Thomas Kidd: Benjamin Franklin and Enlightenment | BRI Scholar Talks

0:00 [Music] hi welcome to another life liberty in the pursuit of happiness scholar talk i am tony williams with the bill of rights institute a senior fellow with bri and we are very honored to welcome professor

0:20 thomas kidd uh who wrote numerous pieces for life liberty and the pursuit of happiness but we’re here to discuss his piece entitled benjamin franklin and the american enlightenment uh by way of introduction thomas kidd is the associate director of the institute for studies of religion

0:41 and a distinguished professor of history at baylor university his books most recently include who is an evangelical a history of a movement in crisis and he has written extensively on early american colonial history including benjamin franklin the religious life of a founding father

1:03 american colonial history clashing cultures and faiths george whitfield america’s spiritual founding father patrick henry first among patriots and i happen to have that right here uh god of liberty a religious history of the american revolution

1:23 also pulled off my shelves today and finally uh the great awakening those are just a few of the books i pulled off my shelf and you have others as well and and all marvelous he has a phd in history from the university of notre dame and received a bachelor’s and master’s degree from clemson university where

1:45 my own daughter goes to college so tommy uh welcome very much and thank you for joining us thanks for having me okay great great well why don’t we just jump right in uh to the conversation now we have a lot of teachers and and students watching and and i was wondering if you can just provide some general historical context and explain

2:08 what the enlightenment was and and what are some of its main ideas particularly in the american context right so uh this is a really hotly debated issue among historians about uh the enlightenment and and i mean of of books on the enlightenment there is no end uh but but in general uh that this is

2:31 understood to be roughly kind of late 1600s to maybe early 1800s uh and it’s a time of a new emphasis on uh rationality learning science um the distribution of knowledge and education and those kind of things and and uh one

2:53 of the reasons why uh it’s it’s so hotly debated is because the term itself enlightenment sort of presupposes a preceding era of dark times which which to some of the more uh extreme uh advocates of the enlightenment would mean

3:14 that you’re switching from a time of faith which is dark time to a time of rationality which is the lifetime and you can you can see within that that there there’s a certain kind of ideological component that has come along with parts of the study of the enlightenment uh especially an older generation uh

3:34 that studied the enlightenment that a lot of historians think is is a little too uh ideologically loaded seems like you know some christians in the past were in favor of learning stuff so uh that that’s one of the reasons why it’s controversial i mean there there’s a lot of other reasons you know the place of women and the enlightenment has been a

3:55 huge discussion in recent decades and and uh all kinds of things uh about the enlightenment but i i think it with taking it with a an appropriate grain of salt i mean i do think that there’s something to the enlightenment um that that culturally things are changing

4:16 in america and in europe in the 1600s 1700s so that um you know sometimes i tell my students that um you know if you’re living in in 1700 in the colonies uh and your cow unexpectedly dies which was you know this is kind of an

4:36 everyday occurrence um you know your your thoughts are are likely to turn to the possibility of malevolent forces having you know being responsible for the demise of your cow where in in 1800 you know even a regular person is is a little less likely to think that

4:57 way and to think well you know there’s medical reasons uh you know biological reasons why my cow got sick uh you know and and and so you tend to default to a more scientific kind of explanation for phenomena in the natural world and i would say to the extent that that’s true

5:17 uh that that that change happens we we can attribute that to the enlightenment quote unquote right right okay great um and so my next question would be uh more specific to benjamin franklin uh you know he’s uh obviously a printer early on an entrepreneur if you will and so how

5:37 does he achieve a lot of this early success once he moves to to philadelphia right so uh so franklin grew up in boston and he was he was in a puritan family in boston and so grew up in a really intense uh religious environment but his older brother

5:57 was a printer um and and so he was actually uh indentured to his older brother which is kind of a horrible fate to be indentured it basically you’re kind of you know forced into servitude um but it wasn’t that uncommon uh for people modest means to end up in some form of

6:19 servitude but uh it was a difficult situation as you might guess for franklin um and he had a fraught relationship with his brother um and he actually ended up running away from boston uh in um uh in early life uh early adulthood and and um

6:41 trying to get out of a bad situation but he had learned a lot about the print trade from his brother and so uh he was able eventually to get set up in in the print business in philadelphia uh working for printers in philadelphia originally spent a little bit of time in london trying to get uh to learn more about the print trade and

7:02 and to get some printing equipment and as as usual with with everything in those days london was the center of the kind of the best of technology and printing and all those those sorts of things and so eventually he was able to come back to philadelphia and set up his own uh printing business and and you know

