PEIRCE'S INQUIRY ON HABITS. A CONTEMPORARY PERSPECTIVE

This thesis’ aim is to analysis the concept of habit from the point of view of the philosophy of American thinker Charles Sanders Peirce (1829-1914). In particular, my goal is to treat habit as a general principle, examining its structure, its “mode of being” and the consequences it entails for cognition and human subjectivity. My thesis analyses and focuses on certain aspects of Peirce’s vast and complex account of habit, starting from broad ontological questions. Habit appears as a constitutive feature of his categorical system, one of the American philosopher’s most important contribution to the history of thought. From there, moving thematically in the complex architecture of his thought, I highlight the important role habit plays in a pragmatist perspective. My work is inserted in a wider conceptual framework and it is born out of some unsolved question in contemporary secondary literature concerning Peirce and habit. On one hand, I took into consideration the history of habit and its theoretical implications. In the last decade we have witnessed a newfound interest in habits as a fundamental philosophical principle form its very beginning, after almost a century of neglect in our discipline. On the other, the pragmatist perspective has become of noteworthy importance in contemporary thought, and the peculiar reading of habit inherent to this tradition is certainly one of its strengths. Peirce plays a peculiar role in this wider context, and even though his thought on this matter has been somehow thoroughly analysed, it has become necessary to show the richness of his theoretical propositions and the contribution that a Peircean philosophy could give to a philosophy of habit. Given this context, my guiding insight was to analyse the concept of habit in its broadest possible sense, in its mode of being. To do so, this work considers two factors. Firstly, it pays special attention to accurately frame Peirce’s propositions, isolating some thematic cores I deem central on which I based my own perspective, and, secondly, highlighting, in the unfolding of the project, the differences, affinities and peculiarities that these thematic cores bring up in relation to the contemporary debate concerning the concept of habit. Peirce develops a wide and multifaceted concept across the entirety of his thought’s evolution, underpinned by a clear structure: habit is a general principle, triadic and serving as a mediating function, that constructs a tendency to act in a certain way given a certain situation in the future. Taking heed from this general structure, I divided my work in three main sections. In the first part, I highlight the philosophical particularity of the concept of habit (in a Peircean perspective) and I show what vision of the concept of habit I’m going to uphold in my argument, in contrast with some contemporary views of habit. In the second part, the conceptual core of my thesis, I’ll examine the ontological features of habit and I’ll underline its main metaphysical properties. My work will consider several areas of Peirce’s thought, trying to show a philosophical position that could be confronted with other ontologies of habit, that run through the whole history of this concept, albeit, at times, in disguise. My primary goal is to demonstrate the peculiarity and originality of Peirce’s views on habit, that stems out of habit’s secular history and captures some interesting implications entailed since the concept’s inception. Peirce treats habit as a fundamental attribute of being, the central structure of one of his categories. My theoretical aim is then to make one step further: habit is not just a categorical state, but on the basis of Aristotelian interpretation, it is configured as the middle term between the modes of potency and act, forming a dynamic principle that “enables” from the various categories and modes of being, in a topological and temporal perspective. Only from this assumption can we begin to appreciate the richness of a proper philosophy of habit, which informs, albeit not in an explicit manner, all of Peirce’s philosophy. In fact, in the third part, after having described the general architecture and the properties that define habit’s mode of being, I will take into account which effects this renewed vision of habit could have on human cognition and the self. I will observe that the concept of habit, as I have conceived it, as a mediating and triadic structure among being’s categories, gives rise to a different way of seeing our idea of intelligence and subjectivity, forcing us to revise some “substantialistic” assumptions regarding our way of conceiving our mind, our faculty of reasoning and what we are “used” to call “self”. In conclusion, I will defend the idea uphold in much secondary literature (not exclusively regarding habit) that we could be defined as “creatures of habit”. I will do it starting from the considerations amassed in the first part of my work: my argument in support of this is that we share with the principle of habit certain fundamental properties, which shape our mode of being and place us in a precise ontological and temporal position. Habit not only influences deeply the human being and play a fundamental role in various aspects of our life. Peirce shows us further developments and I believe, with Peirce, that our perspective on the concept of habit should be completely upended: we are the ones who navigate in an environment structed by habits, and with participate in the same mode of being, that constitutes the real essence of being alive in the world.