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Benjamin Franklin and the American Enlightenment
| Article
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10444 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1993 |
5,684 Words |
| Author
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Andrew Reck
Andrew Reck is professor of philosophy at Tulane University in
New Orleans, where he also directs the Master of Liberal Arts
program. |
There are scholars who have denied that there ever was Enlightenment in America.
Such scholars usually have in mind the revolutionary aspects of Enlightenment thought that destroyed the ancient regimes in European states. They contend that, since ecclesiastical and political authoritarianism was minimal in America, there was no real Enlightenment here. They also, point to the relative paucity of intellectual and artistic productions in America in comparison with the output of the European nations.
However, their argument implicitly denies that there ever was an American Revolution and implies that, if there was, it did not occur in 1776 but later, during the Jacksonian era, when anti-Enlightenment principles were at work.
Let me dismiss these arguments at the beginning. There was an American Revolution in 1776, and its principles were Enlightenment principles. Further, political and ecclesiastical authoritarianism has existed on these shores, and the liberation of humans from the oppressiveness of authoritarianism has had to be fought for here, in the past and even at the present hour.
As for the alleged paucity of intellectual and artistic productions on these shores, the richness of such materials is evidenced in the studies of Henry F. May and others.
Franklin's Links With Britain And France
The American Enlightenment, moreover, was part of the Anglo-French and German Enlightenment. Let us not forget that until 1776 America was part of Britain, and so for the first seventy years of his life Benjamin Franklin, born in 1706, was in fact a British American who, indeed, spent decades in London, the English capital of politics, commerce, and letters. He worked as a printer in England for eighteen months from 1724 to 1726, and from 1757 to 1762 he served in London as an agent of the Pennsylvania Assembly. During this period, he met David Hume, Joseph Priestley, Richard Price, Adam Smith, and Lord Kames. In 1764, he went back to England as agent for Pennsylvania, adding New Jersey in 1769 as a second colony he represented, and returned to America in 1775, in time to serve in the Continental Congress and help draft the Declaration of Independence.
Later, as an American envoy, he was influential in Paris. In 1776, Franklin went to France to serve the
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