7:22 franklin is characteristically known for being an entrepreneur and a scientist and all these and it’s all true i mean it’s it’s all the things that you’ve heard about franklin along these lines are all true incredibly hard working innovative uh ingenious uh and and so he was able to set up his his

7:44 print business in in philadelphia and uh franklin is also a genius of good timing and good luck and so he was able to get uh a printing contract with the uh the government of pennsylvania uh in philadelphia and that that really set him on his way to uh being enormously successful in a very

8:06 lucrative print business right right and and was the official government printer if i’m not mistaken right that’s right i know and the postmaster too i meant yeah so it kind of helped uh yeah and so it becomes enormously successful uh right um and we’ll talk about how he’s able to dedicate his life

8:26 in a few minutes but so uh you know he’s printing uh almanacs for richard’s almanac uh and the pennsylvania gazette and and so so how do newspapers and almanacs pamphlets books uh how do they contribute to the american enlightenment right uh because as you point out in

8:46 your essay there’s some relationship between literacy and learning and education you know sort of becoming a self-governing people you know building building republican self-government right so um this is you know part of an older story that goes back at least to say the

9:07 reformation i mean the reformation is very much driven by by print and and one of the things that print does is it of course allows for the greater dissemination of knowledge and learning and education and advancement uh in those areas for you know anybody who can gain access to those sorts of things and so uh franklin you know grew up

9:30 in a person of fairly modest means but but even when he was working for his brother in boston uh he as as a man with very little money um he was able to uh read all the books that they were they were publishing uh there in boston and and in in

9:50 philadelphia uh when he was working for other people he would he would uh you know at night he would stay up late and read whatever he could get his hands on um and that that uh is is an illustration of even for someone of relatively modest means if they were literate then then you could get

10:11 a hold of the latest learning and and research and scholarship uh and controversies about uh you know theology and politics and all those sorts of things and so uh the the bounds of of print uh the and the print trade are expanding more and more uh during the era of the enlightenment

10:32 uh because of innovations and uh the print trade and the the print is becoming more and more um inexpensive during this time and and so people like franklin uh could be a beneficiary of that early in life and then and then franklin is able uh as an author to uh distribute

10:53 his own his own work uh so especially most notably his work on electricity that goes through many different english language editions but it’s also translated into many different languages in europe and so his ideas for instance about about electricity are being disseminated very

11:13 quickly because of uh developments and in the print trade so um you know print is i guess is a is a kind of lubricant to the to the the spread of enlightenment ideas um and and and so franklin is a beneficiary of that uh both as a as a you know relatively um uh poor young man uh once he’s able

11:37 to get access to to all these these reading materials then he’s able to make it a lot of money in the print trade and then he’s able to circulate his own ideas uh through uh the the agency of the print trade and so you can see at all those different levels and more uh that that franklin is is is

11:57 you know participated all these different levels of the print trade and and then through the print trade to uh the broader enlightenment right and and its connection for franklin and for others uh to that idea of self-government uh can you talk a little bit about that sure so uh once you have this kind of

12:19 broader access you know you might say democratization of of print then print uh the you know the the the public sphere uh is you know was what print is is kind of creating is this is the sphere that’s not under the control if the government is not actively censoring uh then the public sphere

12:42 is is kind of this uh you know third sphere you know that that is you know it’s not under the control of the government it’s not under the control of the church but but is is this relatively independent intellectual sphere uh that again if you have access to print um and you’re literate then then you can

13:05 participate in in these things and and even if you’re uh you know an indentured servant to your older brother you theoretically can get access to knowledge about government principles of government authors like john locke which franklin read a fairly early stage in life

13:25 franklin is is an exceptional case in terms of this auto didactic kind of education i mean he has almost no formal education at all i mean he really spends about a year basically in in school uh but but he because of print he’s able to get access to these things and educate himself now you know most

13:46 people don’t do what franklin does i mean he’s he’s he’s a voracious uh driven reader uh and wanting access to knowledge but if you are that way like franklin uh because of the widespread availability of print you can you can do that in new ways in the 1700s okay great all right uh and

14:08 franklin while he was in philadelphia and throughout his life really became involved participated in a number of civic activities uh to to demonstrate his commitment to a healthy civil society his his commitment to civic virtue and that vibrant kind of self-governing

14:28 society if you will so can you talk about some of those activities and why franklin thought it was important well franklin was constantly thinking about those kinds of issues about what we would call you know civil society and and he he was constantly thinking about the inculcation of virtue

