[Reading Notes] The Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin

I listened to this book on Audible. My local book club reading eighteenth century works in 2026 discussed this one for August.

I hadn’t read this book since I was sixteen in American lit class at the community college, at which time my classmate, Matt Winckler, started calling Ben Franklin a turkey (and I can now confirm he has continued to do so for nearly 3 decades).

So I was surprised to enjoy this book as much as I did, seeing it is the life of Ben Franklin, the Turkey, in his own words. But, hey, if George Whitefield could be his friend, why can’t I smile at his stories?

Right after I finished The Autobiography, I came to the section in MacIntyre’s After Virtue where he illustrates different views on virtue with Franklin’s practice, directly calling him out as the peak example of utilitarianism. It was great to have the full context so recent in my mind.

In this reading I noticed how much early American cities accomplished privately that we now consider squarely a government’s job: keep streets paved and clean, street lights, libraries. Private initiative set such things up at first. Governments are not required for cooperation if “equal and fair” isn’t everyone’s top concern, but rather improvement of everyone’s conditions.

Also, although clearly America was more virtuous and moral and hardworking at this time, it was by no means perfect. Franklin’s history is riddled with men defaulting on loans and even skipping the country on a ship to escape the responsibilities of a wife and child.

Franklin tells us about con artists, men who promise more than they deliver, business competition that’s less than ethical and upright. Yet he also tells such things, even when practiced against him, without bitterness or animosity. He is very matter-of-fact and rather explains his own wisdom and maturity developing out of those experiences than blames them for harming him.

Reading Ben Franklin alongside Bad Therapy was a fascinating juxtaposition, Franklin providing the foil to the modern therapeutic assumptions about trauma and hardship.

Read Bad Therapy with me on Monday, August 31st!