Hazlitt, Disinterestedness, and the Liberty of the Press

Ranging across Hazlitt’s varied body of work—from his earliest philosophical treatise, An Essay on the Principles of Human Action (1805), to his last major work, The Life of Napoleon (1828–1830)—this essay traces some of the shared premises informing Hazlitt’s allied commitments to a particular epistemic and ethical ideal, disinterestedness, and to the liberty of the press. This essay argues that disinterestedness, as initially formulated in the Essay and then modified in his later work, is the ground of Hazlitt’s commitment to the freedom of speech, and that Hazlitt should be understood as a pivotal figure in the Romantic history of the liberty of the press. Hazlitt’s interest in the issue comes to a head in the controversy surrounding the publication of Southey’s Wat Tyler in 1817, an event which spurred Hazlitt to produce some of his sharpest writing on the subject and to return to and refine his earlier concepts of disinterestedness and the discontinuity of the self. With threats to the freedom of speech, across the political spectrum and around the globe, on the rise, Hazlitt’s work provides a valuable perspective of its importance, and its fragility, for liberal societies.