent towards the sewer and sends it shooting towards the heavens? (Kent, 2002: 120)
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While Augustine invoked the concept of habit to attribute sinfulness to human freedom, Aquinas invokes it to secure the link between virtue and freedom. But in understanding Christian virtue in terms of habit, Aquinas tries to navigate two ideas that are in tension throughout the history of theology: the preservation of human freedom, on the one hand, and the denial of human selfsufficiency, on the other. By attributing habit to grace and, in so doing, radically transforming the pagan notion of habit as a second nature acquired through the individuals own actions and efforts Aquinas maintains a delicate balance between these two aspects of Christian doctrine. At the same time, he is more generous than Augustine to the classical Greek and Roman accounts of virtue. In distinguishing between acquired and infused virtues, he expresses his recognition that the former do indeed deserve to be classed as virtues, albeit ones relative to an end the attainment of happiness within this life that is surpassed by the Christian vision of the ultimate good, and the highest happiness, as eternal communion with God. In retaining something of the classical conception of second nature, then, Aquinas seeks to secure some continuity between the natural and supernatural orders between nature and grace. This is an important feature of his theology, and one that distinguishes it from the Christian teachings of both Augustine and Luther. His use of the concept of habit is pivotal here, as Simon Oliver suggests:
If God were simply to move humanity to the beatific vision, this would constitute a violent motion because humanity would be destined for an end for which its nature was not prepared. . . . In addition to God moving humanity to its appropriate end, grace is also given as what Aquinas calls an habitual gift, namely a form or nature by which humanity can move and be moved to the supernatural end appointed by God. Just as God provides for creatures not only by moving them to their appropriate ends, but also in bestowing forms and powers by which they make that motion their own, so too God provides his grace by which humanity may make its motion to beatitudo its own. (Oliver, 2005: 63)
This idea of appropriation of making ones own a movement that originally lay beyond ones power is thus crucial both to the concept of habit in general, and to Aquinas theology of grace in particular. For Aquinas, it is through such appropriation that the continuity
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between nature and grace is maintained: the divine gift crosses between and unifies the natural and supernatural orders. Indeed, gift and habit share precisely the sense of making-inward or makingones-own, of becoming-natural or becoming-mine that is expressed in the idea of appropriation. And, in spite of Aquinas reluctance to recognize a connection between habit and the body in his treatise on habits, in the Christian tradition to which he belongs, and which he has shaped, this appropriation takes the form of incorporation: divine grace is given in the sacraments of the church. According to Aquinas:
it is fitting that the grace which overflows from the incarnate Word should be carried to us by external perceptible realities; and also that certain external perceptible works should be brought forth from this interior grace, by which flesh is made subject to spirit. (Aquinas, 1971: 43/STq.108a.1)
In the sacrament of the Eucharist in particular, the link between grace and habit is clear: the divine gift is appropriated bodily, repeatedly, frequently and regularly. Luthers theology challenges this account of appropriation, although his interpreters disagree about how far his doctrine of grace marks a radical break with Thomism. For Luther, although divine grace is certainly given and received, it does not thereby become a persons own in the same way as for Aquinas. In rejecting the scholastic theologians adoption of the Aristotelian concept of habitus (see Lohse, 2006: 47, 5960, 72, 261), Luther expresses concerns both psychological and ontological, and he proposes a new way of thinking about the transformations involved in becoming a Christian. In order to illuminate the significance of the concept of habitus for Luther, however, we may begin with something rather less radical. He was critical of Aristotelian ethics for the same reasons as Augustine, Aquinas and other Christian thinkers: he found the pagan idea that we acquire virtues and attain our human telos merely through our own efforts to be in conflict with the Christian emphasis on the need for divine grace. While Aquinas sought to adapt and reconcile Aristotles philosophy to his own tradition, Luther was more straightforwardly hostile to it. His critique of both Aristotelian and scholastic thought was not simply a reversion to Augustines position, for it reflected his theological training at the University of Erfurt, which was dominated by the nominalism of William of
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Ockham. The late medieval school of Ockham was known as the via moderna, in distinction to the via antiqua of Aquinas and Duns Scotus, and this modern way placed greater emphasis on the difference between theology and philosophy, and between faith and reason, to the point that these often came into tension with one another. One symptom of this development was a more critical relationship to Aristotelian thought, and this is clearly evident throughout Luthers writings (see Lohse, 2006: 4850). And at times, his polemic focuses on Aristotles moral psychology: in 1516, he wrote that We are not, as Aristotle believes, made righteous by the doing of just deeds . . . but rather in becoming and being righteous people we do just deeds (Luther, 1963: 25).6 Of course, there is nothing in this remark to conflict with Aquinas view that virtuous action is caused by a habitus infused by God. However, Luther detected a problem in this interpretation of grace according to the concept of habitus. Although a divinely infused habitus is not acquired by a persons own efforts, there is still a gap between the habitus and its exercise, between the capacity and its realization. And this gap makes it possible to reintroduce a notion of merit: a person only