"Wordsworth's attitude in the above lines, after he had liberated himself from the tenets of Godwinian social engineering, was diametrically opposite to the assumptions of some contemporary sociologists who summon faiths and passions to the bar of empirical investigation as an article of discipline; and possibly the only contemporary English political philosopher he might have sympathized with is Professor Michael Oakeshott, with his way of looking at political attitudes as a matter of men's habitual arrangements, and not either of theory or of scientific scrutiny. To say this is to recognize that as a severe critic and eloquent victim of liberal, utilitarian thought Wordsworth is still intellectually present to us in an age dominated by concepts of social engineering which are now invading the universities. He may not be a Dostoievsky, but we have not got a Dostoievsky, so we must make do with him as gad-fly to our liberal complacency."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
Roger Sharrock, ‘The Prelude: The Poet's Journey to the Interior’, English, Vol. XIX, No. 103 (Spring 1970), p. 2
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Wordsworth
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William Wordsworth
1770 – 1850
englischer Dichter
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