Abstract

»the bold and arduous Project of arriving at moral Perfection«: On the Concept of Self-Perfection in Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography

Among the manifold educational projects of the early American Republic, the model of self-education presented in Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography is probably the most famous and most influential. Calling up the notion of perfectibility, a key concept of the Enlightenment, the Autobiography also contributed to its author’s reputation as the most important American representative of that intellectual movement and thus reinforced the iconic status Franklin had already gained by his extraordinary lifetime achievements. – The present study approaches the text with particular regard to its complex rhetorical structure, concentrating on three aspects: first, the rhetorical strategies by which Franklin established his claim to serve as a model for coming generations; second, Franklin’s self-education and its impact on the Autobiography’s matter and manner of presentation, with particular emphasis on the function and significance of the Socratic model; and third, the catalog of virtues, its narrative frame, and its ethical implications. The study concludes that in its own time the Autobiography offered a model of behavior that served the particular needs of a society in a period of transition from an elitist and hierarchical to the more egalitarian system of the early republic yet also had a lasting impact on the further course of American culture.