becomes righteous insofar as she actualizes her habitus through good works (see Ebeling, 1970: 701). In this way, for Luther, the scholastic doctrine of grace permitted a connection between works and justification that would be open to the problem that Augustine had identified several centuries earlier: the danger of pride infecting virtue, and thereby corrupting the Christian life at its very core. Whereas Aquinas could explain the exercise of a divinely infused habitus by appealing to a natural desire for the good which, when empowered by grace, facilitates the Christian life, Luther makes a much stronger contrast between grace and nature, whereby even the desire for God does not come from ourselves: Those who seek God, do good freely and gladly, purely for the sake of God alone. . . . But this is the work not of our nature but of grace (Luther, 1972: 227). Our righteousness, he suggests, comes completely from the outside and is foreign to our nature: God does not want to redeem us through our own, but through external, righteousness and wisdom; not through one that comes from us and grows in us, but through one that comes to us from the outside (Luther, 1972: 136). In rejecting the idea that grace is given in the form of a habitus, Luther seems to suggest that even when we receive the gift of grace,
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it never properly belongs to us. In his lectures on Pauls Letter to the Romans, he contrasts a proud, boastful person of the law who is confident in the righteousness which he already possesses with the humble person of faith who prays for the righteousness which he hopes to acquire. According to Luther, the whole life of faith is nothing else but prayer, seeking and begging . . . always seeking and striving to be made righteous . . . never standing still, never possessing (Luther, 1972: 2512). He does appear to qualify this statement in claiming that our righteousness is not something in us or in our own power because the grace imputed by God is not ours by virtue of anything in us, or in our own power (Luther, 1972: 257). This question of ownership is a matter of debate among Luther scholars. According to Bernhard Lohse:
in a fundamental way Luthers interpretation [of grace] exceeds the bounds of the scholastic doctrine. The point of his exposition is that one cannot speak of a continuous growth of the grace one is given, as if that grace became a possession that could not be lost. (Lohse, 2006: 73)
Heiko Oberman distinguishes between the concepts of property and possession, suggesting that property implies a rightful claim, and arguing that in Lutheran theology the righteousness granted is not ones property but ones possession (Oberman, 1986: 121). Gerhard Ebeling argues more strongly, however, that Luthers denial that the gifts of grace become our own was decisive in his break with the Church:
What was of vital importance was his bewilderment at what the Churchs teaching and scholastic theology in general asserted as selfevident: that the grace infused in the first place in baptism, and renewed after each mortal sin in the sacrament of penance, inhered in the person who received it as a new supernatural faculty enabling him to live a saintly life, even though still imperfectly. . . . It was on this issue, the scholastic interpretation of which raises many subtle problems, that there took place . . . what we might call the hidden atomic fission which set up a chain reaction leading to the events of the Reformation. The grace of the Holy Spirit never becomes our own virtus but is always effective as the virtus of God. (Ebeling, 1970: 701)
Ebeling notes that, unlike his scholastic predecessors, Luther confined the use of the word virtus to Gods power (1970: 272). This
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indicates a more radical departure from the Aristotelian tradition than that attempted by Aquinas. At the heart of Luthers thought is the idea that, once the process of justification has been completely separated from works and merit, the love that flows from God through human beings remains pure: a person is free to love without this becoming ensnared in a self-interested striving for reward, nor becoming tainted by pride. In Luthers view, the gift of grace is most purely a gift when it is entirely detached from any notion of merit. However, the consequence of this interpretation of the gift is that, as Ebeling suggests, it never becomes our own. In Luthers thought, then, we find a movement from the view that a person is constituted by her faculties, dispositions and tendencies however these are acquired to the view that she is constituted by her relationship to God. This shift does not primarily concern the extent of the human beings dependence on Gods creative and restorative power as we have seen, an insistence on this dependence is at the root of both Augustinian and Thomist theologies. Rather, it is a question of the kind of being that a person is, or has. In other words, the issue is ontological rather than theological. According to Luther, the change that is brought about when divine grace is bestowed is not the infusion of a new capacity or inclination. Instead, what changes is the individuals being before God (corum Deo). Luther distinguishes between the inward aspect of a person, which is how she sees herself, and an outward aspect, which is how she is viewed by God: The saints are always sinners in their own sight, and therefore always justified outwardly. But the hypocrites are always righteous in their own sight, and thus always sinners outwardly (Luther, 1972: 257). Both saints and hypocrites are thus at the same time both righteous and unrighteous, but in opposite senses; the person of faith is a sinner inwardly and yet righteous in the sight of God (McGrath, 1985: 133). According to this new logic of grace, the divine gift is not appropriated as the persons own nature or essence. Instead, it always remains between the individual and God and, as such, it is the very substance of this relationship. For this reason, claims Ebeling, the Latin preposition corum characterises the very basis of Luthers thought, for it expresses the way in which the human condition is constituted by a persons relationships fundamentally, but not only, to God; also to oneself, to other people, to the world (corum meipso, corum hominibus, corum mundo).
