Benjamin Franklin's Mistakes: Self-Interest Rightly Understood

Great Essays
Benjamin Franklin is known to be one of the first self-made man in the U.S.A.
Throughout his life, he has accomplished more than an average human being can. Franklin has a long list that includes a printer, writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, civic leader, and diplomat. But behind closed doors, Franklin wasn’t the man he portrays in the public. In Franklin’s life, he struggled with his identity. While reading his autobiography, the reader can tell he has some issues about his self and not confident as he portrays to be in the public eye. Franklin family life is not together as the reader would expect from the first self-made man. Also, thought out his life he made mistakes and does not go into details and does not say what he learned from
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In Learning from Franklin’s Mistakes: Self-Interest Rightly Understood, Franklin’s persona in the Autobiography, as seen through the lens of the errata, perhaps unlike
Franklin himself, had perfectly squared the circle of combining egoism and altruism. Other writers have an opinion on Franklin’s Art of Virtue. In the book, Benjamin Franklin and his enemies, D.H Lawrence said that” This is Benjamin 's barbed wire fence. He made himself a list of virtues, which he trotted inside like a grey nag in a paddock.’’ As reading, the reader should realize that Art of Virtue was not a good chart. Franklin has to many flaws with in this idea to make this a successful tool for people that are trying to improve their selves. He treated his self like one of his experiment and he failed at
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He is giving advice to a friend about marriage and how it should be based on happiness. “A woman wants his Force of Body and Strength of Reason; he, her Softness, Sensibility and acute Discernment.” Although, Franklin marriage was not the tradition way and Deborah did not seem happy during the marriage. In the public he explained how he loves her so much but when it a private setting, he is a selfish and self-involved man. Then, he explained to his friend that if you are not ready, you should date older women instead. In Old Mistresses Apologue, he gives eight reasons why his friend should prefer older women. The first one point he explains how older women are smarter, more experienced and can hold an intellectual conversation better. The second one is that older man will take care of you better than a younger one. The third explains how older women does not have a need to have children because they have already experience that part of life. The fourth one explains that an older woman will how you progress into a better man by shaping his value and manners. The fifth point makes you think Franklin is a womanizer he

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