抄録
Through his development of the concept of habitus, Pierre Bourdieu aimed to transcend dualisms, such as objectivism/subjectivism, determinism/freedom, unconscious/conscious, conditioning/creativity, and society/individual. However, Bourdieu’s critics argue that his formulation of habitus is incomplete; more specifically, Bourdieu has not indicated how agents actively participate in the process of generating practice. To overcome this weakness, many critics attempt to supplement Bourdieu’s theory of habitus with discussions of agency, individuation, and consciousness, and so on. This article adopts a different approach to the problem and shows that we can understand how agents control their practices by closely considering Bourdieu’s discussion of habitus, not by supplementation. To examine this problem, the author focuses on the concept of “practical sense,” a term Bourdieu used to illustrate the notion of habitus. Bourdieu said that practical sense is a sense of “à venir.” In other words, it allows agents to anticipate the imminent future. This article demonstrates that “à venir” and practical sense have two aspects. First, practical sense predicts the imminent future on the basis of past experience. Agents are unable to control this process. Second, practical sense predicts the imminent future on the basis of signs in the present that imply the imminent future. To grasp these signs, agents must practice unceasing vigilance in the present. By focusing on the present, agents can grasp the imminent future. By investigating the concept of “practical sense,” we can understand how agents are actively involved in the process of generating practice. Agents participate actively in the process of generating practice by focusing on the present, that is, through their practical sense. This reading of Bourdieu suggests that habitus is a more flexible concept than most critics have claimed it to be.
