Can a soul see God or itself without intermediaries? The self as distinct from its habits and actions

Abstract

Are our habits and knowledge an inseparable part of “us”? Or is there a certain primal self, concealed beneath, that remains constant, while habits may be lost, change and disguise it? Chapter 3 examines this question through the lens of the problem of the immediacy attributed to the visions of Paul and the blessed souls. Approaching the condemnations of 1241 from a new perspective, it argues that what was at stake was competing approaches as to what should be considered “the self.” According to some, the seeing subject constituted one unified unit but was composed of a naked potency to know, which was regarded as the “self,” and a habitus of knowledge, which stood between it and its object. The problem of whether one’s essence is faithfully seen through one’s habitus is then shown to be dominant in contemporary French romance literature, in works such as Silence,and Renart’s Guillaume de Dole and The Shadow.