Word: moralizers
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...warranted, and so too are some of the qualms. But the lessons from Franklin's life are more complex than those usually drawn by either his fans or his foes. Both sides too often confuse him with the striving pilgrim he portrayed in his autobiography. They mistake his genial moral maxims for the fundamental faiths that motivated his actions...
...useful for us to engage anew with Franklin, for in doing so we are grappling with a fundamental issue: How does one live a life that is useful, virtuous, worthy, moral and spiritually meaningful? For that matter, which of these attributes is most important? These are questions just as vital for a self-satisfied age as they were for a revolutionary...
Franklin's favorite device for poking fun at social mores and political outrages was the hoax. Unlike the frauds perpetrated by Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair, Franklin's satires were meant to be playful and to make a moral point, although they did occasionally deceive. "The Speech of Polly Baker," for example, purports to recount the speech of a young woman on trial for having a fifth illegitimate child. Franklin, who had fathered an illegitimate child but taken responsibility for him, was particularly scathing about the double standard that subjects her, but not the men who had sex with...
When she leaves London to live with an aunt in the country, they begin an extraordinary correspondence. It covers the full breadth of moral and natural philosophy. Always prim but also refreshingly direct, Polly poses her questions--about barometers, insects, river tides, electrical storms--and he responds in the flattering style he inevitably uses with young women who catch his eye. He ends one dense six-page tract, for example, by musing how he might sign off to so receptive a mind as hers. "I had rather conclude abruptly with what pleases me more than any Compliment can please...
Right across the street from Independence Hall in the Old City is the American Philosophical Society amphilsoc.org) founded by Franklin in 1743. (At the time, natural--as opposed to moral--philosophy referred to science.) On view now is an exhibit about the founding fathers of American natural history, from Jefferson to Audubon...