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Body & Society 19(2&3) This corum-relationship, in which man always finds himself, is in fact the characteristic human situation, without which he would not be man at all. In it the way in which he encounters others, others encounter him, and he encounters himself are interwoven. . . . It is because man exists in this corum-relationship that he only truly exists in being recognised. (Ebeling, 1970: 1967)
It seems that this Lutheran ontology, according to which human beings are constituted by their relationships rather than by their inherent qualities, transforms the very terms of the theological debate that provides the context for Aquinas account of virtue and grace. Luthers doctrine comes closer to Lombards ridiculous view that human acts of virtue arise from direct intervention by the Holy Spirit (see McGrath, 1985: 85). As we have seen, the problem with such a view a problem perhaps shared by Augustinian theology is that it can so easily accommodate not only a tension but an outright conflict within the individual herself between nature and grace, between a law of the flesh and a law of the spirit, between old and new habits, which, we read in the Confessions, tore [Augustines] soul apart. Aquinas tried to solve this problem by employing the concept of habitus. But one impetus for Luthers reformation of theology was an urgent need for liberation from the psychic conflict that marked the culmination, within his own person, of centuries of theological tradition. Modern Philosophies of Habit: Responding to the Theological Tradition In modern European philosophy, as in the medieval and early modern theology that precedes it, the question of habit opens up debates about the constitution of the human being. For philosophy as for theology, these debates concern the nature of human freedom. From the 17th century onwards the challenge was to accommodate freedom not in the face of dependence on divine power, but in the face of a mechanistic conception of the natural world as subject to necessary physical laws. One response to this challenge was to develop a dualistic ontology, which sought to preserve human freedom by excluding it from the domain of natural law and this response perhaps reaches its fullest articulation in the late 18th century, in Kants philosophy. The legacy of Bacon, Galileo and Newton is evident in
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Kants understanding of nature as operating according to mechanistic principles. However, in Kants account of the domain of human freedom, where order is founded on moral rather than physical laws, Luthers influence is also apparent. Kants emphasis on purity of motivation a moral standard that, like Luther, he regarded as effectively impossible to achieve epitomizes the austere Protestant impulse, albeit in a philosophically refined form that elevates the authority of reason above that of scripture. On the other hand, while Luther found that the Aristotelian emphasis on habit ultimately compromises the human beings dependence on God and thus, it seems, allows too much scope for human freedom for Kant the identification of moral virtue with habit undermines the freedom that makes morality possible. Kant echoes Luther in his criticism of Aristotelian moral psychology. It is well known that while Aristotles ethics focuses on the development of character and the virtues, and assesses actions according to the doctrine of the mean, Kant advocates a deontological ethics that focuses more on the question of the legitimacy of the moral law than on the practical question of how one actually lives a good life.7 Kants dualistic framework means that moral psychology, with its empirical perspective, needs to be excluded from the a priori project of establishing the ground of morality (see, for example, Kant, 1964a: 41012). However, even when, in his later writings, he discusses virtue from the perspective of moral anthropology, Kant is critical of Aristotles ethics and he rejects not only the doctrine of the mean (see, for example, Kant, 1964b), but the definition of virtue in terms of a concept of habit. In his Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View he describes habit as a physical inner necessitation to proceed in the same manner that one has proceeded until now, which, as such, deprives even good actions of their moral value because it impairs the freedom of the mind and, moreover, leads to thoughtless repetition of the very same act (monotony) and so becomes ridiculous (Kant, 2007: 261). This modern view of habit as thoughtless or mechanical repetition has little in common with earlier conceptions of habitual virtue as essentially connected with choice and practical reason (Aristotle), or with the will (Aquinas). Has Kant simply misunderstood Aristotle on this issue?8 Or is it rather that his dualistic philosophy, following from the principles of 18th-century science, simply cannot accommodate the idea that
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freedom may be instantiated in the empirical realm to which habit belongs, and thus has to rule out any continuity between physical nature and free, intelligent, rational action? This question concerning human freedom and natural law set the agenda for post-Kantian philosophy, and in the first half of the 19th century both German idealism and French spiritualism sought to move beyond the dichotomies posited by Kant. This project focuses most particularly on the concept of habit in the work of Fe lix Ravaisson, who in his 1838 essay De lhabitude argues that habit not only traverses the opposition between mechanical Fatality and reflective Freedom (Ravaisson, 2008: 55) but also thereby discloses an underlying continuity from inert matter to intelligent, purposive, spiritual activity. This is demonstrated, claims Ravaisson, by the process of habit acquisition in human beings. Actions that are originally consciously chosen and directed to a goal come, by degrees, to be incorporated into the body as natural, spontaneous, quasi-instinctive movements: habit transforms voluntary movements into instinctive movements (2008: 59). While in Aquinas thought the appropriation accomplished by habit is confined to the rational powers of the human soul, for Ravaisson this appropriation modifies both mind and body. As habits develop, consciously posited goals or ideas increasingly become the form, the way of being, even the very being of [the bodys] organs (2008: 57). Furthermore, habits constitute a desire for the objects and experiences to which one has become accustomed, and this desire is analogous to biological need. So the second nature born of habit is just like our original nature, and yet this new, acquired nature is imbued with freedom and intelligence. The force of habit is an inclination that follows from the will . . . a law of the limbs, which follows on from the freedom of the spirit (2008: 557). Ravaissons reflection on habit helps him to articulate a philosophy of nature and of life animated by a concept of tendency, which unites need and desire.
