The local unit in Milan deals with the theme of habits from a pragmatist perspective. It mainly investigates the American tradition starting with Peirce, where the topic of habit has both semiotic, pragmatist and cosmological relevance, and continues with other 20th century pragmatists: Dewey and Mead. In their transdisciplinary perspective, the notion of habit is placed at the center of a series of reflections that intertwine with issues of great contemporary importance in biology, human evolution, and the cognitive and social sciences. Whitehead’s philosophy can also be placed in the same vein, questioning the process of genesis and evolution of philosophical and scientific habits in relation to common sense.
Our attention is also drawn to continental traditions in their intertwining with the pragmatist perspective. The way of thinking that will be studied is that of human practices: philosophical exercises that become habits in transformation from the perspective of Pierre Hadot, scholar of ancient philosophy; discursive and pragmatic practices of the self in Foucault, immanent practices of conceptual creation in Deleuze. Attention will also be given to the reflections of Bruno Latour, who has recovered the concept of habit from James and has originally applied it to the theme of relationality.
