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Habit and Mental Illness from an Hegelian Perspective

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Abstract

Hegel proposes cultivation of habit as one of the major cures for mental illness. According to him, habit not only involves embodiment and dexterity but also mental activities and ethical elements. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the types of habit Hegel prescribes for curing mental illness in his original works. A three-level framework comprising the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and spiritual levels is adopted, and results show that although Hegel points out that habit is ethical and spiritual in nature, in his discussions on mental illness Hegel makes the majority of references on habits that involves the body such as physical movement and laboring. Habits that belong to the interpersonal and spiritual aspects are relatively neglected. This paper proposes that habits in the interpersonal and family realms, habits that function in the transition from the subjective to objective spirit, and habits in the morality sphere, which are equally important in Hegel’s philosophy, should be taken into consideration in future research and interventions for mental illness.

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Notes

  1. Some examples are madness, insanity, dementia, and mania. See, for example, Doob (1974), Gomory, Cohen, and Kirk (2013).

  2. Hegel provides an account of a few types of mental illness such as idiocy, the distracted mind and the rambling mind in the Zusätz of §408 of his Philosophy of Mind (PhM) (Hegel 1971). However, the descriptions are relatively short and most of them cover about one page only.

  3. For example, “mental disorder,” “psychopathology,” and “mental patient” will also be used wherever suitable.

  4. Following prominent experts on the history of mental illness (e.g., Scull 1979; 2015), this paper uses the term “mental illness” as an umbrella term for mental and psychological disorders in modern usage to replace Hegel’s “madness” and “insanity” which he often used.

  5. For example, Forman (2010), Howard (2013), Lumsden (2012), Testa (2017), Žižek (2009), and Zovko (2018).

  6. For example, Menke (2013); Žižek (2009).

  7. For example, Hegel (1971, p. 123).

  8. Hegel’s conceptualization of dementia is entirely different from contemporary conceptualizations. For example, in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) (American Psychiatric Association 2013), dementia is categorized as a Neurocognitive Disorder which is a disease of the brain.

  9. One good example is the influences of his theories on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (American Psychological Association 2013).

  10. In his later important work, the Philosophy of Right (1953: 109), Hegel points out habit is a “second nature”.

  11. As stated by Hegel, “at the stage we have now reached in the development of subjective mind, we come to a being-for-self of the soul that has been brought into being by the Notion of soul which has overcome the inner contradiction of mind present in insanity, has put an end to the complete dividedness of the self. This being-at-home-with-oneself we call habit. In this, the soul which is no longer confined to a merely subjective particular idea by which it is displaced from the center of its concrete actuality, has so completely received into its ideality the immediate and particularized content presented to it, has come to feel so at home in it, that it moves about in it in freedom” (Hegel 1971: 144).

  12. Lumsden (2012: 224) explains how habit is related to self-identity, that “(T)he repetition is what allows the subject to habituate that feeling, sensation of action and thereby make it part of its identity, something it could then be indifferent to, precisely because it relates to them as external drives, sensations or impulses. Prior to habit the subject is not able to be at home with itself and is not free because the being of the soul is driven by particulars. It can only be at home with itself when the particulars are idealized, only then has it started to become self-identical.”

  13. In Malabou’s words, “from the beginning to the end of the organism’s life, habit is busy applying its power from the inside, fulfilling the individual development of the organism’s faculties” (Malabou 2005: 58).

  14. As stated by Malabou, “habit becomes a condition of adaptation in a double sense, being a form of contemplation – absorbing the environment, passively lending itself to what is given – and a kind of exercise, informing and transforming the surroundings, appropriating the given conditions for its organic functions” (Malabou 2005: 60).

  15. As suggested earlier on page 4, Hegel treats dementia as a reversion to nature, a flight from the world, and a deficit in world relation (Hegel 2007: 140).

  16. For example, de Sousa, Varese, Sellwood, and Bentall (2014).

  17. See, for example, Hegel (1971: 135) and Hegel (2007: 148).

  18. For example, Jones (2017) and Schirmann (2013).

  19. For example, Hegel (1977).

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    Manfred Man-fat Wu

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Wu, M.Mf. Habit and Mental Illness from an Hegelian Perspective. Hu Arenas 5, 245–261 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42087-020-00151-5

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