Metaphysical Hazlitt
Journal Data
| Type | SOURCE_BOOK |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis Group |
| ISBN-13 | 9780203420287 |
| Open Library | OL18845855W |
| Total publications | 12 |
| Coverage period | 2006 - 2006 |
| Language | EN |
The rediscovery and restitution of William Hazlitt as a canonical Romantic author has been among the latest and most significant developments in present-day Romantic studies. This volume, a collection of previously unpublished essays by the foremost scholars in the field presents Hazlitt as a philosophical, and not simply a 'familiar' essayist. It offers a comprehensive statement of the significance and transmission of Hazlitt's philosophical principles, in his own work and in that of his contemporaries and succeeding writers. This book is an essential contribution to a vital new aspect of Romantic studies and shows Hazlitt to be, as his memorial claims, 'The first (unanswered) Metaphysician of the age'.
‘A Nature Towards One Another’
Hazlitt had been trying to write his then-intractable ‘metaphysical choke-pear’, the Essay on the Principles of Human Action , for several years before his celebrated visit to Coleridge and Wordsworth in Somerset in the summer of 1797. During that visit he made a walking tour along the Bristol Channel with Coleridge as far as Linton, where, while staying at the village inn, they were told by a local fisherman that a boy had drowned off Linton bea…
Circle of Sympathy
This essay will attempt to assess Hazlitt&s;s influence on the development of Shelley&s;s moral philosophy. Shelley&s;s acquaintance with Hazlitt dates to early 1817, when Leigh Hunt brought them together, thereafter, Hazlitt met Shelley on several occasions at Hunt&s;s cottage in Hampstead. Their shared political interests were manifest; Charles Cowden Clarke recollects an occasion at Hunt&s;s where there took place ‘a very warm argument in favo…
Hazlitt and the ‘Kings of Speech’
In the table of contents to his Prospectus of a History of English Philosophy , Hazlitt&s;s general view of the subject includes the claim that philosophy is ‘little more than common sense well understood ’ (ii, 289). Yet the philosophical intervention of his own by which he set most store, that ‘metaphysical choke-pear’ the Essay on the Principles of Human Action , is, as Hazlitt himself frequently concedes with some pride, far from being the st…
One Impulse
According to the philosophers Raymond Martin and John Barresi, Hazlitt&s;s Essay on the Principles of Human Action is one of those books whose insights and perspectives were so far ahead of its own times ‘that they drop through the cracks of history’. 1 Martin and Barresi argue that had Hazlitt&s;s views on personal identity received the attention they deserved, the philosophical discussion of personal identity ‘may well have leaped ahead 150 yea…
‘The Future in the Instant’
When on the heath, in act 4 scene 3, Lear first encounters Poor Tom, the king at once cries out at the sight of this piteous naked madman: ‘Didst thou give all to thy daughters? And art thou come to this?’ That is to say: gave all as I did, and came to this, like me. And then again he exclaims: ‘What, have his daughters brought him to this pass?’ and finally: ‘Nothing could have subdued nature / To such a lowness but his unkind daughters’.
The Road to Nether Stowey
‘My First Acquaintance with Poets’ is our principal witness for events during Hazlitt&s;s visit to Nether Stowey and Alfoxden in late May 1798. Its popularity derives not just from what it reveals of Wordsworth and Coleridge at a vitally important moment in their creative lives, but from its ingeniously constructed myth of initiation into their work. For those reasons, we should be wary of accepting it as the final word on the events it describes…
‘Darkening Knowledge’
There are few more striking examples of the intellectual boundary that divided Romantic writer and utilitarian philosopher than the case of William Hazlitt&s;s sojourn as the tenant of Jeremy Bentham at 19 York Street, Westminster, between 1813 and 1819. During this time Hazlitt never once met his landlord, who lived next door and, for his part, Bentham seems to have been aware of the essayist only as a source of rent, for the non-payment of whic…
Hazlitt and the Idea of Identity
I am not the same thing, but many different things.
