ABSTRACT
There are many philosophical methods, but making distinctions is one of the most basic and ubiquitous tools of philosophy. A series of distinctions have structured our analysis of habit: receptivity and resistance; ethos and hexis; consuetudo and habitus; capacity and tendency; active habit and passive habituation; animal and human habit; physical and psychological habit; individual habit and collective custom; habit and practice. People have seen that habit cuts across and unsettles distinctions between permanence and change, mind and body, freedom and necessity, life and death. And all these distinctions play a part in illuminating the ambiguity and ambivalence that seem to follow habit wherever it goes. Learning to philosophize means becoming more discriminating about concepts, language and arguments, and less subject to the images and associations that flow unbidden through our minds. This means that the double law of habit should influence the philosopher as it influences the discerning wine expert and not as it affects the casual drinker.
