Hazlitt’s writings as a whole are distinguished by his close attention to the structures of power, political power not excepted. In a Morning Post article of March 1800, he writes,
... power is the sole object of philosophical attention in man, as in inanimate nature; and in the one equally as in the other, we understand it more intimately, the more diverse the circumstances are with which we have observed it to exist.?
(“Pitt and Buonaparte”, Political Essays; vii. 326)
“Power” in Hazlitt’s metaphysic refers to the mind’s innate faculty, its freedom from subjugation to external influences. His philosophy also connects power with liberty: the mind is free since it is subject only to the laws of its own innate constitution. By affirming innate “power”, Hazlitt refutes the empirical account of epistemology in which the mind, moulded from without, remains passive or subjected. He asserts in its stead that the process of knowledge is ab intra, directed by the mind from within. The creative genius celebrated in Hazlitt’s literary and artistic criticism exemplifies intellectual power in its highest degree, and so vindicates the core principle of his metaphysics.