14:49 uh and learning was certainly one of the those virtues but diligence and honesty and being concerned for your fellow man and so uh once franklin especially once he became uh what we would call independently wealthy because of his print work uh really in a lot of ways the whole

15:10 rest of his life was devoted to those those sorts of projects but even even before then i mean uh he gets involved when he’s still a printer in philadelphia he’s involved in the founding of what he calls the junto uh this this group for you know we would call it sort of a book club but it was

15:30 it was a little bit more ambitious i think than your average book club i mean it was artisans in philadelphia so that that made it unusual i mean usually you would think about more elite aristocratic characters being involved with this sort of thing but he he wanted it to be for people uh tradesmen uh in philadelphia for for self-improvement

15:53 and for philosophical political discussion um and and for learning just you know for for being able to uh inform yourself and participate politically um and to to improve yourself and to to give yourself more uh networks and opportunities and it was all kind of these entrepreneurial

16:16 uh but also virtuous projects all kind of mashed together um you know they didn’t want people arguing with each other about things like religion um but but i mean they would talk about religious topics but they but they did definitely didn’t want it to be a debating society they wanted it to be for mutual ratification and virtue and

16:38 and uh improvement of the laws and that those are the kind of things that they were interested in talking about and you know this was still a time when you didn’t necessarily think of artisans uh participating you know that this is kind of the what we would call the working-class uh people and so this

16:58 this definitely is feeding into that kind of spirit of self-government uh and uh learning for you know all people at least at least people like franklin um there’s many others that we could list i mean i think one of the most obvious ones uh after he experiences this kind of material

17:18 success in the print business is the founding of the library company of philadelphia um which was the first public lending library uh in in america uh now of course many private individuals and uh colleges had uh uh libraries before that point you know harvard had its own library and

17:40 those sorts of things but franklin’s idea here was that even though the the uh print business had become uh more widely available and disseminated and through cheap print up to that point there were still a lot of books uh that you know one individual couldn’t afford

18:02 especially artisans couldn’t afford uh to buy and i mean with that we are familiar with that sort of thing today when you see the the price of some academic uh titles you know 80 or 100 dollars who could possibly buy these things and so so franklin’s idea was that the library company would become a a repository

18:23 of as many books as possible including relatively expensive books um and that people would it was a subscription library and so people would pay a yearly subscription uh to get access to the library’s holdings but once you did you could borrow these titles that that would exceed the budget of

18:44 most uh artisans and and so uh you you could get access to the best learning that that was uh available and so this this is you know the epitome of this kind of public spirited you know philadelphia if it’s going to be a great world city it needs to have a lending library like that

19:05 okay uh and what were the what were the main ideas shaping franklin’s thinking about education and schools he was involved in in starting some and so if you can talk a little bit about his his involvement in specifically in education sure i i think john locke on like on so many

19:26 issues is is the most formative influence on franklin uh about education and this is another uh instance where uh the enlightenment influences people like uh and like was kind of one of the early great writers of the english enlightenment butch and then he exercises such a huge

19:47 influence on the american enlightenment um uh a lot of optimism about uh the potential for uh education for a lot of people not not just the elites but also a kind of a pragmatic streak about uh you know since black brings in a

20:07 sense that franklin adopts that a lot of education is is kind of um no pun intended locked into uh you know you know these older forms of very classical and kind of rigid uh forms of education and not that they rejected that but they wanted to have

20:28 less of a dependence on uh you know greek and greek and latin texts and more of an emphasis on english texts um and you know and this this is again kind of trying to make education more widely available in in vernacular uh languages of course that’s very much in the spirit of the reformation uh but

20:49 so you know it’s not just this kind of enlightenment that’s floating out there that’s making this happen it’s also part of older christian philosophies about uh uh education um and there is a turn away from uh strictly theological kind of education it’s not it’s not taken out um but

21:11 franklin is interested in an education that would not just be for pastors because uh up to that point uh the early 1700s uh virtually all education in england and in america uh was for the training of pastors um and uh yale when it’s founded in the

21:31 early 1700’s is certainly uh thinking in terms of training congregational uh ministers but uh franklin one again he’s happy to have an educated pastorate um and and thinks that that’s very important but he wants uh all kinds of people uh to be able to have access to education

21:51 and not necessarily just for ministerial uh training so uh you know when when franklin is interested in founding what originally is called the academy of philadelphia but but then later turns into uh the the the college of philadelphia or the university of pennsylvania is it eventually