The disposition of which habit consists, and the principle endangering it, are one and the same thing: this is the primordial law and the most general form of being, the tendency to persevere in the very actuality that constitutes being. (2008: 77)
Ravaissons Of Habit gathers a wide variety of sources that combine to subvert the project of modern science, and its accompanying
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dualistic philosophy. These sources include Aristotelian ethics and metaphysics (see Mauve, 1999); the vitalism and animism of early modern scientists (see Cazeneuve, 1958); Leibnizian conceptions of force and inertia; and Schellings philosophy of nature. Ravaisson also develops existing accounts of habit, in particular that of the 18thcentury English moralist Bishop Joseph Butler, whose Christian version of Aristotelian moral psychology offers an influential formulation of a double law of habit (see Ravaisoon, 2008: 812, 121, 123; see also Butler, 1857: 108; Carlisle, 2010a). Although Ravaisson does not mention Thomas Aquinas, his own Christian Aristotelianism clearly situates him within this Catholic tradition. Whereas the Augustinian-Lutheran tendency is to regard the religious life as an ongoing struggle against ones own corrupt nature, which is only entrenched by force of habit a view which seems to be shared by Kant Ravaisson, like Aquinas, finds in habit much more cause for optimism. As virtuous responses become habitual, they become increasingly effective, require less effort, and produce more pleasure:
Repetition or continuity makes moral activity easier and more assured. It develops within the soul not only the disposition, but also the inclination and tendency to act, just as in the organs it develops the inclination for movement. In the end, it gradually brings the pleasure of action to replace the more transient pleasure of passive sensibility. In this way . . . the helpful activity and the inner joys of charity develop more and more in the heart of the one who does good. In this way, love is augmented by its own expressions. . . . Virtue is first of all an effort and wearisome; it becomes something attractive and a pleasure only through practice, as a desire that forgets itself or is unaware of itself, and gradually it draws near to the holiness of innocence. . . . In this way a second nature is formed. (Ravaisson, 2008: 69)
Quoting the 17th-century Catholic thinker Franc ois Fe nelon, Ravaisson offers an explicitly theological interpretation of this account of habit. If, as Aquinas suggests, divine grace helps the individual by infusing virtues that surpass her natural capacities, then, for Ravaisson, God also offers within nature itself a prevenient grace (2008: 71) a kind of grace that enables the will, despite its fallen condition, to seek the good. Departing from Aquinas, Ravaisson regards habit as a principle of nature that is shared by all living beings, from the
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simplest organisms to the most highly developed human beings. He argues that habit is itself a law of grace (2008: 57) insofar as it facilitates each organisms movement towards the good. In this way, the French philosopher seems to move a step further than Aquinas, positing not just continuity between nature and grace but their ultimate unity: In every thing, the necessity of Nature is the chain on which Freedom unfolds itself. But this is a moving and living chain; it is the necessity of desire, love and grace (2008: 75). A rather different but complementary account of the relationship between habit and freedom can be found in Hegels philosophy. Like Ravaisson, Hegel challenges the restricted interpretation of freedom arising from Kantian dualism, and draws on Aristotelian thought to formulate a positive conception of second nature. In the Philosophy of Right he suggests that communal ethical life (Sittlichkeit) is the realm of freedom made actual: when mind or spirit becomes a second nature, its freedom is actualized, expressed concretely out in the world (Hegel, 1942: 20). While Kant sets natural laws in opposition to the moral law, Hegel posits an analogy between these two forms of law, reinforcing this by appealing to the idea of a second nature:
Just as nature has its laws, and as animals, trees and the sun fulfil their law, so custom (Sitte) is the law appropriate to free mind . . . . Education is the art of making men ethical. It begins with pupils whose life is at the instinctive level and shows them the way to a second birth, the way to change their instinctive nature into a second, spiritual nature, and makes this spiritual level habitual to them. (Hegel, 1942: 260)
Here, as in Ravaissons De lhabitude, habit traverses the difference between nature and spirit, between nature and freedom, between nature and culture. In his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, Hegel offers an extended and more complex discussion of this idea. In this text he focuses on habit within the individual, rather than on social customs and institutions:
Habit is rightly called a second nature; nature, because it is an immediate being of the soul; a second nature, because it is an immediacy created by the soul, impressing and moulding the corporeality which enters into the modes of feeling as such and into the representations
Carlisle and volitions so far as they have taken corporeal form. (Hegel, 1971: 141)
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Although he here highlights an ambiguity regarding habit and freedom, Hegel seems to conclude that, in principle, habit promotes freedom rather than inhibits it:
