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Learning from Franklin's Mistakes: Self-Interest Rightly Understood in the Autobiography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2014

Christopher S. McClure
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Abstract

Benjamin Franklin divides the mistakes he lists in the Autobiography into “errata” and “great errata.” He derived no benefit from the latter, but some benefit from the former. Examining Franklin's regret, or lack of regret, at these errata opens a window onto Franklin's understanding of morality. The laxity in his list of virtues and his flexibility with regard to conventional morals stem from the insight Franklin tells us he gained from these errata. For Franklin, or at least his persona in the Autobiography, there was no conflict between egoism and altruism, and he is therefore the embodiment of a type of self-interest well understood. Tracing the story of the errata, which Franklin inserted into an earlier draft of the work's first part, and Franklin's later actions provides the key to understanding the rhetorical strategy of the Autobiography, and the reason he never wrote his proposed Art of Virtue.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 76 , Issue 1 , Winter 2014 , pp. 69 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2014 

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References

1 Franklin, Benjamin, Autobiography and Other Writings, ed. Seavey, Ormond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar, 3.

2 Franklin's statement here is also ambiguous regarding the issue of whether, on repeating his life, he would do so with the benefit of the wisdom he had gained on his first attempt.

3 See, for example, Pangle, Lorraine, The Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007)Google Scholar, 65. Sanford, Charles L., “An American Pilgrim's Progress,” American Quarterly 6 (1954)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quoted in Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography: An Authoritative Text, ed. Lemay, J. A. Leo and Zall, P. M. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986)Google Scholar, 311, sees the errata as analogous to Christian's sins in Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress.

4 By conventional morality, or traditional standards of morality, I mean loosely what would have been considered the moral norms of Franklin's time and place (many of which, of course, remain the moral standards of today). That is, one should be honest, not steal, commit adultery, pay one's debts, etc.

5 Pangle, Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin, 122, notes that “even when [Franklin's] appeal was to charity, he found a way of weaving prudent calculation into the mix.” Morgan, Edmund, Benjamin Franklin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 17–25Google Scholar, 30, quoted in Weinberger, Jerry, Benjamin Franklin Unmasked (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005)Google Scholar, xii, also notes that Franklin does not include charity in his list of virtues.

6 Aldridge, Alfred Owen, Benjamin Franklin and Nature's God (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1967)Google Scholar, 58, says of Franklin that “the system he evolved was fundamentally altruistic.”

7 See Forde, Steven, “Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography and the Education of America,” American Political Science Review 86, no. 2 (1992)Google Scholar: 359, who describes what we could call Franklin's hierarchy of goods, from wealth to virtue to happiness: “The Autobiography first caters to the reader's presumptive (and presumptively legitimate) concern with wealth, then directs it toward a much fuller vision of human happiness and the well-lived life.”

8 John Adams, “John Adams on Franklin,” Boston Patriot, 15 May 1811, quoted in Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, ed. Lemay and Zall, 244, speaks of the “the turpitude of [Franklin's] intrigues” and his ability to dissemble for the sake of different audiences. For a good discussion of this phenomenon see Wood, Gordon, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (New York: Penguin, 2003)Google Scholar, 9ff.: “In fact, the historic Franklin, the Franklin of the eighteenth century, seems to elude us as much as Gatsby's ever receding green light eluded him. When we actually recover the Franklin of the eighteenth century, he does not seem to fit the image we have created of him.” Pace Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Parsons, Talcott (New York: Routledge, 2005)Google Scholar, 18, who speaks of “the really unusual candidness of his autobiography.”

9 I do not attempt in this article to assess the veracity of Franklin's claims about himself or others. Instead, I focus on the message Franklin is trying to convey in the Autobiography, since this message is more important, and perhaps even truer, than the facts.

10 Zall, P. M., “The Manuscript and Early Texts of Franklin's ‘Autobiography,’” Huntington Library Quarterly 39, no. 4 (1976)Google Scholar: 378.

11 Many thinkers have identified the tension between self-interest and selflessness as an important strand in the American character. In particular, many note the tension between the commercial and religious character of America. This is more fully articulated by authors such as Weber, who in Protestant Ethic points out the complex relationship between capitalism and Protestantism, and Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Mansfield, Harvey C. and Winthrop, Delba (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000)Google Scholar, 500ff., who describes the paradoxical nature of self-interest well understood and the contrast between the seventh day of each week, when “the commercial and industrial life of the nation seems suspended” and “a deep repose, or rather a solemn meditation follows” as Americans contemplate their duties, and the other days of the week (517).

12 I elaborate on this in the next section, below.

13 See Weinberger, Benjamin Franklin Unmasked, 57–63.

14 Franklin wrote the Dissertation as a response to Wollaston, William's The Religion of Nature Delineated (London: James and John Knapton, 1731)Google Scholar, for which he set the type in London.

