Hume and Deleuze: habit as a passive synthesis of time

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to expose the Hume's theory of habit from Deleuze's interpretation, which conceives such theory from the perspective of the question of time. At first we try to describe the way the habit produces causality, once the causal relationship is exemplary from the point of view of temporal problematics. In a second moment we deal with the principle of habit as a synthesis of external and different perceptions, a principle that is independent of subjective activity. Habit, as we seek to show, is prior to any subjective activity because its dynamics are entirely passive. In a third moment we show that this synthesis of habit is a synthesis of time, a passive synthesis of time, producing, as Deleuze states, of the living present of the active subjectivity.