Franklin was an atheist, and explicitly chose his list to be sure that no one would find it incompatible with their religion. That’s solid evidence that the elements of the list will be chosen for practicality.
With 13 subdivisions, it’s more narrowly focused than the cardinal virtues, which are my next best candidate of practical virtues, and thus more likely to expose deficiencies.
I get the impression, from the distance of centuries, that young Franklin is similar to present me, and old him is a good target to shoot for. Thus, anything he took seriously I should take seriously, and daily consideration of the list (and attempting to conform my life to it) seems like a more thorough introduction to it than just reading it and thinking about it.
“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” Supposing there is a better set of virtues out there for me, I will be better prepared to tell after having done this.
5. Franklin is a high-status individual in American culture; emulating him may serve both to increase one’s own motivation and to serve as defense against unpleasant criticism/mockery by others.
6. Franklin’s rules are well-known on top of his high status; hence it saves effort explaining, and has other network-effect-like benefits (or maybe Schelling point is a better analogy) - you can probably find examples by other people and compare your attempt, which could be very interesting/entertaining.
Franklin was an atheist, and explicitly chose his list to be sure that no one would find it incompatible with their religion. That’s solid evidence that the elements of the list will be chosen for practicality.
Where did you get this idea? As far as I know, Franklin was a deist until the day he died and even thought organized religions, such as Christianity, were necessary to maintain morality amongst the common people.
First, I think Deism pre-Darwin more closely resembles atheism post-Darwin than Deism post-Darwin, and so it’s more informative to modern readers to use the more similar reference point. Second, I don’t see strong reason to believe the self-identification of historical figures in cases where the truth would damage their reputation. Franklin, in particular, gives many examples of bending his public conduct to maximize his reputation.
For example, I take this line from his autobiography to be more significant than the one where he calls himself a thorough Deist:
and farther, that my indiscrete disputations about religion began to make me pointed at with horror by good people as an infidel or atheist.
As for:
even thought organized religions, such as Christianity, were necessary to maintain morality amongst the common people.
I don’t think he thought organized effort was just for the common people:
My arguments perverted some others, particularly Collins and Ralph; but, each of them having afterwards wrong’d me greatly without the least compunction, and recollecting Keith’s conduct towards me (who was another freethinker), and my own towards Vernon and Miss Read, which at times gave me great trouble, I began to suspect that this doctrine, tho’ it might be true, was not very useful.
I get the sense he would have happily attended church if the local pastors were as good at other-improvement as he was at self-improvement, but they weren’t, and so going would be a misspent hour. He still paid the subscription for them his whole life (as far as I can tell, as another reputation-preserving measure), and the Junto is probably the closest thing to a religious organization that he actively participated in.
Why Ben Franklin’s list and not another one? I mean, they’re good virtues to have, but why those?
Several reasons:
Franklin was an atheist, and explicitly chose his list to be sure that no one would find it incompatible with their religion. That’s solid evidence that the elements of the list will be chosen for practicality.
With 13 subdivisions, it’s more narrowly focused than the cardinal virtues, which are my next best candidate of practical virtues, and thus more likely to expose deficiencies.
I get the impression, from the distance of centuries, that young Franklin is similar to present me, and old him is a good target to shoot for. Thus, anything he took seriously I should take seriously, and daily consideration of the list (and attempting to conform my life to it) seems like a more thorough introduction to it than just reading it and thinking about it.
“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” Supposing there is a better set of virtues out there for me, I will be better prepared to tell after having done this.
5. Franklin is a high-status individual in American culture; emulating him may serve both to increase one’s own motivation and to serve as defense against unpleasant criticism/mockery by others.
6. Franklin’s rules are well-known on top of his high status; hence it saves effort explaining, and has other network-effect-like benefits (or maybe Schelling point is a better analogy) - you can probably find examples by other people and compare your attempt, which could be very interesting/entertaining.
Where did you get this idea? As far as I know, Franklin was a deist until the day he died and even thought organized religions, such as Christianity, were necessary to maintain morality amongst the common people.
First, I think Deism pre-Darwin more closely resembles atheism post-Darwin than Deism post-Darwin, and so it’s more informative to modern readers to use the more similar reference point. Second, I don’t see strong reason to believe the self-identification of historical figures in cases where the truth would damage their reputation. Franklin, in particular, gives many examples of bending his public conduct to maximize his reputation.
For example, I take this line from his autobiography to be more significant than the one where he calls himself a thorough Deist:
As for:
I don’t think he thought organized effort was just for the common people:
I get the sense he would have happily attended church if the local pastors were as good at other-improvement as he was at self-improvement, but they weren’t, and so going would be a misspent hour. He still paid the subscription for them his whole life (as far as I can tell, as another reputation-preserving measure), and the Junto is probably the closest thing to a religious organization that he actively participated in.