In habit the human beings mode of existence is natural, and for that reason not free; but still free, so far as the merely natural phase of feeling is by habit reduced to a mere being of his, and he is no longer involuntarily attracted or repelled by it, and so no longer interested, occupied or dependent with regard to it. The want of freedom in habit is in part merely formal, as habit merely attaches to the being of the soul; partly only relative, so far as it strictly speaking arises only in the case of bad habits, or so far as habit is opposed by another purpose: whereas the habit of right and goodness is an embodiment of liberty. The main point about Habit is that by its means man gets emancipated from the feelings, even in being affected by them. (Hegel, 1971: 141)9
Like his analysis of habit, Hegels relationship to the Christian theological tradition is also more ambiguous than Ravaissons. (Perhaps his ambivalent view of habit reflects the extension of his reconciliatory impulse to the Catholic and Protestant traditions.) Hegel was strongly influenced by Luther, and critical of Catholicism, but on the other hand he was very receptive to Aristotelian thought. One aspect of Hegels reflection on habit resonates strongly with that of Thomas Aquinas, and this is his conception of appropriation, of making-ones-own. In this respect, Hegel is true to the origins of the Greek hexis and the Latin habitus in the verb to have: he argues that it is through habit that a person comes to have or to possess his experiences and actions as his own, for he comes to relate not to a contingent single sensation, idea, appetite, etc. but to himself, to a universal mode of action which constitutes his individuality, which is posited by himself and has become his own and for that very reason appears as free (Hegel, 1971: 144). Hegel aptly describes habit as a being-at-home-with-oneself (1971: 144). He suggests that the souls possession and domestication of itself by means of habit accomplishes its liberation:
In this manner the soul has the contents in possession, and contains them in such a manner that in these features it is not sentient, nor does
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Body & Society 19(2&3) it stand in relationship with them as distinguishing itself from them, nor is absorbed in them, but has them and moves in them, without feeling or consciousness of the fact. The soul is freed from them, so far as it is not interested in or occupied with them: and whilst existing in these forms as its possession, it is at the same time open to be otherwise occupied and engaged. . . . [H]abit is indispensable for the existence of all intellectual life in the individual, enabling the subject to be a concrete immediacy, an ideality of soul enabling the matter of consciousness, religious, moral, etc. to be his as this self, this soul, and . . . part and parcel of his being. (Hegel, 1971: 140, 143)
Here, Hegel offers a philosophical interpretation of the everyday phenomenon of habituation. Because so much of our activity is taken care of by habit moving around our home or our workplace, driving a car, using a pen or a keyboard our energies and attention are free for other things, including creative thought. Without this effect of habit, indeed, it is difficult to imagine the development of a culture beyond the basic elements of survival. Luthers criticism of the idea of appropriation implicit in the scholastic teaching that divine grace is imparted in the form of a habitus is echoed in Sren Kierkegaards hostility to the Hegelian view that human freedom can be embodied in a second nature both as habit within the individual and as custom on a larger, social scale. Kierkegaards attitude to the question of habit and freedom also seems to be indebted to a Kantian legacy: it is probable that his resistance to the Hegelian ideas championed by Danish contemporaries in the 1830s and 1840s made him unwilling to engage in the project of overcoming the dichotomies and antinomies of Kants thought. In any case, this philosophical project was not Kierkegaards main concern, for his own work was dedicated to reinvigorating the Christian life at a time when, he believed, widespread religious complacency veiled a decline in genuine religious commitment. Kierkegaard regarded this spiritual malaise as due in part to the naturalization or domestication, over many centuries, of Christian teachings which were originally scandalous, paradoxical and existentially challenging (see Carlisle, 2010b). On this issue, then, he opposes an ethic of radical decision to the Hegelian idea of second nature: the task of faith is accomplished by a repeated leap, rather than by steady development and incorporation of the qualities essential to the Christian life. For Kierkegaard, the task of becoming a Christian involves repeatedly
