Date:         Sun, 16 Jun 96 12:09:33 EDT
From: Elliot Weininger <PATBH-AT-CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Info Request: Geneology of "Habitus"


There's a well-known interview--whose location I've nonetheless managed
to forget--in which, in addition to Weber and Elias, Bourdieu names
Husserl, Hegel, and one of the medievals (Augustine?) as figures he
had in mind when developing the concept of habitus.

With respect to Husserl, the relevant text in which habitus and Habitualitat
are developed is, in my view, _Experience and Judgment_ (and *not* the
_Cartesian Meditations_).

In _E+J_ these concepts are used to describe a certain regularity and
"familiarity" which consciousness confers upon the world of experience
*prior* to any explicit attempt to cognitively extrapolate it.  This
regularity is therefore *pre-reflective*.  It operates by grouping objects
together into a variety of "types" on the basis of their similarities
and differences.  These types, in turn, pre-determine how and
what I will apprehend each time I encounter a new object of
experience. Furthermore, the habitus effects this organization of the
world on an *aesthetic*--rather than conceptual--basis.  (Aesthetic,
for Husserl, in the sense of "aisthesis," which is to say, perceptual.)
Alluding to this aesthetic character, Husserl states that the habitus
allows the world to exhibit a familiar "style."

A few points which may be of interest: 1) for Husserl, the habitus
has an explicitly *non-linguistic* structure. This means that
the typifications which it contains do not take the form of
predicative judgments--i.e the form "S is p".  To the contrary,
typifications are, as noted, formed according to perceptual
criteria of similarity and contrast.  Husserl expresses this
by speaking of a "pre-predicative" component of experience.
2) Additionally, any explicit extrapolation of objects in
the world--i.e. any predicative judgments that I render--have
to begin from the regularities already established at the
level of the habitus.  However, they often modify, abstract
from, or otherwise transform the world's pre-predicative order.
This is particularly clear in the case of scientific judgments,
which are formulated according to explicit rules of evidence
that obviously don't apply at the level of habitus.  (It is
for this reason that phenomenologists often speak of the
world of habitual typicalities as that of a "pre-scientific"
nature.)  3) Lastly, it should be noted that this pre-
predicative level of experience comprises one of the (many) meanings
that Husserl gave to his well-known term "lifeworld."

I hope this little disquisition is of interest.  It seems to me
that what probably appealed to Bourdieu was Husserl's notion of an
underlying experiental regularity which is both pre-reflective
and non-linguistic.  (Interestingly, Husserl is clear that only
predicative judgments are routinely open to thematization and
criticism; the strucutres of the habitus, by contrast, can only
be laid bare by means of a complicated philosophical technique
capable of breaking with the presuppositions of everyday and even
scientific thought.)  Of course Bourdieu, who tries to restrain
his philosophical impulses, is primarily interested in how particular
institutional arrangements or particular cultural configurations
evince a particular habitus.  Husserl, to the contrary, was interested
in the invariant structures of the habitus as such.  The one
time he took an even slightly sociological approach was in his
late study _The Crisis of the European Sciences_.  This text, in
my opinion, can be read as an attempt to analyze (and thereby help
dispel) the way in which the culture of modern science has quietly
reshaped the contemporary European habitus.  (Phenomenology is thereby
supposed to have an extra-philosophical significance.)

Elliot Weininger
Dept. of Sociology
CUNY Graduate Center
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