15 Franklin, Benjamin, The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Smyth, A. H. (New York: Macmillan, 1905)Google Scholar, 2:vi. For those brave enough to read it, the dissertation can still be found in Franklin, Benjamin, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Labaree, L. W. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1959), 57–71.Google Scholar

16 See Zall, “The Manuscript and Early Texts of Franklin's ‘Autobiography.’”

17 Forde, “Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography and the Education of America,” 360, although I agree when he speaks of “the moderating role of reason in moral deliberation that is central to the outlook of the Autobiography.” Cf. Lemay, J. A. Leo, “Franklin's Autobiography and the American Dream,” in The Renaissance Man in the Eighteenth Century (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1978)Google Scholar, quoted in Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, ed. Lemay and Zall, 349, who sees this episode as an example of Franklin's “profound skepticism concerning reason.”

18 Many scholars see in this development a new focus on pragmatism. See, for example, Campbell, James, “The Pragmatist in Franklin,” in The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Franklin, ed. Mulford, Carla (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)Google Scholar, 106.

19 Weinberger (Benjamin Franklin Unmasked, 159, 174, 55) claims that Franklin's Dissertation was a “slapstick parody of Deism” and one of a number of “metaphysical burlesques,” and that the moral conversion Franklin describes “never happened at all.” This is because, Weinberger argues, “Franklin concluded that our commonsensical concepts of morality—justice, free will, deserving (merit and demerit), devotion, virtue and vice, the noble, evil, and reward and punishment—make no internal logical sense, despite the fact that they seem so obvious” (203). I am in partial disagreement with these points. I do not think that the Dissertation was a burlesque, although I agree that the account Franklin offers is not as straightforward as it at first appears. Also, it may be true that Franklin did not take many of the terms listed above seriously, but he clearly did undergo a moral reformation of some sort. Walters, Kerry, Revolutionary Deists (New York: Prometheus Books, 2011), 60–61Google Scholar, wonders how seriously Franklin wanted readers to take the Dissertation, but concludes that “there is more reason to think that Franklin was deadly earnest in his defense of the bleak cosmic machine portrayed in the Dissertation,” and that “in his references to it in later life, he never gives any indication that his purpose in writing it was anything more than to push the Newtonian worldview to its logical conclusions.”

20 Notice here that Franklin refers to the intended beneficiaries of the work in the plural, indicating that it was never meant solely for his son, as some have argued. Pace Wood (Americanization of Benjamin Franklin, 139) who claims that “it is more likely that Franklin actually did intend the first part of his memoir for his son, perhaps partly as an admonishment to William to cut his expenses and do as his father had done.”

21 Aldridge, Benjamin Franklin and Nature's God, 127–28, also recounts a letter from Franklin to a deist acquaintance in which Franklin says, “You yourself may find it easy to live a virtuous Life without the Assistance afforded by Religion. … But think how great a Proportion of Mankind consists of weak and ignorant Men and Women, and of inexperienc'd, and inconsiderate Youth of both Sexes, who have need of the Motives of Religion to restrain them from Vice.”

22 As Franklin (Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, 224) says in a letter to Lord Kames about his proposed Art of Virtue, “all Men cannot have Faith in Christ; and many have it in so weak a Degree, that it does not produce the effect [of making men virtuous]. Our Art of Virtue may therefore be of great Service to those who have not Faith.” See also Weinberger, Benjamin Franklin Unmasked, 40, who is correct to note that “it is not unreasonable, I think, to see the Autobiography as a Franklinian warning about a danger of the dawning modern age: the possible death of God.”

23 Twain, Mark, “The Late Benjamin Franklin,” in The Galaxy 10 (July 1870): 138–40Google Scholar, quoted in Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, ed. Lemay and Zall, 272, recounts how both Franklin's actions and his aphorisms were used to inspire young boys to good behavior. Franklin, he says, “was of a vicious disposition, and early prostituted his talents to the invention of maxims and aphorisms calculated to inflict suffering upon the rising generation of all subsequent ages. His simplest acts, also, were contrived with a view to their being held up for the emulation of boys forever—boys who might otherwise have been happy.”

24 Franklin, letter to B. Vaughan, October 24, 1788, in Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, ed. Lemay and Zall, 206; my italics.

25 There is a similar potential ambiguity in a letter to the Duke de La Rochefoucauld (in Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, 205), in which Franklin states that “what is done [viz., the Autobiography down to his fiftieth year] will be of more general Use to young Readers; as exemplifying strongly the Effect of prudent and imprudent Conduct in the Commencement of a Life of Business” (my italics).