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willing and striving to fulfil this task, and he opposes this free, spiritual movement to the repetitions of habit, which he regards as mere physical necessity. Because Kierkegaard is concerned to oppose modern philosophys commitment to human autonomy a development he attributes to both Kant and Hegel the conception of freedom at stake in his account of repetition is qualified by a theological emphasis on divine grace. Thus it is not just that individuals must choose repeatedly, but that they must if they are to embrace the task of becoming a Christian repeatedly open themselves to the gift of Gods grace that is the source of all human power. For Kierkegaard, the person of faith performs a continuous double movement that oscillates between receiving this gift, and losing or renouncing it. Here, then, we find echoes of the Lutheran understanding of grace as a gift that can never be possessed that can never become appropriated as a habitus but must always be given and received anew. Concomitantly, Kierkegaard follows Luther in regarding the religious life as shaped by a continuous striving, rather than by a progressive improvement in virtue. However, in later, atheistic versions of existentialist philosophy, only Kierkegaards emphasis on the repetition of radical choice is retained. In Sartres thought, for example, this decisionism entails a rejection of habit as a cover for bad faith, a flight from freedom, and therefore a rejection of the very category of hexis (see Sartre, 1969: xxiixxiii).10 Conclusion: The Question of Habit The preceding discussion has necessarily been brief and, of course, highly selective in its survey of Christian theology and modern philosophy. However, this has enabled us to trace two distinct responses to the question of the value of habit. The Augustinian-Lutheran tradition develops a negative assessment of habit: this is sustained in Kants rejection of habit as opposed to human freedom and intelligence, and seems to persist in the very different existentialisms of Kierkegaard and Sartre. On the other hand, a much more positive evaluation of habit characterizes the Catholic and Aristotelian tradition spanning the centuries from Aquinas to Ravaisson. And Ravaissons work has inspired several 20th-century philosophers to look to habit in developing new currents of thought: in France, his influence
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is evident in the phenomenology of Paul Ricoeur and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (see Ravaisson, 2008: 1920),11 and in the new vitalism of Bergson (see Sinclair, 2011) and Deleuze (see Marin, 2004); in America, in the pragmatism of William James and John Dewey. Habit, it seems, has been central to the issues that have occupied such thinkers over many centuries, and in particular to questions about the nature of human freedom and responsibility. As I suggested in the introduction to this article, this aspect of the discourse on habit illuminates contemporary notions of plasticity, and keeps open the kind of critical reflection on how we understand our own materiality that Malabou proposes in asking What should we do with our brains? For the medieval and early modern theologians, the question of freedom is addressed in the context of belief in the human beings profound dependence on divine power; for the philosophers, the context is rather that of the modern sciences and their deterministic conception of nature. It is possible, however, to see in the dualisms of modern thought, and in the attempts to overcome them, continuities with pre-modern theological debates concerning the relationship between nature and grace. Although Hegel, with his emphasis on the ambiguity of habit, brings together the two divergent traditions the Catholic and the Protestant his inclination is more towards the view that habit is essential to human freedom. It seems to me that this positive conception of habit is more productive in understanding the human being in its concrete existence, for it allows us to think of human freedom as situated in communal forms of life, as embodied in routines and rituals and practices, as continuous with the natural world, as embedded in history. It is perhaps no coincidence that the use of the concept of habitus in the social sciences, pioneered by Pierre Bourdieu, can be traced directly back to scholastic theology.12 In his postface to his French translation of Erwin Panofskys classic work Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism, Bourdieu develops for the first time the theoretical category that would become central to his mature thought:
To contrast individuality with community so as better to safeguard the rights of creative individuality and the mystery of individual creation is to forego discovering community at the very heart of individuality in the form of culture in the subjective sense of cultivation or Bildung or, to speak the language used by Panofsky, in the form of the
Carlisle habitus through which the creator partakes of his community and time, and that guides and directs, unbeknownst to him, his apparently most unique creative acts. (Bourdieu, 2005: 226)
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Here, Bourdieus concern is to overcome a dichotomy between individual and community and, as for the philosophical heirs of the Catholic tradition, it is a concept of habit that unifies what modern theory has separated. We have seen that, while Augustine sees the force of habit as a rule of sin, Ravaisson finds in habit a law of grace. And Ravaissons view has a social dimension that he does not himself accentuate. When we contract habits from others by sharing spaces, practices, routines and rhythms, and a language, communication and interaction become easier and less effortful, and communal life becomes more harmonious. Appreciating the rich conceptual resources within a tradition of thought that is prepared to recognize the value of habit, and thus to explore it in greater depth, should not, however, lead us to dismiss habits detractors. It should not be a question of choosing sides in the debate concerning habit, of deciding which tradition, and which interpretation of habit, we prefer even if current fashion, led by French philosophy, makes habit more seductive in the guise of a new vitalism or a neo-Hegelian new materialism than it appeared when confined to the dusty corners of Aristotelian ethics, scholastic theology or British pragmatism. Rather, the