Article ID: CBB734477521

From Habit to Monads: Félix Ravaisson's Theory of Substance (2015)

unapi

In this article, I argue that in his 1838 De l'habitude, Félix Ravaisson uses the analysis of habit to defend a Leibnizian monadism. Recent commentators have failed to appreciate this because they read Ravaisson as a typically post-Kantian philosopher, and underemphasize the distinct context in which he developed his work. I explore three key claims made by interpreters who argue that Ravaisson should be read as a Schellingian, and show [i] that these claims are incompatible with the text of De l'habitude and [ii] how they have obscured from view the monadism at the heart of this work. This article is divided into two sections. First, I explain the importance of Victor Cousin and Maine de Biran for the development of nineteenth-century French philosophy. Second, I argue that to understand the structure of De l'habitude, it should be read as a critique of Cousin's philosophical method and a demonstration of the superiority of Biran's Leibniz-inspired introspective method. Like Biran, Ravaisson believes that the introspective method leads to a pluralist metaphysics of forces, but he uses the introspective analysis of habit to go further back to Leibniz than Biran does and develops a pluralist substance metaphysics.

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Associated with

Article Jeremy Dunham; Pauline Phemister (2015) Monadologies: An Historical Overview. British Journal for the History of Philosophy (pp. 1023-1032). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB734477521/

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Authors & Contributors
Phemister, Pauline
Antoine-Mahut, Delphine
Basile, Pierfrancesco
Lézé, Samuel
Fincham, Richard Mark
Howard, Stephen
Concepts
Philosophy
Monads, monadology
Metaphysics
Psychology
Physics
Philosophy of science
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
17th century
20th century
20th century, early
Places
France
Great Britain
Germany
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