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In preparing to co-author a new course in American literature, I re-read “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.” As you may know, it was an enormously popular and influential work in its era, and it continues to be studied in literature, history and philosophy courses to the present day.
The autobiography recounts Benjamin Franklin’s prototypically American success story, which starts with his early life as the 15th of 17 children of a poor tallow chandler in Boston. It follows him through an unhappy apprenticeship in an older brother’s printing shop until he leaves Boston at the age of 17 to make his own way.
Through hard work, thrift, intelligence and skill, he became a prosperous printer and one of Philadelphia’s leading citizens. As a civic activist, Franklin played a central role in the establishment of a fire department, a postal service, a hospital, a library and an academy that eventually became the University of Pennsylvania.
Benjamin Franklin came to be seen as the “first American,” a sobriquet that reflects the idea that the virtues he exemplified and wrote about were those admired and shared by many of his contemporaries.
He was, for example, industrious, self-educated, frugal and optimistic. He tried to live in a manner consistent with the virtues necessary for an individual to achieve success while contributing to the advancement of society and the well-being of his fellow citizens.
Below are Benjamin Franklin’s 13 virtues and precepts, taken from his autobiography:
Which of these virtues do you think do today’s Americans value? Put another way, how would a list of contemporary American virtues differ from Franklin’s, and what do those differences suggest about the future of our country?
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