ambivalent response to habit that is expressed both in Hegels philosophy, and within the history of European thought as a whole, reflects the nature of the phe iz nomenon itself. Habit is both a blessing and a curse. As Slavoj Z ek puts it in his reading of Hegels analysis of habit, it is unexpectedly close to what Derrida called pharmakon [i.e. at once a poison and a cure], the ambiguous supplement which is simultaneously a force of iz iz death and a force for life (Gabriel and Z ek, 2009: 100). Z ek means that, for Hegel, habit on the one hand dulls life and makes it mechanical, and on the other hand facilitates every exercise of freedom. But there is more to habits ambivalence than this. Habit gives order and stability to life, but it also entrenches ways of being in a manner indifferent to their value. That is to say, habit empowers the bad as much as the good, the unhealthy as much as the healthy, the unjust as much as the just, the ignorant as much as (if not more than) the enlightened. The attachment and even dependence produced by
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deep habits can be a source of great suffering when conditions change. Moreover, habit conceals its patterns as it reinforces them, making critical reflection more difficult and also leading us to take for granted what might more appropriately be a cause for wonder or for protest. These effects of habit apply as much to cultures and to social institutions as to individuals: the psychological bondage wrought by the force of habit that Augustine describes so vividly can also be a political phenomenon. And indeed, we can transpose to the political domain Augustines theological insight that, since sin is due to our habits rather than to our natures, it is rooted in free will and remains our responsibility. This Augustinian conception of habit anticipates the interpretation of plasticity that Malabou advances in response to contemporary notions of plasticity as passive flexibility. (It is perhaps indicative of our modern ways of reflecting on the human being that, while the medieval discourse on habit was explicitly and unequivocally engaged with questions about virtue and value, Malabou has to draw attention to the normative implications of neuroscientific concepts.) In exposing the political force of a scientific discourse that purports to be objective and morally neutral, Malabou echoes a call to responsibility for habit that is centuries old. To put it another way: if habit is the means by which we make our materiality that of our life, and that of our world our own, and is thus the ground of our identity, then the strength and endurance through time of these identities whether personal or collective, private or public, if indeed such distinctions can be made is profoundly ambivalent. What kind of power does the force of habit generate? Is it a power of liberation or of bondage, of creativity or of domination, of freedom or of servitude? Whether or not we agree with Aquinas that the capacity to develop habits is uniquely human, it is no doubt true that, as human beings, we have a special ability to question habit and this is how we should interrogate it. What kind of power does the force of habit generate? This question can be asked not only of habit as such, but also of the particular habits that distinguish us as individuals and that bind us as communities. Notes 1. On the role of habit in Aristotles ethics, see Burnyeat (1980); Sherman (1989: 15799); Garver (1989); Aristotle (2002: vii
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2.
3. 4. 5.
xvii); Baracchi (2008: 6673, 901, 11222). On the significance of, and historical background to, the concept of hexis, see Rodrigo (2004). For an extended scholarly account of the concept of habit in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, see Kent (2002). My own discussion of Aquinas is indebted to Kents work. On the continuities between Aristotelian hexis and Thomist habitus, see also Marion (1975: 2530). For further discussion of this passage, see Carlisle (2010a). For a detailed discussion of Augustines treatment of habit, see Prendiville (1972). Bonnie Kent elucidates this passage as follows:
The skilful movements of the body, caused by its disposition to function in a skilful way, should be seen mainly as residual effects of the souls control. . . . Insofar as a power [of the soul] acts from natural instinct, it cannot acquire habits in the strict sense. . . . In downgrading the [powers of memory and imagination, Thomas] appeals to their connection with the body, to the force of sheer repetition in conditioning them to operate in certain ways, how they tend to influence, instead of being influenced by, our intellectual judgement . . . and just how far removed they are from the control of the will. (Kent, 2002: 119)
6. See also Luther (1972: 3, 257; 1976: 174). For Luthers criticisms of scholastic theology, see Luther (1963: 37, 59); McGrath (1985: 815); Oberman (1986: 10420). 7. However, for a comparative discussion of Aristotelian and Kantian ethics that seeks to reconcile the two, in part by arguing that ancient conceptions of the cultivation of character traits and emotions can be found in Kants moral philosophy, see Sherman (1997: 12186). 8. This seems to be Nancy Shermans view: see Sherman (1997: 161). iz 9. Slavoj Z ek also accentuates the ambiguity in Hegels analysis iz iz of habit (see Gabriel and Z ek, 2009: 95121). Z ek draws heavily on Cathe rine Malabous interpretation of Hegel; for Malabous discussion of habit in Hegels thought, see Malabou (2005: 2438, 5374). See also Malabous preface to Of Habit in Ravaisson (2008: viixx).
