ABSTRACT
In contrast to approaches that divorce the body from the soul, this chapter offers the nineteenth-century French philosopher Felix Ravaisson’s alternative view of the human person. Ravaisson’s account is grounded in habit, “a spontaneous disposition or tendency that emerges amidst change” and that is manifested as an “idea becomes being” in the body. This notion of habit explains that our souls can achieve a kind of moral maturity that is at the same time rooted in our corporal functions. In fact, habit is both a “law of the limbs” and a “law of grace” and even discloses “God within us.” Thus, in place of a substance dualism, habit serves as a phenomenological paradigm to reveal a robust ontology of material things, including the human body. Vest highlights the medical implications of such a paradigm; physicians should attend not simply to the bodily needs of their patients but also to their moral and spiritual health. The remainder of his piece explores the possibility of common ground between Ravaisson’s thought and Eastern Christian ascetic theology, namely their emphasis on self-development toward the good of loving union with the divine.
