Description
Book SynopsisIs Benjamin Franklin, the familiar cultural icon whose face appears on coins, currency, and postage stamps, in addition to being an affable inventor, printer, and humorist also an important American philosopher? In Recovering Benjamin Franklin, James Campbell attempts to recover Benjamin Franklin''s role as philosopher. In the broad eighteenth-century understanding of the term philosopher, most people would say that Franklin clearly qualifies as one. But since the beginning of the twentieth century, the meaning of the term has narrowed. What should be said about Franklin as philosopher in the current sense of the word?
Part of the problem is that Franklin''s thought is difficult to classify. Franklin is not a composer of lengthy, systematic treatises. Instead, we know him as the author of letters and essays, primarily short and often fragmentary, that were intended for diverse audiences. Was Franklin a thinker whose interests were nearly universal, or was he a dabbler who flew f
