Lonergan's new notion of habit (1959)

[The new notion is found, it would seem, only in a little known archival text. I think it is a very significant notion.

To clarify it, I would need to clarify: (1) the shift from faculty psychology to the flow of consciousness (TE 1959) or intentionality analysis, (2) the new psychological analysis of development and the way it is different from the metaphysical analysis found in ch. 15 of Insight, (3) the new notion of the human good, in contrast to the cosmic or intellectual account of ch. 18 of Insight.]

HM 109-110:

De systemate et historia (Fall 1959) notes that the upper blade must be related to all philosophies as mathematics is to all hypotheses and theories of physics. A system of this type can be constructed in several ways: (1) as Hegelian dialectic, (2) as something initially potential, to be perfected and determined through research, (3) as a conceptual potency, (4) as a potency of some other type, such as operational. 

This operational potency is probably related to the notion of operational habit found in the archival text 'De circulo operationum.' The latter is to be distinguished from the 'operative habit' of the scholastics insofar as operative habits reside in some single and determinate potency, whereas operational habits can reside in several potencies at once: for instance, art involves the whole person, body and soul. Further, operational habits need not be restricted to a single mind, for science is an explicitly conscious operational habit, and it is so extensive that it cannot be contained in a single mind.

Now if operational potency is the same as operational habit, then we can say that the universal viewpoint defined in this way transcends the restriction both to some single faculty and to a single mind. But perhaps we should be careful.... 

HM 111:

The philosophy of education lectures of 1959 begin to speak about a shift from faculty psychology to the flow of consciousness. 

This is matched by a new, psychological analysis of development in contrast to the metaphysical analysis of chapter 15 of Insight and by a human account of the good in contrast to the cosmic or intellectual account of chapter 18 of Insight.

The new analysis of development, formulated with help from Piaget, leads to a significant new notion of habit that, in contrast to the scholastic one, is confined neither to some single faculty nor to a single mind. [Coelho, Hermeneutics and Method 111.]