This contribution aims to address the nature of the normative in Hegel's theory of habits and to highlight that social practices are the outcome of natural and biological characteristics related to the homeostasis of the organism and to the common biological features of the individuals of the same species. This should point out that habits and human practices have a concrete biological background and are the outcome of humans' eagerness to inhabit the world through socially codified activities. The contribution deals also with the relation habits have with the self-conscious life and human world history. Hegel's conception of mind in the Encyclopedia represents an exceptional contribution for understanding the mind-body relation and, particularly, the organic character of the cognitive functions. What Hegel proposes is to conceive of the human mind as a faculty that is developed within the biological evolution of the organism and as a function integrated in the organic living whole of the subject. He deals, therefore, with a soft version of naturalism as he claims that cognitive capacities are strictly connected with natural requisites and maintain a permanent relation with the natural dimension of the organic. Mind is the outcome of a crossed stratification of nature and cognitive dispositions because there is no stage of cognitive activities that can be considered as separated or totally emergent from their natural premises. The rational criterion of Hegel's naturalism is the idea that nature is a system of grades (System von Stufen) (Hegel, 1830, § 249) in which the idea and freedom represent the last step. However, this step can only be achieved by a natural organism having developed an organization of its own life based on self-consciousness and on the " Notion " [der Begriff]. Mind is, hence, an embodied faculty, determined by this embodiment and permanently related to this condition. In the Encyclopedia Hegel undertakes an analysis of the different levels of the cognitive disposition by starting with those that are mostly connected to the organic dimension of life in order to highlight that the highest level of life is freedom, which is attained by a dialectics between the organic requisites and the very pursuit of the mind. In this narrative, habit occupies a very important position for it is placed after the sentient faculty of the body and introduces the actual soul, i.e. the condition in which the soul conceives of its body as its own other and distinguishes itself from the outside environment, becoming an individual subject (Hegel, 1830, § 411). The notion of soul in the Hegelian conception of the mindful disposition is intended to correspond to the classical notions of anima and ψυχή in the ancient philosophy. Therefore, it is not a fully rational and self-conscious disposition because it is not based on a conceptual activity; it is rather much closer to sensibility and to what animates individual agency and behaviour. The

In this paper, I argue that Hegel‘s concept of habit is not one, but two: consisting of human habit on the one hand and animal on the other.

In this paper, I will explore the role of habit in Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit, arguing that its relevance should not be restricted to the Anthropology. Hegel distinguishes between habituality as the second nature of the embodied self and a more sophisticated form of habituality presented in the Psychology as memory. Memory is the function of intelligence that is committed to the production of language, thereby giving rise to thinking and the possibility of theoretic freedom. Since Hegel himself warns against the automatic and impersonal character of habituality, I wish to explore to what extent habit and memory influence the development of theoretical spirit. Is there any room for a notion of freedom that is independent from habituality? I will first assess the difference between habit and memory. Then, I will tackle the possibility of freedom from a Hegelian standpoint.

The aim of this paper is to understand the relationship that exists, in Hegel’s philosophy, between his conception of “habit” and that of “the world of right”, insofar as both are defined by Hegel as “second nature”. First of all, we will focus on the Hegelian conception of habit, as it is formulated in his anthropology (first section of the philosophy of subjective spirit). Secondly, we will show the connection between the concept of habit and that of custom, as it is formulated in the philosophy of right. Finally, on this basis we will provide an insight into some of the fundamental structures of the Hegelian conception of the State as the “actuality of the ethical idea”.

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the central role of the notion of " habit " (Gewohnheit) in Hegel's theory of " embodiment " (Verleiblichung) and to show that the philosophical outcome of the Anthropology is that habit, understood as a sensorimotor life form, is not only an enabling condition for there to be mindedness, but is more strongly an ontological constitutive condition of all its levels of manifestation. Moreover, I will argue that Hegel's approach somehow makes a model of embodied cognition available which offers a unified account of the three main senses of embodiment understood as both a physiological, a functional, and a phenomenological process. In this sense Hegel's approach to habit can make a useful contribution to the contemporary debate on embodiment in philosophy of mind, the cognitive sciences, and action theory. For a long time habit in 20th century philosophy and science has been mostly read in a negative way, identified with mechanical and repetitive routine. The reconstruction of Hegel’s approach is particularly relevant here and can fruitfully contribute to this discussion, since it offers us not only a model that assigns to habit a positive constitutive role in the formation of embodied human mindedness but which also overcomes the dualism between habitual motor routine and intentional activities that is prevalent nowadays in the cognitive sciences and in action theory, and allows for some sense of natural agency as belonging to animal life. Furthermore, Hegel’s approach cuts across the great divide between associationist and holistic approaches to habit that has for a long time dominated the philosophical debate on habit and still shapes the current opposition between classical cognitive science and embodied cognitive science.

Hegel frequently identifies ethical life with a "second nature." This strategy has puzzled those who assume that second nature represents a deficient appearance of ethical life, one that needs to be overcome, supplemented, or constantly challenged. I argue that Hegel identifies ethical life with a second nature because he thinks that a social order only becomes a candidate for ethical life if it provides a context conducive to the development of what I call "real habits." First, I show that a criterion for a real habit can be found in Hegel's Anthropology, namely, that of liberation. Next, I explain how the state, as Hegel analyzes it in the Philosophy of Right, provides such an environment by enabling trust toward and within it. I then consider two literary examples of contexts that fail to be similarly supportive-Coates' Between the World and Me and Atwood's Handmaid's Tale-concluding with reasons for thinking that real habits are an integral part of ethical life.

Recent discussions of Hegel's conception of second nature, specifically focused on Hegel's notion of habit (Gewohnheit), have greatly advanced our understanding of Hegel's views on embodied normativity. This essay examines Hegel's account of embodied normativity in relation to his assessment of good and bad habits. Engaging Hegel's account of the rabble (Pöbel) in the Philosophy of Right and Frank Ruda's assessment of Hegel's rabble, this essay traces the relation between ethicality, idleness and race in Hegel. In being a figure of refusal in its affirmation of idleness, the rabble disallows the progressive revision of the project of modernity central to Hegel's philosophy. Hegel's discussion of the rabble is thus key to assessing the production of race within Hegel's notion of ethical life.