Hazlitt and the Selfishness of Passion
Hazlitt is fascinated throughout his career by the many forms of selfishness and prejudice in his contemporary society. His specific focus in numerous essays on selfishness, which derives from prejudice, partisanship and passion, constitutes a major exploration of one of the key concerns of his Essay on the Principles of Human Action (1805). Here Hazlitt attempted to establish the possibility of a moral imagination which enabled him to defend hum…
Schelling and Hazlitt on Disinterestedness and Freedom
In 1809, when Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling wrote his essay on Human Freedom ( Philosophische Untersuchung über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit ), the German provinces were under French occupation. Schelling himself had gained his appointment at the new University of Munich after the French had taken over the former Bavarian university in Ingolstadt. Schelling wrote in a context of immediate threat to the principles of freedom. Altho…
Metaphysical Hazlitt
Disinterested Imagining and Impersonal Feeling
The utilitarian reduction of moral philosophy which divided all motives into the self-regarding and the other-regarding was put forward and elaborated in the writings of Mandeville, Hume, and Adam Smith. Reservations, it is true, about these principles of action may be found even among the writers who first propounded them. Hume said that the two sorts of motive permeate each other, and Smith believed that an impartial umpire, ‘the man in the bre…
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‘A Nature Towards One Another’
Hazlitt had been trying to write his then-intractable ‘metaphysical choke-pear’, the Essay on the Principles of Human Action , for several years before his celebrated visit to Coleridge and Wordsworth in Somerset in the summer of 1797. During that visit he made a walking tour along the Bristol Channel with Coleridge as far as Linton, where, while staying at the village inn, they were told by a local fisherman that a boy had drowned off Linton bea…
Circle of Sympathy
This essay will attempt to assess Hazlitt&s;s influence on the development of Shelley&s;s moral philosophy. Shelley&s;s acquaintance with Hazlitt dates to early 1817, when Leigh Hunt brought them together, thereafter, Hazlitt met Shelley on several occasions at Hunt&s;s cottage in Hampstead. Their shared political interests were manifest; Charles Cowden Clarke recollects an occasion at Hunt&s;s where there took place ‘a very warm argument in favo…
Hazlitt and the ‘Kings of Speech’
In the table of contents to his Prospectus of a History of English Philosophy , Hazlitt&s;s general view of the subject includes the claim that philosophy is ‘little more than common sense well understood ’ (ii, 289). Yet the philosophical intervention of his own by which he set most store, that ‘metaphysical choke-pear’ the Essay on the Principles of Human Action , is, as Hazlitt himself frequently concedes with some pride, far from being the st…
One Impulse
According to the philosophers Raymond Martin and John Barresi, Hazlitt&s;s Essay on the Principles of Human Action is one of those books whose insights and perspectives were so far ahead of its own times ‘that they drop through the cracks of history’. 1 Martin and Barresi argue that had Hazlitt&s;s views on personal identity received the attention they deserved, the philosophical discussion of personal identity ‘may well have leaped ahead 150 yea…
‘The Future in the Instant’
When on the heath, in act 4 scene 3, Lear first encounters Poor Tom, the king at once cries out at the sight of this piteous naked madman: ‘Didst thou give all to thy daughters? And art thou come to this?’ That is to say: gave all as I did, and came to this, like me. And then again he exclaims: ‘What, have his daughters brought him to this pass?’ and finally: ‘Nothing could have subdued nature / To such a lowness but his unkind daughters’.
The Road to Nether Stowey
‘My First Acquaintance with Poets’ is our principal witness for events during Hazlitt&s;s visit to Nether Stowey and Alfoxden in late May 1798. Its popularity derives not just from what it reveals of Wordsworth and Coleridge at a vitally important moment in their creative lives, but from its ingeniously constructed myth of initiation into their work. For those reasons, we should be wary of accepting it as the final word on the events it describes…
‘Darkening Knowledge’
There are few more striking examples of the intellectual boundary that divided Romantic writer and utilitarian philosopher than the case of William Hazlitt&s;s sojourn as the tenant of Jeremy Bentham at 19 York Street, Westminster, between 1813 and 1819. During this time Hazlitt never once met his landlord, who lived next door and, for his part, Bentham seems to have been aware of the essayist only as a source of rent, for the non-payment of whic…
Hazlitt and the Idea of Identity
I am not the same thing, but many different things.
Hazlitt and the Selfishness of Passion
Hazlitt is fascinated throughout his career by the many forms of selfishness and prejudice in his contemporary society. His specific focus in numerous essays on selfishness, which derives from prejudice, partisanship and passion, constitutes a major exploration of one of the key concerns of his Essay on the Principles of Human Action (1805). Here Hazlitt attempted to establish the possibility of a moral imagination which enabled him to defend hum…
Schelling and Hazlitt on Disinterestedness and Freedom
In 1809, when Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling wrote his essay on Human Freedom ( Philosophische Untersuchung über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit ), the German provinces were under French occupation. Schelling himself had gained his appointment at the new University of Munich after the French had taken over the former Bavarian university in Ingolstadt. Schelling wrote in a context of immediate threat to the principles of freedom. Altho…
Metaphysical Hazlitt
Disinterested Imagining and Impersonal Feeling
The utilitarian reduction of moral philosophy which divided all motives into the self-regarding and the other-regarding was put forward and elaborated in the writings of Mandeville, Hume, and Adam Smith. Reservations, it is true, about these principles of action may be found even among the writers who first propounded them. Hume said that the two sorts of motive permeate each other, and Smith believed that an impartial umpire, ‘the man in the bre…