Essay Questions

Elaborate Hazlitt’s ideology in “On the Past and Future”.

Hazlitt undercuts the venerable viewpoints that are universally used to review humans’ existence : “Que peu de chose est la vie humaine, is an exclamation in the mouths of moralists and philosophers, to which I cannot agree. It is little, it is short, it is not worth having, if we take the last hour, and leave out all that has gone before, which has been one way of looking at the subject. Such calculators seem to say that life is nothing when it is over, and that may in their sense be true. If the old rule—Respice finem—were to be made absolute, and no one could be pronounced fortunate till the day of his death, there are few among us whose existence would, upon those conditions, be much to be envied.” Hazlitt edifies the reader that values such as “Que peu de chose est la vie humaine” and “Respice finem” are not unconditional validities that should not be confronted. Such faulty philosophies program adherents to blindly pursue the shadows of the future, because they are famed ‘moralists and philosophers’ certify them. Hazlitt accentuates the requisite to transcend the idiosyncratic viewpoints which speciously trivialize the past.

In terms of variants of learning, explicate a predominant binary in “On the Ignorance of the Learned”.

Artificial Learning versus Actual Learning: “Uneducated people have most exuberance of invention and the greatest freedom from prejudice. Shakespeare's was evidently an uneducated mind, both in the freshness of his imagination and in the variety of his views; as Milton's was scholastic, in the texture both of his thoughts and feelings. Shakespeare had not been accustomed to write themes at school in favour of virtue or against vice. To this we owe the unaffected but healthy tone of his dramatic morality. If we wish to know the force of human genius we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning we may study his commentators.” Shakespeare’s learning is actual since it stems from his inherent creeds that are not adulterated by slanted artificiality. Accordingly, being uneducated does not categorically qualify as imprudent. Commentators who put dents in Shakespeare’s compositions personify artificial learning which is unconditionally bereft of organic inventiveness.