My new Osher class begins one week from today. It’s called American Polymath: The Extraordinary Life of Benjamin Franklin. I submitted a proposal to teach this class about six months ago, in September of 2021, and I have been working on it ever since.
The idea for this class began buzzing around in my head last spring, when I was preparing and then teaching a class I called The Building Years: American in the 1790s. I was reading a lot about the history of America during the American Revolution and during the first years under the Articles of Confederation as I played around with ideas for that class, and I kept coming across Benjamin Franklin. I became interested in him, because he seemed to be everywhere and know everything.
Since proposing the class, I have become convinced that my initial impression was correct – he really was everywhere and he knew an enormous amount – although maybe not everything.
I called him a “Polymath” in the title for my class, although I was not the first person to give him that name. If you look at the Wikipedia article for “Polymath,” a portrait of Franklin is the profile image. I’m not even kidding. Wikipedia defines a polymath as “an individual whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems.” This fits Franklin very well – but I particularly like the last part of this description, which calls for the application of knowledge to solve specific problems.
Franklin was not a theoretician. He thought through problems and then proposed solutions that had practical impact. This is evident throughout his life, even in his personal theology. He is often described as a Deist, or perhaps even an atheist. But Franklin held tightly to a set of religious beliefs that represented a theology of action – it was not enough to be good; one had to do good. He parted ways from his Puritan roots to reject “salvation by grace.” His goal was “salvation through works,” and he didn’t think that God cared much about what you thought while you were doing good things.
As is often the case, once I began to focus on Franklin I found him everywhere. The Omohundro Institute (part of the History Department at William and Mary) hosts a podcast called Ben Franklin’s World. Although this podcast and the research projects that underpin it have been going on since 2014, I learned of it only a couple of months ago. There is currently an archive of 324 podcast episodes. I have listened to a handful of them, and I want to listen to as many as I can find before I teach my class. I don’t think I’ll be able to listen to all of these episodes.
In addition, Ken Burns is releasing his two-part documentary on Franklin on April 4 of this year – after the second of my three sessions and the day before the last one. I have listened to a couple of preliminary programs the producers have put together in anticipation of the release of this film, and I think it’s going to be very good. I had no idea that this program was in the works until a few weeks ago. It’s nice to be on the same page as Ken Burns, but I have some trepidation that I’ll leave out something major that will be revealed by Ken Burns.
In preparation for teaching this class, I have read a number of wonderful biographies about Franklin. Here are the best, so far as I’m concerned:
I recommend any of these books if you’re interested in Franklin. For sheer reading pleasure, however, I suggest Stacy Schiff’s book A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America. It is, in a word, a romp. The New Yorker says this is “A dazzling narrative . . . told with verve, elan, and wit.” I couldn’t agree more. Professor Schiff spent years in the French archives in Paris, reading everything she could find by and about Franklin. Then she spent more years in American archives. This is the way the Amazon listing for this book describes it:
"‘In December of 1776 a small boat delivered an old man to France.’ So begins an enthralling narrative account of how Benjamin Franklin--seventy years old, without any diplomatic training, and possessed of the most rudimentary French--convinced France, an absolute monarchy, to underwrite America's experiment in democracy.
“When Franklin stepped onto French soil, he well understood he was embarking on the greatest gamble of his career. By virtue of fame, charisma, and ingenuity, Franklin outmaneuvered British spies, French informers, and hostile colleagues; engineered the Franco-American alliance of 1778; and helped to negotiate the peace of 1783. The eight-year French mission stands not only as Franklin's most vital service to his country but as the most revealing of the man.
“In ‘A Great Improvisation,’ Stacy Schiff draws from new and little-known sources to illuminate the least-explored part of Franklin's life. Here is an unfamiliar, unforgettable chapter of the Revolution, a rousing tale of American infighting, and the treacherous backroom dealings at Versailles that would propel George Washington from near decimation at Valley Forge to victory at Yorktown. From these pages emerges a particularly human and yet fiercely determined Founding Father, as well as a profound sense of how fragile, improvisational, and international was our country's bid for independence.
Over the next couple of weeks I’ll write more about Franklin for my Tuesday (Osher Program) Substack essays as I teach the successive sessions of the class.
Terrific! Can’t wait for the class to begin!