Abstract
This essay examines how the question of habit has been raised as a question in metaphysics and psychology throughout the modern French philosophical tradition. The issue of habit was already pivotal in eighteenth-century Scottish and French empiricist philosophies, but the essay shows how nineteenth-century French thinkers attempted to give a positive account of the force of habit that, as some of them argued, can be found throughout the natural world, even in the inorganic realm. The essay offers a taxonomy of French approaches as mechanist, vitalist or animist, and shows that appreciation of propensity, tendency or inclination in habit supports vitalist and, a fortiori, animist positions. In conclusion, the essay shows how reflection on tendency in habit led in the development of French thinking to a non-linear notion of time as ‘real duration’.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | The Oxford handbook of modern French philosophy |
Editors | Mark Sinclair, Daniel Whistler |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Chapter | 33 |
Pages | 540-553 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9780198914587 |
ISBN (Print) | 9780198841869 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 18 Jul 2024 |