Man's Fortune As Virtue Franklin example essay topic

HOW D'YD BENJ AM " YN FRANKL " YN and THOMAS PAINE ENLIGHTEN AMERICA? The Enligtenment comprises the period which scientists, religious rationalists and political philosophers emerged from centuries of ignorance into a new age clarified by reason, science, and respect for humanity. People of the Enligtenment took human reason to discover the naturel laws of universe and determine the natural rights of achievements as basis. Scientific rationalism, in other words the Age of Reason developed first in seventeenth century England, spread to France and Europe, and finally came to the English colonies in America in the eighteenth century.

It was an age of great discoverers, and greatest of all was Isaac Newton. His discovery of the law of gravitation supported the Copernican system and opened enormous new fields in astronomy. Copernicus demolished media vel cosmology by proving that the sun, rather than the earth was the center of the universe. There were also new understandings and findings: Galileo's telescope, the mathematical developments of Kepler in astronomical calculation, Descartes in analytical geometry and Vesalius's tidies in anatomy and William Harvey's discovery of circulation of blood put medicine on a modern plane. In the light of these discoveries, science of seventeenth and eighteenth century gained new roots by establishing the existence of God on a rational rather than metaphysical basis.

Philosophers of the Enligtenment considered that they were helping man to understand the true nature of the Divinity by denying Miracles, the Incarnation, the Trinity, and Biblical Authority; therefore, Enligtenment especially challenged theology and church. The most significant movement arising from the results of reconciling science with religion was deism. The Deists admitted the supremacy of human reason, rejected the miraculous and denied the divinity of Christ, nevertheless, they adored his teachings and took them as part of their creed. Mankind accepted the deistic God, instead of theism, who appeared to have designed the universe according to the scientific laws and withdrawn from the intervention in human affairs. In America, the belief and the traditions of the seventeenth century made people ready to accept the new ideas of the Age of Reason and Enligtenment.

Things that constituted the theological concern of the seventeenth century such as storms, earthquakes, and meteors were being searched for evidence of God's providence and this paved the way to prepare the way for the acceptance of the new science. The spirit of the Enligtenment is represented more than any other man by Benjamin Franklin so he was the most important figure of this era. He was a scientist, a master of diplomacy, a humanitarian who helped establish hospitals, schools, and libraries. He believes of the possibilities of human progress and the comforts of material success. Franklin was one of the representatives in paradox cial faith in both social order and in naturel rights, in love of stability and devotion to revolutionary change. Although he had Puritan parents, he did not support the Calvinist attitude that the earth was a vale of tears and suffering so constituted to try men's spirits for the wrath to come.

In contrast to this, he believed that this life should be dedicated to the pursuit of human happiness. Franklin borrowed from Puritan teachings his famous Thirteen Virtues and exhorted others to practice them, not for their Calvinistic Value of justifying the ways of God to Man but rather for their practical usefulness in what Franklin recognized and approved as the fundamental motive of existence -the desire to Get On (Kuntz and Hay craft 59). In other words, we can say that Franklin wanted to modernize of the Puritan concept of fruitful industry. Franklin appreciated the worshipping of success as soon as that success was honestly obtained. He believed that the desire for a social and financial security could be a powerful force in the dynamics of society and an incitement to intellectual and spiritual improvement. Moral virtue was a practical commodity through the exercise of which man could succeed.

It should be followed because it is the key to personel happiness and social well-being rather than through the fear of God's wrath and because it is its own reward. In his Autobiography, Franklin asserts that Truth, Sincerity, and Integrity in Dealings between Men and Men were of the utmost importance to the Felicity of Life... Revelation had indeed no weigh with me as such, but I entertained an opinion, that the certain actions might be forbidden because they were bad for us... And later he sums up his whole ethical attitude under the frank statement that Nothing is so likely to make a man's fortune as virtue Franklin was thought greater than Voltaire and wiser than Rousseau. He succeed in creating the American Republic. He was a master of the periodical essay of satire, and political journalism.

He helped establish a tradition in American writing of the simple utilitarian style, and in writing his Autobiography he set the form for autobiography as a genre. He created America's first great book. Thomas Paine was the one attacking metaphysical religion sharply. He disdained what he considered to be the claptrap of clerical mythology in Age of Reason. It was an attack on the irrationality of religion, the source of the most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties that offlicted the race.

It was a crude but forceful statement of the doctrines of deism (Mc micheal 394). As the proper guide for man reason gained significant and this caused a storm of protest. He was accused of atheism though he insisted on his belief in God. Conservatives in England and America saw Paine as a fiend. masterminding a plot to destroy all christian morality. To him, religion could exist only when it was made compatible with in a skeptical and rational age. Also it must be related to the deistic concept of God as a First Cause acting for the benefit of mankind through the laws of nature.

Like Franklin, he was a religious man and he wanted to prevent Christian theology from its outmoded qualities so as to its finest precepts could continue to survive. Without this concept, he tought that the world would soon reject all religious belief and would sink into atheism. The obvious conclusion is that Age of Reason and Revelotuion revealed the ideals in American mind like rationality in human progress, benevolence and perfectibility of man, desire for social improvement, equality. Today these ideals main tian as the naturel rights of man and challenge for our future..