American Literature

In The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and Notes on the State of Virginia, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson both conceive of irrationality as a serious threat to the liberty and well being of the people.  They both advocate moral and historical education, as well as free-thinking, as paramount in avoiding social and political problems stemming from human irrationality.  This can be seen in the fact that, while both thinkers attempt to mold the minds of the population and lead them to a more rational existence, Jefferson does so by proposing laws while Franklin does so through literary and personal channels, opening himself up as an example for people to emulate.  I will begin by comparing Jeffersons and Franklins educational models, showing that Jefferson understands education to be by and for the state while Franklin takes a more private, individualized approach.  I will then explore how, while Jefferson posits exclusion from the state as an appropriate method for promoting rationality among the people, Franklin sees individual self-discipline as key.  To conclude, I will compare the authors methods for combating irrationality, and show how these methods reveal their respective views.  These points combine to support the thesis that while Jefferson is elitist and statist in his view of irrationality, holding that it can be remedied from without through education or exclusion, Franklin concentrates on the correction of irrationality from within.

In Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson recommends the creation of school districts and the establishment of semi-public education as a way to combat irrationality and diffuse knowledge more generally through the mass of people (157).  His recommendations, while meant to secure the well being of the entire population, are centered on the power and good of the state.  He envisions a multi-tiered educational system that provides three years of free education to everyone, then progressively roots out the most intelligent children and molds them into potential state leaders.

Every person is entitled to send their children three years gratis, and as much longer as they please, paying for itOf the boys thus sent in any one year, trial is to be made at the grammar schools one or two years, and the best genius of the whole selected, and continued six years, and the residue dismissed.  By this means twenty of the best geniuses will be raked from the rubbish annually, and be instructed, at the public expense. (Jefferson 157)

Here we see that, for Jefferson, it is the states job, over and above the parents or the individual, to bring about mental improvement and nurture reason.  The overriding point of his educational program is to identify geniuses and allow the state to take responsibility for their further advancement.  Jefferson characterizes non-geniuses as rubbish and residue, indicating that he has a certain disdain for those who do not demonstrate superior intelligence, and that, despite his republican principles, he associates the common good with superior leadership by a few.  The object of the law, he says, is to secure everyones freedom and happiness (Jefferson 158), but such freedom and happiness are directly related to the promotion of a few elite geniuses.  
There exists some contradiction, then, between Jeffersons elitism and his republicanism.  His elitism is not economic, since he advocates the discovery of geniuses from among the poor, but is related to natural intellectual capacities, as he demonstrates amply in his discussions of race and education (Jefferson 149).
We hope to avail the State of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich (Jefferson 159).  Through the cultivation of these natural capacities, Jefferson claims, the strength of the state and therefore the liberty of the people can be safeguarded.  Of all the views of this law, none is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty (Jefferson 159).  Here we see the complex and contradictory relationship between Jeffersons republicanism and his elitism it is vital to keep the people in control of the government, but this should be accomplished by the governments raising specific, naturally intelligent people to positions of power.  Ultimately, Jeffersons educational system is geared toward the continuity and security of the state.
Rationality, he suggests, will flow down from the top, meaning that the self-improvement of the residue of the population is not necessary in order for society to be protected from irrationality.

There are three principal differences between Jeffersons and Franklins visions of education and reason Franklins attempts to combat irrationality through education are geared toward self-improvement for its own sake he takes a critical view of established educational standards and of the relationship between education and rationality and he advocates private, grassroots educational schemes rather than statist ones.  Franklin puts a high value on self-education, showing how his self-imposed educational disciplinestudying each Sunday rather than attending church, learning languages on his ownleads him to be more sensible and competent.  It is just such commitment to self-improvement that Franklin wishes to encourage in the population.  His distribution of intellectual pamphlets, his private attempts to create universities, libraries and debate societies, and even his own autobiography serve as vehicles for the grassroots dissemination of knowledge and the struggle against popular irrationality.   In these ways, common tradesmen and farmers can become as intelligent as gentlemen (Franklin 74).  Franklin thus advocates the self-improvement of individuals by various, private educational methods.

Moreover, Franklin critiques the traditional, established educational system, questioning whether certain subjects are useful to study, and he does not make the same straightforward association between rationality and education that Jefferson does.  In his discussion of one mans movement from Oxford-educated scholar to indentured servant, Franklin shows that education does not necessarily instill sense or reason in a person.  It was an odd thing to find an Oxford scholar in the situation of a bought servantHe was lively, witty, good-natured, and a pleasant companion, but idle, thoughtless, and imprudent to the last degree (Franklin 56).  Franklin has no illusions, then, that education makes a person rational or virtuous.  Whereas Jefferson identifies rationality with traditional education, suggesting that the measure of a persons reason is whether or not they can understand Euclid (Jefferson 151), Franklin associates sense with the self-disciplined cultivation of virtue (Franklin 93-94).

