HABIT, NORM, RITUAL IN THE LIGHT OF CHARLES PEIRCE’S PRAGMATISM
New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria
Abstract
Although drawn as an idea from Charles Peirce’s philosophy, the triad “habit-norm-ritual” is not present in this exact formulation within the named. Peirce develops a thorough concept of habit as an element of the rational thinking, states theses on the norm and mentions the ritual only en passant within his thoughts, concerning the forms of thinking. The present study keeps the spirit of the pragmatic doctrine, which is recently named to be “the philosophy of the future”, looking for the applications of the drawn triad not only within the anthropological theory, but also within the terms of the everyday living.
The ritual as a phenomenon is historically related to the semiotic researches and mainly to those of the French structuralism from the beginning of the XX century. In this period, facing numerous theoretical issues, anthropology starts “borrowing” research methods from different humanities. Mary Douglas (1921 – 2007) for example uses Basil Bernstein’s (1924 – 2000) linguistic code theory for reaching the conclusion that the ritual practices are created for regulating the social relations within a community, which turns them into a medium for control. Maurice Bloch (1939) emphasises that the ritual, being a formalisation of beliefs, is an effective mean of control in the societies where authority is traditionally dominant. He clarifies that such groups are too often “depressingly hierarchic” (Bloch 1975: 3). The quest of finding semiotic perspective over the matters of culture and anthropology is tactile at its most at the beginning of the 60s in the works of Claude Lévi-Strauss (Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1908-2009), who spares considerable room for the ritual in his researches. This “opens” the science of signs up to the field of culture studies. It is an indicative fact that today, even in purely lingual terms we are used to talk about “symbolic nature” of the ritual activity. Yet, the works of Lévi-Strauss lean to the dual tendency in semiotics, while in the current research fruitful relations between the ritual and the triadic concepts of Charles Peirce (1857 – 1913) are sought.
Peirce’s pragmatic model for determination of meanings is used in the present paper in the quest of answering the fundamental anthropological question “what is ritual”, which remains unsolved in a definite way in the anthropological literate up to the present day. And the basis of the pragmatic analysis herewith will be the triad habit-norm-ritual. If only the first term – habit – is to be taken, it is indisputably Peircean one; the second one – norm – is considered in the specific meaning, attached to it by Peirce, bearing in mind the named is more of a secondary unit within his philosophy; and the third term – ritual – is taken from the field of anthropology entirely. Revealing the connection between the anthropological view of ritual and the Peircean concept of habit is one of the main aims of the present paper. Then the function of norm, as a gravitational centre able to keep the defined meanings while at the same time remaining subject to change, will be analysed. ATriadic structural model of ritual, drawing the frame of the named as a phenomenon on which different and at times exceptionally complex sign systems could be built, will be suggested as the ultimate point of the current research.
The main hypotheses, giving the start of the analysis could be formulated as follows:
1. The ritual contains in its kernel a mental habit, yet it is upgraded as a structure, so that stability in the group to be created and the knowledge of importance for that community to be preserved. And the habit, as an essential part of the ritual, functions as a “reliever” of mental energy which is to be used for reaching new knowledge.
2. Before turning into a ritual a norm, or otherwise – fixed layer of habits, pertaining to one and the same category, is formed around the habit. The norm itself is a phenomenon which simultaneously welts together and preserves the knowledge by creating dynamics as well. It is the norm assuring the two main functions of the ritual – transmission of the gathered knowledge and the vouch for the dynamics and the transformation ability of that knowledge.
3. Around the mental habit, upgraded to a norm, the creation of an outer circle of ritual objects is needed; the latter being more modifiable, as often it is the outer circle’s dynamics to ensure the social stability of the inner layers, which contain the habit and the norm.
