Essays On The Principles Of Human Action; On The Systems Of Hartley And Helvetius - Softcover

William Hazlitt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0461479397 ISBN 13: 9780461479393

Publisher: HardPress, 2021

Synopsis

Essays On The Principles Of Human Action; On The Systems Of Hartley And Helvetius; And On Abstract Ideas, By W. Hazlitt, Ed. By His Son by William Hazlitt. This volume gathers Hazlitt’s late-18th/early-19th-century essays on human action, benevolence, and the nature of abstract ideas. It defends the unity of self-interest and benevolence as natural aspects of a single moral psychology, arguing that people are naturally disposed toward others, and that genuine virtue arises from habit and reflection rather than pure self-interest. The text critically engages with Samuel Hartley’s associationist psychology and Helvetius’s deterministic self-love, offering a rigorous critique that emphasizes imagination, memory, and the role of future expectations in motive. A substantial portion is devoted to the concept of personal identity, the relation between past, present, and future selves, and the conditions under which sympathy and disinterested benevolence can exist. The collection also includes Hazlitt’s extended discussion of abstract ideas, their formation, and their linguistic and logical significance, presented in his characteristic analytic prose.

Edition details

• Publisher: HardPress
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0461479397
• ISBN 13: 9780461479393
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 194