Hazlitt, Persuasion, and Progressivism

Abstract

Abstract William Hazlitt’s essays repeatedly refer to a notion of enlightened “progress” over time, characterized by an increase of knowledge and cultivation that overcomes ancient “barbarism.” He even targets a wide variety of groups from religious dissenters to utilitarians as obstacles to his project, because of their embrace of superstitious and idolatrous impulses. Ultimately, however, Hazlitt shows a great deal more discomfort with traditional notions of improvement and the rhetorical arts supporting them than such statements might imply. For he champions art forms as progressive only in a limited and skeptical way—only insofar as they invite competing persuasions rather than mastering any normative trajectory of thought or taste. Works of art for Hazlitt are public things, functioning as tenuous holding spaces for contending judgments.