Clarity overlooked
One of the easily determinable issues in anthropological research is the lack of consentience and terminological clarity in regards to the ritual. Most of the researchers, such as James Frazer (1854–1941), Emile Durkheim (1858–1917), Victor Turner (1920–1983), Claude Levi-Strauss are focused on describing ritual practices without explicitly addressing the fundamental theoretical question “What is ritual?” Only here and there within the researches partial, unclear and even contradictive definitions of the phenomenon are being provided. These definitions outline ritual’s frame only as a mythologised act, expressing community’s primitive beliefs, related to fruitfulness and to the existence of controlling supreme forces. Later on these borders of the ritual are being widened to the religious practices, their cultural dimensions and the meanings of the signs used. Turner is the first to attempt forming a definition:
“First let me comment on the difference between my use of the term “ritual” and the definitions of Schechner and Goffman. By and large they seem to mean by ritual a standardized unit act, which may be secular as well as sacred, while I mean the performance of a complex sequence of symbolic acts. Ritual for me, [as Ronald Grimes puts it], is a “transformative performance revealing major classification, categories, and contradictions of cultural processes” (Turner 1987: 75)
Another definition of his states that the ritual is „prescribed formal behavior for occasions not given over to technological routine, having reference to beliefs in mystical beings and powers” (Turner 1967: 19). Points of view different to those above or often even contradicting to them are stated by each and every succeeding researcher. This leads to the constant increase of possible definitions but not to a theoretical unanimity. In her book Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (1992), named to be the most significant study of the ritual in the XXth century by the editors of Oxford University Press, Catherine Bell (1953–2008) underlines that:
“There is little explicit consensus concerning the intrinsic features of ritual, and some do not believe there to be any features intrinsic to ritual. Nonetheless, certain features – formality, fixity, and repetition – have been consistently and repeatedly cited as central to ritual and ritualization” (Bell 1992: 91–92).
Despite of the disagreements between the different scholars, at the end of the XXth century anthropology formulates several generally valid characteristics of the ritual, which will be used as a starting point for the application of the Peircean pragmatic method. These characteristics are namely:
· The ritual is a sequence of repeated acts, related to the stable beliefs of a group (and more rarely to individual ones).
· The ritual transmits knowledge and experience important to the community. This fact turns it into both a structuralizing element of every social group and respectively – into a research subject for the contemporary humanities.
· The ritual is repetitive and bears features, which are demonstrative of the culture of the respective group.
· The ritual is structured over a set of defined, stable beliefs on both social and emotional levels.
· The ritual is always subject to periodicity (calendar), which means that it functions as a law within the community.
These general conclusions on the essence and functions of the ritual make it strongly akin to Peirce’s concept of habit, yet here the clarification is needed that habit as part of the Peircean philosophical system should not be in any way mixed up with the same term, used in the everyday life. Peirce considers the habit as a firm structure, which makes the thinking process easier; the habit being similar to a furrow through which the thought flows before casting itself in the moulds of the interpretants (its interpretations). It can be liken to a stereotype block or model, a form arisen out after a long use of repetitive thoughts which blaze trails in the mind through which it reaches the conclusions for the interpretations easier. The habituation is potency, inherent in every new thought, which after some time gets hardened and trampled as a path ready for future usage. Thus, every fluent verbalization of a thought means that the mind has taken advantage of a habit for thinking. The arisen of habituation in an initial chaos signifies the beginning of a process for realisation of the nature of this form of existence – a beginning of the formation of habit for certain way of thinking.
Controlled chaos
The correlation between habit and ritual is found even in the initial stage of the analysis. The ritual is defined as „thoughtless action – routinized, habitual […] physical expression of logically prior ideas” (Bell 1992: 19). This statement is connate to the Peircean understanding of habit. Alike the habit, ritual could be defined as a belief vested with action. In numerous cases people repeat the habit mechanically as it stops being subject of thinking in time and instead takes the form of a tag action which saves mental energy and transmits a firm meaning. Edward Shils (1910–1995) emphasises that beliefs can exist without rituals but not vice versa. Evidently the ritual is built around a belief which transfers knowledge important to the community. Yet the belief, in the Peircean view, develops naturally into habit in order to save mental energy in the everyday life. Thus, namely habit, harmonizing the outer reality, is to be found in the kernel of the ritual. The named thesis is supported by the ritual’s characteristic of the slow change of the ritual acts. The ritual provides “life” to the habit-beliefs in the community, linking the collective belief and the private experience. In rare cases the ritual could be private, devoid of social significance. In his essays Peirce considers as well the habit’s role as a regulator of the thinking and behavior within the group:
The gentleman is imbued with conservatism. This conservatism is a habit, and it is the law of habit that it tends to spread and extend itself over more and more of the life. In this way, conservatism about morals leads to conservatism about manners and finally conservatism about opinions of a speculative kind. (CP 1.50)
From the above another important aspect of habit becomes evident – it is always a result of personal thinking and belief. Gradually, following the tendency for habituation, the habit widens itself gripping more and more similar concepts, becoming in the end a major factor of thinking and behavior upon “specific type” of issues. Could then be claimed that the ritual is built on a collective habit? Evidently Peirce considers moral namely as a system of such collective thought schemes and actions. This system he calls “social conscious” or “social spirit”, remarking that it is not exactly the same in people and is neither an independent state of the separate individual. „Conscience has been created by experience just as any knowledge is; but it is modified by further experience only with secular slowness” (CP 1.56). Thus Peirce suggests that it is not only the individual who can create and follow their own system of rules, but a group can do it, as the group’s evolution depends on the availability of habits and free mental energy to be used for new discoveries.
