Edmund Husserl's Phenomenology of Habituality and Habitus
D. Moran
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Topics | Philosophy of mind |
| Key points | Argues that Husserl's mature genetic phenomenology develops a complex account of habit spanning individual, sub-personal, personal, social, and collective experience, and that critics like Bourdieu and Dreyfus misrepresent Husserl as a Cartesian intellectualist. Proposes that habituality is a key structural principle in the genetic constitution of the transcendental ego and of meaningfulness at all levels. |
Abstract
Introduction The concept of habit enfolds an enormous richness and diversity of meanings. According to Husserl, habit, along with association, memory, and so on, belongs to the very essence of the psychic.1 Husserl even speaks of an overall genetic “phenomenology of habitualities”.2 In this paper, as an initial attempt to explicate the complexity of phenomenological treatments of habit, I want to trace Husserl’s conception of habit as it emerged in his mature genetic phenomenology, in order to highlight his enormous and neglected original contribution in this area. I shall show that Husserl was by no means limited to a Cartesian intellectualist explication of habitual action (as commentators such as Bourdieu and Dreyfus have claimed), but attempted to characterize its complexity across the range of human individual, sub-personal, personal, social and collective experience. Habit, as we shall see, for Husserl, is intimately involved in the constitution of meaningfulness (Husserl’s Sinnhaftigkeit) and forms of sense (Sinnesgestalten) at all levels, from the level of perceptual experience, through the formation of the ego, to the development of society, history and tradition, indeed to our whole sense of the harmonious course of worldly life and to the genetic constitution of worldhood as such. Habituality, furthermore, is a key structural principle in the genetic constitution of the transcendental ego itself, as it unfolds as a concrete living and acting person in an intersubjective, cultural and historical world.
Comparable studies
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| The phenomenology of deep brain stimulation-induced changes in OCD: an enactive affordance-based model. | 2013 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Looking for the Self: Phenomenology, Neurophysiology and Philosophical Significance of Drug-induced Ego Dissolution | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cited by 8
- Where Merleau-Ponty Meets Dewey: Habit, Embodiment, and Education Studies in Philosophy and Education September 9, 2023
- Between Minimal Self and Narrative Self: A Husserlian Analysis of Person Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology February 13, 2019
- Ritualizing intersubjectivity: a Xunzian-enactive account of social formation Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences October 14, 2026
- Habit, choice, priming, and activity as flow: rethinking metaphorical models of action and cognition in cognitive linguistics Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences August 15, 2026
- Habit, sedimentation and economic institutions Continental Philosophy Review May 25, 2026
and 3 more in the library