Clare Carlisle

This paper begins by reflecting on the concept of habit and discussing its significance in various philosophical and non-philosophical contexts – for this helps to clarify the connections between habit and selfhood. I then attempt to sketch an account of the self as ”nothing but habit,“ and to address the questions this raises about how such a self must be constituted. Finally, I focus on the issue of freedom, or liberation, and consider the possibility of moving beyond habit. I emphasize the body since it is through the body that the un-doing of habit must take place. Deleuze and Merleau-Ponty are distinguished from the many philosophers who have recognized the importance of habit by their more radical claim that we not only have habits, but are habits – and for this reason I draw on their work in the first two sections of this paper.

This chapter examines the relationship between Soren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger. It explains that Heidegger mentioned Kierkegaard in much of his work from the early 1920s until his latest writings, but did not clarify the relationship between his own thought and Kierkegaard's. The chapter analyses Kierkegaard's distinctive contribution to philosophy and evaluates how this was taken up by Heidegger in his writings, particularly in Being and Time. It also evaluates the extent to which contemporary interpretation of Kierkegaard was influenced by Heidegger's philosophy.

This article argues that Spinoza’s account of the eternity of the mind in Part V of the Ethics offers a re-interpretation of the Christian doctrine of eternal life. While Spinoza rejects the orthodox Christian teaching belief in personal immortality and the resurrection of the body, he presents an alternative account of human eternity that retains certain key characteristics of the Johannine doctrine of eternal life, especially as this is articulated in the First Letter of John. The article shows how Spinoza’s account of human eternity reflects two key principles of his philosophy: the ideal of union with God, and the possibility of the human being’s ontological transformation through this union.