The habit is a major element of almost every Peircean study, including his pragmatic method formulated as follows:
Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object. (W3: 266)
In another essay Peirce reformulates the pragmatic dictum, as quoted above, in accordance to habit:
To develop its meaning, we have, therefore, simply to determine what habits it produces, for what a thing means is simply what habits it involves. Now, the identity of a habit depends on how it might lead us to act, not merely under such circumstances as are likely to arise, but under such as might possibly occur, no matter how improbable they may be. What the habit is depends on when and how it causes us to act. (W3: 265)
Obviously Peirce not only sets the fixation of the meaning in the centre of the habit but also grounds the conclusion that „the whole meaning is the full set of habits contained in a certain affirmation” (Murphey 1961: 315). If the pragmatic approach is applied to the so-described characteristics and functions of the ritual, it could be easily concluded that the latter appears to be an effect of collective habit.
In anthropology Durkheim scrutinizes the ritual practices as generating collective experience, summarized with the term “socioempiricism”. He points out that within the ritual acts the ideas of existence are both expressed and perceived emotionally, while the joint experience gives the feeling for social power and security in regards to the circumambience. Thus the ritual turns to be a mechanism for sustaining the group’s continuity by including the individual habits and beliefs in a common cosmology. Actually Durkheim’s thesis does not conceptually differ from the one formulated through Peirce’s ideas, namely that the ritual is built around the kernel of a collective habit. Still, the understanding that the ritual is a complex multilayered phenomenon, non-existent if not into generalized form, is to be emphasized. The habit found in the ritual’s kernel is a consequence of a collective belief while the ritual itself is consequential to a mental habit, transmitting knowledge of essential importance to the community. In order to relay the knowledge from its kernel, the habit covers similar concepts and creates a layer of fixed principles or otherwise – a norm. Dynamic “outer elements” (ritual items), gravitating in a changeable orbit, are then attracted to that concepts. This is the way in which the collective habit first develops into a norm, and then into a complex phenomenon called “ritual”.
Stability and resistance
At the beginning of the current paper the hypothesis that ritual, although preserved for centuries, still changes in time thanks to the norm which is essentially stable and dynamic at the same time, was assumed. The need for the processes of thinking to be confined by rules, which to ensure understanding, takes shape already within the school of Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768 – 1834). This is how the normative sciences emerged, corresponding to the ideals for truthfulness, beauty and good, named respectively logics, aesthetics, and ethics. The term “norm” itself is derived from the named sciences, and is widely used, bearing the general meaning of “a rule”, not only in scientific discourse but in the everyday speech.
“There is a family likeness between Esthetics, Ethics, and Logic. All three of them are purely theoretical sciences which nevertheless set up norms, or rules which need not, but which ought, to be followed. Now in the case of taste, it is recognized that the excellence of the norm consists exclusively in its accordance with the deliberate and natural judgment of the cultured mind” (CP 2.156).