While Franklin conceives of irrationality as a problem to be solved on the individual level, Jefferson proposes not only state education but also state exclusion of groups who are deemed irrational.  While he supports the emancipation of black slaves, he advocates their removal from the state on the basis of their natural intellectual inferiority and seeks to replace them with white settlers.

This unfortunate difference of color, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people.  Many of their advocates, while they wish to vindicate the liberty of human nature, are anxious also to preserve its dignity and beautyAmong the Romans emancipation required but one effort.  The slave, when made free, might mix with, without staining the blood of his master.  But with us a second is necessary, unknown to history.  When freed, he is to be removed beyond the reach of mixture. (Jefferson 155)
Jefferson characterizes black inferiority in aesthetic as well as intellectual terms their difference with regard to the faculty of reason, which he at least acknowledges to be a suspicion rather than an established fact, is related to their difference in beauty  (Jefferson 155).  Whereas Franklin points to the co-existence in people of pleasing and irrational qualities (as demonstrated above with regard to the pleasing but idle former Oxford scholar), showing that he understands each individual to have a unique complex of traits and needs, Jefferson claims that whole groups of people are either rational or irrational, beautiful or ugly, and that these qualities are related in a systematic way.  Therefore, it is possible for the state to systematically excise irrationality from the population by the exclusion of these groups.

Jefferson also calls for the exclusion of emigrants who harbor monarchical governmental principles, which, he indicates, are inherently irrational.  Our government is a composition of the freest principles of the English constitution, with others derived from natural right and natural reason.  To these nothing can be more opposed than the maxims of absolute monarchies.  Yet, from such, we are to expect the greatest number of emigrants (Jefferson 93).  These emigrants will, he claims, taint the rationality of the governmental system, turning it into an incoherent, distracted mass (Jefferson 93).  He does not suggest that emigrants be turned away from the state or deprived of citizenship, but he does caution against inviting or encouraging them (Jefferson 94).

In general, Franklin does not talk about irrationality as a racial or national issue, nor does he recommend the removal of supposedly irrational groups from the state.  He is less interested in the primacy of the state or the collective good of humanity, and more interested in the good of the individual or, rather, he does not even try to suggest that humanitys collective good can be systematically imposed by the state.  If humanity is to be good, rational and freeall of which are intimately related for Franklinit is individual self-discipline and innovation that will create the necessary conditions.  Franklin connects the ability to think and act reasonably with the cultivation of a virtuous way of being by imposing mental and physical discipline on themselves, people can become competent, rational actors in the world.    

I considered my newspaper also as another means of communicating instruction, and in that view frequently reprinted in it extracts from the Spectator and other moral writers, and sometimes published little pieces of my own, which had been first composed for reading in our Junto.  Of these are a Socratic dialogue tending to prove that whatever might be his parts and abilities, a vicious man could not properly be called a man of sense and a discourse on self-denial, showing that virtue was not secure till its practice became a habitude and was free from the opposition of contrary inclinations. (Franklin 93-94)

Here we see two key elements in Franklins conception of rationality.  First, he equates virtue (the lack of viciousness) with sense, and argues that the creation of a virtuous bearing necessitates constant and arduous self-denial.  Thus, irrationality can be reduced by the disciplined cultivation of virtue from within.  Second, we see that his methods of instruction with regard to virtue and rationality are grassroots and personal he uses his own newspaper, as well as the private debate group Junto, to disseminate his views among the people.  This fits into his general scheme of attempting to improve peoples lives by communicating with individuals directly, through literary methods characterized by personal wisdom and self-exposure.  Franklins popular publication Poor Richards Almanac, for example, functions as a proper vehicle for conveying instruction among the common people (Franklin 93).  While Jefferson would not necessarily disagree with the marriage of sense and virtue, he sees educational and moral discipline as a social undertaking involving the creation of laws and the molding of individuals by the state.

Franklin and Jefferson both place a high value on the individuals right to think freely, especially with regard to religion, and agree that rational thinking leads to a truer understanding of the world.  Neither seeks to coerce people into rationality, though each, in their different ways, is interested in improving society by discouraging unreasonableness.  Jefferson takes a top-down approach to such discouragement, calling on the state to adopt policies that, through education and exclusion, will create a rational and secure society.  Franklins program, by contrast, is centered on the primacy of individuals, whose specific complexes of needs and experiences require personalized modes of achieving virtue and reason.  This is reflected in the thinkers different methods of approaching irrationalityJefferson through law-making, and Franklin through literary and personal channelsas well as in their different modes of self-critique.  While Jefferson critiques the potential corruption of the government, arguing that the point of sowing rationality among the people is to subvert such corruption, Franklin critiques his own character, suggesting that he views irrationality as primarily a threat to individual human development.