William Hazlitt's Essay 'On The Pleasure Of Hating'

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William Hazlitt in the essay, On the Pleasure of Hating, asserts his view on the way people need to have something to hate, to feel disgust for, to feel bigotry towards, and to overall have something other than the bland pool of neutrality to keep themselves entertained without a real meaning as to why they feel that need to respond to another being that way. Hazlitt supports these claims by giving the almost common knowledge usage of everyday examples such as referring to people of standing like Robert Owen who despite being a capitalist believed that the working man must first change himself in a sort of “self-help ethic”, or even calling attention to the fact that even things that we thought were of the greater good are usually smoke screens to the reality of how everything isn’t how it seems and sometimes even we disappoint and hate ourselves because of the expectations we have for others and the reliance we put upon things. Hazlitt’s purpose in my view is to inform of the many layers the world has and how even if we feel enlightened upon things around us …show more content…

Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon was made so that several people could be observed at once by a single person, but without knowing when they were being watched it effectively controlled the people’s own behavior the entire time as to them assuming they were constantly being observed. I think this speaks to what Hazlitt is saying pertaining to the fact that the life of humans is a large web of things that sometimes we cannot control, because it is being controlled for us; occasionally without us even being aware of it. That being said, Hazlitt brings to mind many things about everyday interactions that sometimes even the most intellectual person may not realize about themselves as they treat one person different from the other despite both being human and of their