But why norm should be scrutinised in the context of a particular science or activity? In finding the answer of the so put question, determination of the function of the norm in the cognitive process is needed first. In bracketed note, Peirce gives a brief but important definition: „I never use the word norm in the sense of a precept, but only in that of a pattern which is copied, this being the original metaphor” (CP 1.586). Due to it wide spread most researchers do not clarify the meaning and function of the term in question, but rather using it directly in its meaning of a mental scheme, model or pattern of behavior, transferred between situations similar to each other. Obviously the norm is a phenomenon of generalizing nature able to attracts and keeps in its orbit meanings stable in time: “When within a formation a norm is set all components are directed towards that norm” (Mladenov 2011: 37).
According to Peirce the norm has the power of “legitimating” the new meanings by including them through the process of rationalization in the chain of knowledge. Yet, the conclusions for which a fixed belief is at hand get themselves fixated into mental habits, in order to release mental energy in the everyday life. Since the sustainability of knowledge is possible through the habits of thinking, in order for the norm to function as a generalized mental model which can be applied to considerable fields within the existence, such as those of morals and beauty, it should be able to withstand within its orbit not only one or two but a whole class of rational habits. As an example, if we need to assess whether an unknown object falls under the beauty norm, not only a single settled criterion (such as form) but a whole set of fixed concepts (form, colour, size, position in space) will be applied to it and their correlations considered. The norm is not a collection of random mental habits but suggests definite relations between the habits to be settled, so that they can form a cognitive category which is referred to as “beautiful”, “good” or “right”.
If the norm is agreed to be a phenomenon, containing a set of habits from the same class, then its stability is ensured by the very nature of habits, which can remain constant for long periods of time. What is in this case which makes the norm to be dynamic? In case this phenomenon is considered a chain of separate habits, then its change should be brought to habits drop out of or added to the chain. Rejection of a habit does not have the power for destructing the norm but changes it at any rate. For example, for ages Africans were out of the scope of the Western norm for beauty due to their dark skin colour. The habit dark skin to be thought of as a physical flaw died out to date, so that people bearing this characteristic fall naturally under the category for beautiful, provided that they meet the rest of the criteria set in the beauty norm.
The norm is able to sustain a common kernel of meaning, consisted of a whole class of mental habits, without the named to affect its inner mobility and mutability. Similar to the Peircean concept of the habit-taking tendency, which a continuum containing all habits already settled, the norm is a tendency withstanding the habits of a specific class. The difference between the single phenomenon (the habit) and the tendency (the norm) is that the latter has the natural ability of resistance. Namely, it is changed upon a habit being added to it or drops out of it, as in most of the cases this process does not affect the other habits within the norm. This is proven by the change in the Western beauty norm out of which the criterion of the light skin drops gradually through time. The presence of the norm within the complex structure of the ritual ensures two of its most important characteristics – its ability to transmits for centuries the knowledge important for the group by remaining at the same time dynamic and open to change.
Gravitation
Being a dynamic set of habits the norm is an important part of the ritual and can shed some light on problematic aspects from the anthropological theory. The two most essential characteristics of the norm were mentioned above as being dynamics and resistance. Most of the difficulties and contradictions in defining ritual practices arise namely from the abovementioned characteristics. Provided that the norm is a kernel, keeping a whole class of meanings but allowing at the same time the possibility for change, it can be assumed that the named is present in the ritual for preventing meanings dispersion. The ritual needs a dynamic center of meaning to exist, as otherwise it would collapsed with the beliefs it summons turning into the receiving end of doubt. Just to fulfill its functions on the social and emotional levels, the ritual needs to be stable. On the other hand, though, it is evident that the ritual practices are changing in time and there is not a single one that remained the same as at the time of its formation. In each ritual particular elements that are taken away, and such that are being added could be listed. In his book „The Golden Bough” (1890) Frazer describes an important change in the spring ritual dedicated to Cybele:
We can assume that from the beginning it was regularly used to hang or somehow to mortify the priest on the sacred tree while he was named and played the role of Attis, in the spring celebrations of Cybele, much later the barbarian custom was transformed the way it is known in later times, when the priests just cut himself to blood under the tree and instead of him they hang his dummy on the tree. (Фрейзър 2006: 341)
The change in the ethic norm that leads to change in the ritual practice is easily distinguishable in the above example. And although in the example at hand the norm is fundamentally developed by the added value to the individual’s life, instead of the previously valued group’s welfare, this does not break the ritual down. The ritual just gets adapted to the new fixed belief that the life of the individual is valuable, which discards this type of offering. Thus the beliefs dynamics can lead to considerable changes in the thinking habits, respectively to changes in the essence of the ritual without the latter to collapse. The stability and dynamic of the ritual can be explained exclusively through the presence of a norm around which the meanings assemble.
