A History of Habit


A History of Habit

From Aristotle to Bourdieu

Edited by Tom Sparrow and Adam Hutchinson







Published by Lexington Books

A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

www.rowman.com


10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom


Copyright © 2013 by Lexington Books


All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.


British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available


Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data


A history of habit from Aristotle to Bourdieu / edited by Tom Sparrow and Adam Hutchinson.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7391-8198-0 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7391-8199-7 (electronic)

1. Habit (Philosophy) I. Sparrow, Tom, 1979– editor of compilation.

B105.H32H57 2013

128'.3—dc23

2013010683


TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.


Printed in the United States of America

For George Yancy, both the Monongahela

and Allegheny to our little Ohio.


Habit is a compromise effected between the individual and his environment, or between the individual and his own organic eccentricities, the guarantee of a dull inviolability, the lightning-conductor of his existence.

—Beckett, Proust




Plato scolded a child who was playing at cobnuts. He answered him: “You scold me for a small matter.” “Habit,” replied Plato, “is no small matter.”

—Montaigne, Essays