What is Intellectual Character?

What is Intellectual Character?

What is character? Character is the network of habits that permeate all the intentional acts of an individual.

I am not using the word habit in the way we often do, as a technical ability existing apart from our wishes. These habits are an intimate and fundamental part of our selves. They are representations of our will. They rule our will, working in a coordinated way they dominate our way of acting. These habits are the results of repeated, intelligently controlled, actions.

Habits also control the formation of ideas as well as physical actions. We cannot perform a correct action or a correct idea without having already formed correct habits. "Reason pure of all influence from prior habit is a fiction. "The medium of habit filters all material that reaches our perception and thought…Immediate, seemingly instinctive, feeling of the direction and end of various lines of behavior is in reality the feeling of habits working below direct consciousness… Habit means special sensitiveness or accessibility to certain classes of stimuli, standing predilections and aversions, rather than bare recurrence of specific acts. It means will."

I think that intellectual character, which is that system of habits that lead us to think in a certain manner and determine significantly what kind of person we are, is a reality in all of us that has a significant similarity with 'paradigm'.

What do I mean when I say ?'character is paradigm'? I mean that the concept ?'paradigm' is a useful concept for comprehending ?'character'.

Intellectual character is a way of "seeing", which transposes into a way of behaving. Without the habits of character our actions would be an untied bundle of isolated acts. ?'Character' is a word representing the interpenetration of habits. If our habits are formed in an incoherent manner our behavior will be incoherent. Our actions, in the case of intellectual character, our thoughts would be a "juxtaposition of disconnected reactions to separated situations".

My understanding of character and the quotations concerning the nature of character are taken from "Habits and Will" by John Dewey http://www.alexandercenter.com/jd/johndeweyhabits.html.