After clarifying the relation between habit and norm as structural elements of the ritual, which insure its steadiness along with its ability to change, a Triadic structural model of ritual, based on the Peircean pragmatic perspective could be drawn.
Fig. 1 Triadic structural model of ritual
The so presented model represents the structure of the ritual act through three inscribed circles, different in their level of dynamics, and therefore in the power with which they keep the meanings. The first, most inner circle contains the main rigid belief with its subsequent habit for action. The ritual for rain evocation, existing in different forms in numerous different places in the world, can be taken as an example. In the core of the named ritual a stable belief is always to be found – the one that through his actions a man can have influence upon the natural power, evoking it in a specific place and time. This belief is so strong and so greatly important for the lives of certain groups of people that by time it has grown into habit for thinking, so that each and every time the community faces a long drought period they resort to that habit as an opportunity for resolving the issue.
The second circle within the ritual’s structure contains a norm, formed through the repetition of the habit and the gradual adding of more habits from the same class. The norm in the second circle of the ritual’s structure could be referred to as the centre of the ritual since it functions as a social law or taboo which regulates the life within the community, decreasing the probability for deviation. It is a centre of meaning of the ritual act with its own “gravity” which keeps the meanings and decreases the probability for them to change or drop out. Fraser describes the following rain ritual:
“When in the villages around Derpta [...] had great need of rain, three men climbed in the pines of the ancient sacred forest. One smashed the hammer on the boiler or a little barrel to mimic the thunder; the other banged into each other two firebrands and that produced sparks and thus resembled the lightnings, and the third, whom they called the “rain man”, sprayed around with water using a bundle of twigs” (Фрейзър 2006: 63).
In order the specific elements of the ritual kept by the second circle of the model (the norm) to be determinate, two more examples provided by Fraser will be given. He describes the rain ritual in New Guinea where the sorcerer evocates the natural phenomenon by steeping a twig from a particular tree into water, dispersing it then on the ground. In New Britain a man from the tribe is chosen to be the “rainbearer” who buries a bundle of wet leaves, recreating then with his mouth the sound of the rain swash (ibid). These three examples prove considerable similarity between the elements of the ritual as conducted in different places across the globe, which points to the presence of a norm in the ritual, premising the similarities. Thus it becomes evident that gradually additional beliefs and their adjoining habits have been added to the main belief regarding rain, namely, that man can evoke it. The norm in the rain rituals contains the habit for the natural phenomenon to be recreated through people’s actions. Yet, in line with the same norm not everyone is eligible for conducting the ritual. Another habit, which became part of the latter norm, is the use of plants, mandatorily made wet or used for dispersing the water symbolizing rain. These essential ritual elements are kept unchanged in time by the norm, being as well insusceptible to the differences in terms of various locations.
Going back to the stability of the habits in the norm’s kernel, mutable and easily changeable elements are found in the third, most external circle of the ritual. Such are mainly the ritual objects or certain technical requirements. The elements of the outer circle are far more dynamic and as a result replacement of one ritual object with another is often observed in a ritual, without such an exchange to influence the meaning of the rite conducted. As mentioned above, the tool used for water dispensing during the rain ritual could be a twig, branch or even the mouth of the rainbearer himself. Thus, even though each group has chosen a particular ritual object, the named could be replaced with another, without the ritual’s impact to be affected. Therefore the greatest dynamic is found in the third, most external circle of the ritual.
