The Revolutionary Period and the Age of Reason

11/4/15

The Revolutionary Period and the Age of Reason

        To understand even the basics of relating Ben Franklin’s action with revolution, we must first understand what the revolution is.  We can define it as “A new radical change in social and political values over a relatively short period of time”.  During this time, it was quite clear that many social changes quickly led to political changes in the span of a few years.  The common American was becoming increasingly radical and supported increasingly radical movements by the governments.  This is quite the same with radical thinkers such as Franklin and want of perfect morals.  Therefore, although, at a glance, the morals that Franklin might seem to not change the ideals of the time, in reality many of the ideals he envisioned that comprised perfect morality were not implemented which, if implemented, would induce a social and eventual political revolution.

        Achieving moral perfection might seem like a daunting task, yet Ben Franklin seemed to break it down into 13 seemingly simple virtues.  However, each of these needed to be performed in simultaneously to achieve perfect morality consistently.   If we look at the requirements of a revolution, there needs to be a social change in ideals, which would eventually lead to the necessary political changes.  Looking at Franklins plan as a whole would does not seems to be support a drastically revolutionary movement.  However when taking a look at the details it is evident that when implemented would cause social changes almost immediately.  The details in his plan would of course be the various virtues that composed the whole.  When looking at these it is evident that some of them would have drastic social changes.  For example, Silence is a completely new ideal that people in society had not been exposed to before.  Many of the colonists spent their evening hours talking to one another for pleasure. If this were stopped, a significant social change would occur supporting the ideal that it was a revolutionary act.  All the other virtues also constitute a radical change that could take place but others would also induce political changes.   With tranquility when a minor accident occurs, one side may tell them not to worry about it since it was a minor accident but the other might demand legal action.  However if policies change for minor accidents, the one that wanted to take legal action would receive no justice.   Even Franklin implied how radical the changes were when he stated, “My scheme of ORDER gave me the most trouble” (Franklin 219).  If even one of the most dedicated men had trouble adjusting to one of the virtues, it support that his plan is a revolutionary act.

        The basis of all enlightenment thinking is to make progress towards change.  At that time, it would be difficult to discern whether the change would be positive or negative.  It seems that this thinking was the drive behind the plan to achieve “moral perfection”.  This radical thinking is what led him to create the 13 different virtues that would help him achieve this goal.  In the context of his inspiration from enlightenment thinking, he was inspired by the need to radically change the social structure previously stated further confirming that it was a revolutionary act.  He had hoped to progress society through his ideals of morality however, the ideals were too radical in the sense they were too complex.  Imagine colonists forced to follow these 13 virtues day in and day out. However, the main idea to gain from this is that he was influenced by Enlightenment ideals to create these virtues.