A Homage to William Hazlitt

Abstract

Hazlitt was a man of letters who developed his career in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century when the public sphere was still strong. Men of letters were a sort of moral guides in times of profound cultural change and political turbulence; they formed public opinion through speaking and writing to a large non-specialized audience about a wide range of issues of public interest including aesthetics, ethics, politics, religion, and science. The stage was divided between conservatives and radicals and, due to the political relevance of the debate and the intense rivalry between the contending parties, there was a violent exchange of ideas. One of the greatest stylists of the English language, Hazlitt was no detached observer but got involved in the defence of his position no matter the cost at a time when not only ideas but matters of style mattered politically. A radical all his life, he combined the ideas of the Enlightenment and Romanticism to defend equality, freedom, autonomy in art and life, and imaginative empathy.