Two Ways to the Philosophy of Habit: Hegel and Bergson

My dissertation investigates the significance of habit for our selfhood, our experience of the world, and human freedom. The first part of my dissertation takes up the problem of initiating a philosophical investigation of habit. I frame this problem by reflecting on the relationship between habit and philosophy, the difficulty of noticing our habits, the philosophical field of research on habit, and ways that philosophers have neglected to raise the problem of habit. Subsequently, I tackle this problem by juxtaposing Husserl's "annihilation of the world" thought experiment and Proust's description of Marcel's "total lack of habit," which creatively evokes the radical disruption of our habits. My juxtaposition of Husserl and Proust raises a set of problems about habit, the foremost of which is: how does habit structure the relationship between the self and world? Addressing this problem, the second part of my dissertation engages with Hegel's Anthropology in the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences and Bergson's Matter and Memory. In addition to advancing original interpretations of their respective theories of habit, my comparative analysis of Hegel and Bergson is the first of its kind and represents a new area of research. In the final part of my dissertation, I show how the differences between Hegel's and Bergson's accounts of habit are rooted in opposing conceptions of the relationship between nature and spirit. My dissertation concludes that, regardless of whether spirit progressively emerges out of or abruptly departs from nature, habit is the materialization of human freedom. My thesis about habit and freedom has important implications for our understanding of human agency, perceptual experience, and character formation, which chart a course for further research.status: publishe