What is, though, causing the differences in the ability for change innate in the three structural layers of the phenomenon? The habit of thinking, occupying the most inner circle, is essentially summarized, containing a fundamental belief for the reality, e.g. the belief that man could evoke the natural phenomena or that the High God could be placated. This habit is stable and its change would be related to going again through the whole cognitive process, as described in the pragmatic essays of Peirce, involving an initial doubt about a certain proposition, followed by the conduction of a research for abolishing the teasing doubt, and the final settlement of a new belief. Yet, the so-described process requires considerable amount of mental energy to be spent. This is namely the reason for such habits to be so stable and needed to the mind, for their change being consequential to a cataclysm or a serious collapse, which to raise a strong doubt. The second circle – the one of the norm – is stable since it contains a complete class of thinking habits. It keeps the knowledge in the form of laws or taboos, needed for the existence and functioning of the community. Nevertheless the norm is not fixed in a definitive way, bearing inner dynamics and the ability to change. Having the nature of a tendency, the norm allows some of the established habits to fall out and new ones to be added without these processes to destroy it. And the elements from the most external circle of the ritual are dynamic and mutable since their change does not lead to the community’s beliefs alteration. Thus, they can even be a result of a fashion, a trend since their purpose is to bring comfort to the participants, making the ritual act more relevant to their lives. Thereby the outer dynamic of the ritual ensures its inner stability. The propinquity of the external elements, such as leaves, branches, utensils, which become sacred during numerous rituals, does not break the rite’s holiness but quite the contrary – reconfirms the values, set by the norm, decreasing this way the probability for a doubt to arise. That’s why it is a natural process for the rituals to change their external form, in order to preserve the stability of the normative meanings in the center. Fraser provides numerous examples of such external changes in the rituals, which aims at the preservation of the beliefs and norms set. This is the case of the pagan cult to the sun which in time gradually becomes part of Christianity. This is namely the case of the ritual for celebrating the winter solstice being transformed into the currently well-known Christmas celebration, happening on December 25th.
According to the Julian calendar, 25 December is considered the day of the winter solstice and the birth of the Sun, because after this turning point in the year the day gets longer and the Sun is getting stronger. The ritual of the Sun birth as it celebrated in Syria and Egypt, is remarkable. Revelers retreated in some domestic chambers and at midnight went out shouting: "The virgin gave birth. Light becomes stronger!" The Egyptians even pictured the newborn Sun in the image of a baby [...] without a doubt the Virgin, conceived and gave birth to a son on December 25, is the great Oriental goddess [...] the Gospel says nothing about the day of Christ's birth and in this situation, the Church does not celebrate it at first. With time, however, the Christians in Egypt started to celebrate January 6 as the day of the birth [...] at the end of the third and beginning of the fourth century the Western church which never had recognised 6 January as the day of Christ birth, took December 25th for the true date of birth [...] Apparently the Christian Church chose to celebrate the birth of its founder on 25 December to transfer the devotion of the pagans to the Sun to those who was named Sun of the virtue (Фрейзър 2006: 345–346).
If we today’s ritual for celebrating Christmas is compared to its pagan prototype, as described by Fraser, it becomes evident that the differences are far more than the similarities. Namely, celebrators’ solitary retreatment and the rapturous announcement of Christmas have fallen out, being replaced by today’s ritual, which is full of elements in the outer circle, added through the centuries as a result of the interaction with other rites or in order to make the ritual more relevant and acceptable for the present society. Such new elements, related also to the development of the consumerism culture, are the sumptuous, florid decorations of the private homes and public spaces before the date of celebration, the Christmas tree, the inclusion of certain mandatory types of foods, and even the usage of certain colours. All these contemporary elements are missing from the prototype of the ritual, being part of the outer circle (the one of the rite’s objects) and as such – being added in time with the purpose (among others) to support the fixed habits of thinking and the norm, which are settled in the two inner circles of the ritual act.
The ritual is a complex phenomenon of a complicated sign-full nature and that is why the studies related to it are more often rather bringing questions to the table, instead of providing answers about its essence and functions. The present paper is unable to cover all the aspects of the topic, yet proving the validity upon application of the triad habit-norm-ritual, thus turning the latter into a crossing point between the Peircean triadic branch in semiotics and the anthropological theory. A triadic structural model of the ritual was derived through the analysis of the phenomena in question. This model gives an explanation of the ritual’s structure without the named phenomenon to be restrained by factors such as time, location and complexity of the act of rite itself. By considering not just the phenomenon of ritual but its effects and manifestations, the present paper sheds some light on some major anthropological questions – those referring to the structure of the ritual, the simultaneous dynamics and the fixity of the phenomenon.
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