Benjamin Franklin

Founder, printer, scientist, and diplomat whose Autobiography is read here mostly as a manual of deliberate self-improvement. Franklin treated character as an engineering problem: form a good plan, cut off distractions, make execution “his sole study and business.”

What we know

• Author of his own Autobiography (read by Kyle in 2018, on the recommendation of the City of Boston), rated 5/5.
• Architect of the Thirteen Virtues — a personal scheme for tracking and improving conduct that prefigures modern habit-tracking (Atomic Habits).
• His humility virtue’s entire instruction was: “Imitate Jesus and Socrates.”
• Namesake of the Ben Franklin Effect — the observation that asking someone for a favor can make them like you more.
• Wary of disputation (“they get victory sometimes, but they never get good will”) and of partnerships without clear terms (Partnership).
• A candid self-observer of his own Motivated Reasoning (the cod-fishing rationalization) and of perfectionism’s limits (The Speckled Ax).
• Appears in American Sphinx, soothing Jefferson during the editing of the Declaration with the parable of the sign painter and the hat.
• Elected a corresponding member of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (today’s Royal Society of Arts) in 1756; its founder and secretary William Shipley informed him by letter of 1 September 1756 (Founders Online). The same year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, a separate body (Founders Online).

Mentioned in

• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
• Benjamin Franklin: An American Life — Walter Isaacson’s biography; primary source for the Junto, the Thirteen Virtues, his diplomacy in Paris, and his role at the Constitutional Convention.
• American Sphinx — where Franklin soothes Thomas Jefferson during the editing of the Declaration with the parable of the sign painter and the hat.

Connections

• Thirteen Virtues — Franklin’s personal scheme for tracking and improving conduct.
• The Speckled Ax — Franklin’s parable on the limits of perfectionism, drawn from his pursuit of the virtues.
• Motivated Reasoning — exemplified by Franklin’s cod-fishing rationalization, which he flags as self-aware about his own reasoning.
• Atomic Habits — modern habit-tracking that the Thirteen Virtues scheme prefigures.
• Ben Franklin Effect — the social-psychology observation named for him: doing someone a favor warms them to you.
• Junto — the mutual-improvement club Franklin founded, central to the Isaacson biography.
• Walter Isaacson — biographer whose Benjamin Franklin: An American Life is a primary source here.
• Thomas Jefferson — co-drafter of the Declaration whom Franklin consoles in American Sphinx.
• Socrates — paired with Jesus in the humility virtue’s instruction: “Imitate Jesus and Socrates.”
• Jesus — the other model Franklin names for the humility virtue.