Abstract

The paper assesses the usefulness of the Bourdieusian idea of "habitus" for the sociology of ideas, and proposes a more nuanced conceptual toolbox for the analysis of an individual actor's dispositions to act based on Neil Gross's work on the intellectual self-concept and Peter Sloterdijk's theory of exercise. This complex conception of the "habitus" is used to sketch a nar- rative of two moments of Robert N. Bellah's career: the formation of his intellectual "habitus" and self-concept during the 1950s, and his work on his last project, "Religion in Human Evolution", from the point of view of the interaction between the challenges typical of the field of the contemporary social sciences, his intellectual self-concept, and his dispositions and «virtues» as an intellectual.