The question of habit in modern French philosophy

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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 languageEnglish
Title of host publicationThe Oxford handbook of modern French philosophy
EditorsMark Sinclair, Daniel Whistler
PublisherOxford University Press
Chapter33
Pages540-553
ISBN (Electronic)9780198914587
ISBN (Print)9780198841869
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 18 Jul 2024

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