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10. However, in the Critique of Dialectical Reason Sartre utilizes the concept of hexis in a more constructive way in developing an account of human praxis. See Sartre (2006: 34750, and passim). 11. Paul Ricoeur discusses habit with extensive reference to Ravaisson: see Ricoeur (1966). Maurice Merleau-Ponty discusses habit as a form of embodied intelligence: see Merleau-Ponty (1994). 12. For a discussion of the influence of Panofsky on Bourdieus development of his concept of habitus, see Holsinger (2005: 94113); Bourdieu (1991). On the significance of habit in social theory more general, see Camic (1986). References Aquinas T (1964) Summa theologiae, vol. 22: Dispositions for Human Acts (Ia2ae 4954), trans. Kenny A. Oxford: Eyre and Spottiswoode. Aquinas T (1969) Summa theologiae, vol. 23: Virtue (Ia2ae 5567), trans. Hughes WD. Oxford: Eyre and Spottiswoode. Aquinas T (1971) Summa theologiae, vol. 30: The Gospel of Grace (Ia2ae 106114), trans. Ernst C. Oxford: Eyre and Spottiswoode. Aristotle (1963) Aristotles Categories and De Interpretatione, trans. Ackrill JL. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Aristotle (2000) Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Crisp R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Aristotle (2002) Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Sachs J. Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing. Augustine (1961) Confessions, trans. Chadwick H. London: Penguin. Augustine (1998) The City of God Against the Pagans, trans. Dyson RW. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baracchi C (2008) Aristotles Ethics as First Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu P (1991) The genesis of the concepts of habitus and of field. Sociocriticism 2: 1124. Bourdieu P (2005) Postface to Erwin Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism, trans. Petit L, in Holsinger B, The Premodern Condition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 221242. Burnyeat MF (1980) Aristotle on learning to be good. In: Rorty AO (ed.) Essays on Aristotles Ethics. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 6992
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Butler J (1857) Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature. London: Bell and Daldy. Camic C (1986) The matter of habit. American Journal of Sociology 91: 10391087. Carlisle C (2010a) Between freedom and necessity: Fe lix Ravaisson on habit and the moral life. Inquiry 53(2): 123145. Carlisle C (2010b) Signs of the times: Kierkegaards diagnosis and treatment of Hegelian thought. Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain 61: 4560. dicale de Ravaisson. Paris: Cazeneuve J (1958) La Philosophie me Presses Universitaires de France. Ebeling G (1970) Luther, trans. Wilson RA. London: Collins. iz Gabriel M and Z ek S (2009) Mythology, Madness and Laughter: Subjectivity in German Idealism. London: Continuum. Garver E (1989) Aristotles metaphysics of morals. Journal of the History of Philosophy 27: 728. Hebb DH (1949) The Organisation of Behaviour: A Neuropsychological Theory. London: Wiley and Sons. Hegel GWF (1942) Hegels Philosophy of Right, trans. Knox TM. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hegel GWF (1971) Philosophy of Mind (part 3 of Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences), trans. Wallace W and Miller AV. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Holsinger B (2005) The Premodern Condition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Kant I (1964a) Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. Paton HJ. New York: Harper and Row. Kant I (1964b) Doctrine of Virtue, part II of The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Gregor M. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Kant I (2007) Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798), trans. Louden RB. In: Zo ller G and Loudon RB (eds) Immanuel Kant: Anthropology, History and Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kent B (2002) Habits and virtues (Ia IIae, qq. 4970). In: The Ethics of Aquinas, edited by Pope SJ. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Konorski J (1948) Conditioned Reflexes and Neuron Organisation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Lohse B (2006) Martin Luthers Theology: Its Historical and Systematic Development, trans. Harrisville RA. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Luther M (1963) Letters I. In: Luthers Works, vol. 48, ed. and trans. Krodel GG. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press. Luther M (1972) Lectures on Romans. Luthers Works, vol. 25, ed. Oswald HC. St Louis, MO: Concordia. Luther M (1976) First lectures on the psalms. Luthers Works, vol. 11, ed. Oswald HC. St Louis, MO: Concordia. McGrath A (1985) Luthers Theology of the Cross. Oxford: Blackwell. Malabou C (2005) The Future of Hegel. London: Routledge. Malabou C (2008) What Should We Do with Our Brain?, trans. Rand S. New York: Fordham University Press. Marin C (2004) Le tre et lhabitude dans la philosophie franc aise contemporaine. Alter 12: 149172. Marion J-L (1975) Sur lontologie grise de Descartes. Paris: Vrin. Mauve C (1999) Ravaisson lecteur et interpre ` te dAristote. LAnti greque au XIXe sie `cle: un exemplum conteste . Paris: quite Harmattan. Merleau-Ponty M (1994) The Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Smith C. London: Routledge. Oberman H (1986) The Dawn of the Reformation. Edinburgh: T and T Clark. Oliver S (2005) The sweet delight of virtue and grace in Aquinass ethics. International Journal of Systematic Theology 7(1): 5271. Prendiville J (1972) The development of the idea of habit in the thought of Saint Augustine. Traditio 28: 2999. Ravaisson F (2008) Of Habit, trans. Carlisle C and Sinclair M. London: Continuum. Ricoeur P (1966) Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary, trans. Koha k EV. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Rodrigo P (2004) La dynamique de lhexis chez Aristote. Alter 12: 1125. Sartre J-P (1969) Being and Nothingness, trans. Barnes H. London: Methuen. Sartre J-P (2006) Critique of Dialectical Reason, vol. 2, trans. Hoare Q. London: Verso.
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Sherman N (1989) The Fabric of Character. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sherman N (1997) Making a Necessity of Virtue: Aristotle and Kant on Virtue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sinclair M (2011) Is habit the fossilised residue of a spiritual activity? Ravaisson, Bergson, Merleau-Ponty. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology Habit 42(1).
Author biography Clare Carlisle is Lecturer in Philosophy of Religion at Kings College London. She is author of On Habit (Routledge, 2014) and translator of Fe lix Ravaissons De lhabitude (Continuum, 2008).

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