22:11 became i mean christianity is is part of what he’s uh emphasizing because he thinks that education is first and foremost for the inculcation of virtue um and of course christianity has a major role to play in that but um unlike harvard and yale or oxford and cambridge

22:34 the the college of philadelphia’s philosophy of education is sponsored by by franklin uh is is a step step certainly in the direction of being more secular um but but it’s it’s uh its aims don’t seem very secular uh because i mean they’re they’re definitely for the inculcation

22:55 of uh virtue and and christianity is going to play a role in in fostering virtue but he’s not as keen about the kind of the exclusive role of uh teaching theology great and so how does franklin then also participate in this international conversation of

23:16 science right he becomes independently wealthy as you said and and retires as his businesses continue to he derives income from them and and he starts to sort of become a tinkerer and a you know experimenter an innovator maybe not a great theorist but uh so how do how do his inventions

23:36 impact society for the good we’ve spoken a lot about that and how does it how do scientific conventions do that right right so it’s it’s really amazing when you think about that that franklin is a major contributor in his time to three different fields uh printing and science and diplomacy

23:59 uh and and i mean he he’s like you know uh einstein’s steve jobs type level i think contributor you know in each of those fields and so um that you know again i’m i’m i’m pretty uh willing to give frank on all the accolades that uh that he’s he’s often given

24:20 in american history um because he is he’s just an extraordinary genius and and and he’s so ambitious he’s so diligent he’s so so hard working and and just doesn’t have any kind of sense in spite of his relatively modest background in spite of his lack of education he doesn’t really have much of a sense of

24:40 his own uh limitations and so as you said uh he begins to make in the 1730s and 40s a phenomenal amount of money in in printing and that allows him to have the time and a discretionary income to uh begin to fund uh scientific

25:01 experiments and the most significant of them classically of course or is experiments in electricity um and without getting too far into the details on on that there there was a dispute about exactly what lightning was uh in in the scientific community and and he was participating by

25:22 his own reading but also an active correspondence with major figures especially in london um about the nature of electricity and weather uh lightning i mean everybody thought lightning was uh some sort of fire um and he said he said yeah it it is fire but but it’s a kind of fire

25:42 that can coexist with water um and so uh he he wanted to demonstrate that that lightning was a type of electricity and so that that leads to his uh experiment with the kite and everybody knows the basic story with with that um and and he ends up uh writing that up

26:03 and and other people are disseminating publicizing it again through this these kind of print networks but also correspondence and just traveling uh people i mean he had people who who really would do uh scientific demonstrations uh based on his work and they would travel very widely publicizing these things for a small fee

26:24 you could come watch the these things so entrepreneurship is part of the story as well but but that you know uh to to illustrate how widespread this was being disseminated i mean as as i said before is being published very widely but uh you know that that experiment with the kite um really did in his time make him

26:46 very famous so famous in fact that there was a a scientist a german scientist who was living in russia at the time who heard about his kite experiment and about a year later tried to replicate it in russia so those are his views on science and you’ve written a whole book on this uh of course but uh if maybe

27:09 in a nutshell for for our viewers uh what are what are his somewhat complex complicated uh views of religion sure well and all these things i’ve been talking about are connected to religion i mean he he made a lot of his money in the print trade off of publicizing the first great

27:30 awakening um and especially george whitefield who was the greatest evangelist of the mid 1700s and a long time a friend of franklin’s but but their partnership really started as a business association uh because franklin was whitefield’s most important publicist in in america uh and so franklin would

27:52 publish whitfield sermons and his travel journals and he but he would also publish anti-whitfield material and just just all of it whatever whatever he could give because he knew that that whitefield was uh just a moneymaker for him and and so that that’s part of the story it’s also uh poor richard zalman acts and the

28:12 pizza laden gazette but but his religious publications are really important and on the scientific experiments i mean people question the propriety of trying to control lightning uh and as franklin also really probably is most practically significant invention was lightning rods uh to to draw off lightning and keep

28:34 houses from being destroyed by a fire created by lightning but some people you know were questioning whether this would even bring more judgment of god on on people by you know by trying to deprive god somehow as if you can do that uh you know of the ability to hit people with

28:54 lightning and so so so at every turn uh you know his his some of his key uh conversation partners on his scientific experiments were sort of these pastor scientists uh in especially in in england um but he you know he grew up as i said in this puritan environment

29:15 very intense uh commitment to uh christianity and his in his parents generation but uh franklin as a teenager began to develop sort of skeptical beliefs about um his parents traditional faith um but he could never get away from it completely uh partly because even as a boy he was

