8 - Political Principles

Summary

Recent scholarship has strengthened Franklin's reputation as a principled Whig or “early modern liberal” by showing that he was from his youth a thorough American, a thoughtful republican, and an advocate for selfgovernance. Lemay, for example, directs readers to consider Franklin the political idealist, who risked his standing to support controversial candidates or causes. Franklin appealed to natural law and natural rights in his disputes in the 1730s, as in his 1749 Proposals, which teaches students “the first Principles of sound Politicks.” Franklin quotes the “great Mr. Locke,” who recommends students study Grotius and Pufendorf, “wherein he will be instructed in the natural Rights of Men, and the Original and [sic] Foundations of Society, and the Duties resulting from thence.” As a politician, Franklin appealed to natural rights as penman for the Pennsylvania Assembly, colonial advocate in Britain, and most famously, in the “self-evident” truths in the Declaration. But on this question of Franklin's principles, most scholars claim—often connected to a treatment of Franklin's philosophy—that Franklin rejected natural rights.

The confusion over Franklin's political principles stems from a lack of clarity about the meaning of natural right. Franklin took the same positions as Locke, who posited an a priori ground for an original social contract, and yet in the Essay (“Esteemed,” wrote Franklin, “the best Book of Logick in the World”) argued for ascending degrees of probability. Natural right, in one sense, refers to living the good life, or the life in accord with the natural order of man as a rational being, as distinguished from convention. Wisdom is the activity of this well-ordered soul. Franklin is certainly a philosopher of natural right in this sense. However, as he writes in 1735, while a love of truth may unite friends, it could never be a political teaching. Yet the positing of a human nature is also the basis for a political teaching of natural law, an appeal to nature an as authority, including a body of rights and duties that serves as a standard for positive law.

Natural rights in this second sense are a series of moral maxims, to which Franklin appealed in his disputes with the proprietors and the revolt from Britain.