26 Implicit in this argument is the notion that Franklin had a plan in mind for the design of the Autobiography, which he was able to follow through despite the difficulties he faces in writing the different parts of the work. I therefore agree with Dawson, Hugh J., “Franklin's ‘Memoirs’ in 1784: The Design of the ‘Autobiography,’ Parts I and II,” Early American Literature 12, no. 3 (Winter 1977/1978): 287–91Google Scholar, who argues that the moralism of part 2 depends on the narrative of part 1, but disagrees that there was a fundamental change of design between the two parts. I also disagree with Aldridge, “Form and Substance in Franklin's Autobiography,” in Essays on American Literature in Honor of Jay B. Hubbell, ed. Gohdes, Clarence (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1967)Google Scholar, 48, who claims that the plan of the Autobiography was a “virtual disaster.”

27 Weinberger, Benjamin Franklin Unmasked; Lerner, Ralph, Playing the Fool: Subversive Laugher in Troubled Times (Chciago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 89–108Google Scholar; Lerner, Ralph “Franklin, Spectator,” in The Thinking Revolutionary (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Paul E. Kelly “Franklin's Satiric Vein,” in Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Franklin. There remain those too who see this list of virtues as emblematic of Franklin's piety. I do not share this position. See, for example, Pencak, William, “Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, Cotton Mather, and a Puritan God,” Pennsylvania History 53, no. 1 (1986): 1–25.Google Scholar

28 Aldridge, Benjamin Franklin and Nature's God, 11.

29 Franklin very rarely admits to any feelings of guilt. One significant exception is his deep regret at not inoculating his son from smallpox, from which his son later died. This, however, is not a matter of moral guilt, but more of a regret at a scientific error, or an error in judgment.

30 For a discussion of this excuse see Douglas Anderson, “The Art of Virtue,” in Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Franklin, 31–32.

31 Weinberger, Benjamin Franklin Unmasked, xv, claims that Franklin “did not believe that the deepest and most important questions could be answered by abstract philosophical systems of the kind that became schools of thought,” and “that is why Franklin wrote no comprehensive formal treatise.” I agree that Franklin did not think he could teach the deepest lessons he learned through a systematic treatise, but I do think, as I argue below, that he thought he could impart at least part of his wisdom to some readers through the experience he shares in the Autobiography. I am in closer agreement with Weinberger's statement that “there is something much better [than a didactical philosophical teaching in Franklins works]: the questions, lines of thought, and conclusions to which we are prodded by Franklin's artful provocations” (5). Pangle, Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin, 4, also notes that “Franklin knew … the great public utility of his own vanity: he knew that in telling stories he was at his most charming and persuasive, and at some level he realized that his vision of happiness and of democratic citizenship could be advanced in no better way than by telling his own story.”

32 For Franklin's use of Bunyan as a model, see Sanford, “An American Pilgrim's Progress,” 310.

33 Indeed, when he was leading his own troops in the building of a fort on the frontier, he suggested to a preacher whose sermons were not well attended the expedient of taking charge of the men's daily ration of rum, and withholding it until after the sermon to ensure their attendance (Autobiography, 154). This anecdote is meant to be compared with another in which Franklin withholds rum from some Indians he is trying to make a treaty with until after their business is concluded.

34 Pangle astutely notes in this regard, “And this benevolence is no small matter. Friendship and trust are essential to happiness, and hence a heartfelt concern with the welfare of others is to be encouraged not just in others but in ourselves. Merely feigning virtue would show that one had missed the great lesson that Franklin spent his life trying to teach: that doing real good is essential to happiness and, thus, that virtues like justice and honesty are not ultimately a sacrifice of self-interest but are integral to the richest happiness” (Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin, 62).

35 See Pangle, Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin, 123.

36 Franklin also incurred great financial risk in this endeavor when he offered to stand surety for Braddock. While this appears to be a purely altruistic act, one that exposed Franklin to the risk of financial ruin, it must be noted that Franklin presents himself here as the linchpin between Braddock and the colonists without which the colony would have been defenseless. This must have surely flattered his pride.

37 Another example of Franklin's relaxed attitude toward dishonesty used for a good cause is his exculpation of the Presbyterian preacher Hemphill who was discovered to be plagiarizing his sermons. After this discovery, Franklin says, “I stuck by him, however, as I rather approv'd his giving us good Sermons compos'd by others, than bad ones of his own Manufacture” (Autobiography, 101). Aldridge, Benjamin Franklin and Nature's God, 8, notes further that Franklin regularly lied to “strict religionists” about his beliefs.

38 Franklin, Benjamin, Way to Wealth, or Poor Richard Improved (Philadelphia: Jacob Johnson, 1808)Google Scholar, is in some sense dogmatic, but certainly not metaphysical, and, as Forde says (“Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography and the Education of America”), Franklin's exhortations to wealth are meant as a first step on the path to virtue for the poor.