29:38 he was so conversant with the king james bible that that he had a lot of it uh functionally memorized um and uh and and so in a way he he does develop this skepticism but he’s so formed by the bible and his parents faith that he almost

29:59 just by default keeps thinking in those kind of categories and even talking and even i mean some of his jokes were you know bible jokes i mean that’s you know he’s he’s a jokester all the time but he would he would for instance show friends of his who he knew didn’t know the bible as well as he did he he would tell them about this story and say don’t

30:20 you remember this this story from genesis and he would tell them the story it wasn’t from genesis it was just something he had made up so uh by by the end of his life i mean frank you know franklin he calls himself a deist uh in his autobiography so that’s that’s not such a bad place to start about franklin’s personal beliefs

30:41 but he also believes in the providence of god no no question people he believes that god is active in human history and human affairs and if you think well diaz can’t believe that that it turns out that franklin a lot of other people who called them themselves dias believed in the providence of god um but but there were key christian

31:03 doctrines that he just never seemed to be able to come around you know the divinity of christ um the trinity some things you know things that christians would consider to be you know pretty basic to their faith he he just at the end of his life he just still couldn’t quite get himself to to believe so

31:23 skeptical but you know that that sort of umbrella of faith that his parents uh gave him um just really deeply influenced his his life and his thinking all the way to that right so in many ways really grappling with these you know the relationship of science and and religion

31:43 uh really throughout his life yeah i mean i think that franklin would have just assumed that christians should be interested in science and and and many of the people that he’s in conversation with both through print and through correspondence are more devout christians than he is um and and one of his actual one of his key uh

32:05 publicists about his scientific experiments was a former baptist pastor in philadelphia who who was you know still a very uh devout and traditional baptist but who was just fascinated with franklin scientific experiments and so he said this man ever needs her ken kennersley

32:25 set up kind of his own traveling show about franklin’s science that was franklin wouldn’t have thought that was unusual at all to have traditional christians who were his friends and supporters and that so that this idea of the you know warfare between science and religion was just not that wasn’t really a thing in in franklin’s time right right good well uh one one final

32:47 question if you don’t mind uh just maybe a a a general uh just kind of final conclusions about uh you know what how was franklin really a representative of this this early american enlightenment uh mid mid 18th century yeah i think that the the american side

33:07 of the enlightenment you know in contrast especially to the front side of the enlightenment tends to be uh more moderate um you know more more cautious uh of course than the extreme versions of the french revolution i mean they’re just throwing everything out and lopping off heads and we can recreate society right now and and do it

33:30 overnight um franklin and people like him on the american side would not have been that ex extreme and radical um but but uh sort of the slow uh judicious pace of rationality scientific inquiry uh reading dissemination of print

33:50 um all these things are are really i think kind of encapsulated in franklin i mean i you know jefferson maybe uh is is a competitor but but uh when you when you consider franklin’s enormous uh successes and especially in publishing and in science i i i think i would choose

34:11 franklin as the the greatest exemplar of the american enlightenment and again in contrast to the the french enlightenment it’s it’s it’s a an enlightenment that’s generally pretty friendly to faith perspectives you know franklin and jefferson are both skeptical about some basic christian doctrines but they they both

34:33 philosophically are very committed to the idea of virtue and public service uh a strong civil society um and and they understood that those those things for typical americans uh were were encouraged and fostered by uh traditional faith and so um even

34:55 you know jefferson tended to be kind of a little harder edged in his anti-clerical views in particular and he picked some of that up in france um but but you know franklin is is just much more of an irenic character uh self-effacing um and so even if he has these kind of doubts personally about

35:15 the divinity of christ and those sorts of things he never would have taken a really harsh stance about about that sort of thing but but his i just exceptional commitment to self-improvement uh you know civil society uh improving philadelphia through uh the library

35:35 and the junto and we could talk about other you know the academy of philadelphia the first hospital in in philadelphia and so forth that that combination of entrepreneurship and innovation and and commitment to civil society i think is just the epitome of what the enlightenment meant um in america and i and that’s why i

35:57 think that franklin is its greatest advocate right well uh thank you very much thomas kidd for appearing today and for helping to uh discuss the the american enlightenment and specifically benjamin franklin uh for our viewers uh particularly our teachers and students uh and thank you for your great

36:17 contributions to uh several essays uh to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness thank you for your time thanks tony and all of the viewers can sign up for life liberty and the pursuit of happiness the bill of rights institute’s free online textbook at our website bill of rights institute dot org

36:38 thank you for joining us