Square Dog Radio -- details of selected programme

Square Dog Radio LLP -- details of "William Hazlitt, Philosopher (2)"
Network:	Radio 3
Date:	Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Time:	23:00
Duration:	15
Presenter:	Jonathan Ree
Producer:	Mark Whitaker
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Description:	William Hazlitt is recognised as a founder of English literary criticism and a magnificent exponent of the art of the essay. But he spent the first half of his career grappling with abstract questions in philosophy, and the fact that he had to abandon the rigours of theoretical writing in favour of relaxed literary journalism was always a source of regret to him. The purpose of these five 15-minute talks is to evoke and celebrate Hazlitt’s work as a philosopher, and show how it helped shape the celebrated ‘familiar style’ of his later essays. Implicitly, it will also seek to show that rumours of a fundamental antipathy between philosophy and English literature are greatly exaggerated. Each talk will present a story of its own, told to a considerable extent (about one fifth) in Hazlitt’s own words. Two: William Hazlitt senior Hazlitt’s entire intellectual career can be seen as a kind of dialogue with his father. William Hazlitt senior was an Irish protestant who studied at Glasgow and became a follower of the philosophy of John Locke, David Hartley and Joseph Priestley. In the early 1770s he was appointed minister to a Unitarian congregation in Maidstone, and wrote a book calling on protestants ‘stand fast in that liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.’ After several prosperous years he had to leave on account of his radicalism, and moved to a post in County Cork, where the same thing happened again, and he sought refuge with his growing family in America; but he failed to find work and returned, humiliated but defiant, to England and the little village of Wem in Shropshire.