Reflection Blog- Franklin's Virtues

So have spent the past few weeks learning a lot about Benjamin Franklin, but we have specifically learned quite a bit about his thirteen virtues. From discussing in class and from reading his autobiography, I learned that Benjamin Franklin was a very knowledgeable and talented man. I learned a lot about his accomplishments and what he did within his life time, but I think that learning about his thirteen virtues was definitely one of the most interesting things we discussed. I found his thirteen virtues to be interesting not because of the actual virtues themselves, but because I thought it was really cool that he would try and perfect himself and that he would dedicate that much of his time into doing so. In this passage from his autobiography, it shows just how much time Benjamin Franklin dedicated to his thirteen virtues:

My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these virtues, I judged it would be well not to distract my attention by attempting the whole at once, but to fix it on one of them at a time; and, when I should be a master of that, then to proceed to another; and so on, till I should have gone through the thirteen (Franklin 150).

I think that it shows a lot about Benjamin Franklin that he was willing to dedicate that much of his time to perfecting himself. Also, I thought that it was really cool in class when we went over his thirteen virtues. I thought it was really interesting to see what virtues he found important and then also to see how he defined each one. Here, Benjamin Franklin tells the readers about how he chose his thirteen virtues:

...and I included under thirteen names of virtues, all that at that time occurred to me as necessary or desirable; and annexed to each a short precept, which fully expressed the extent I gave to its meaning (Franklin 149).

I liked how he picked out virtues that he thought were important, and then defined each one according to what he thought it meant. In my opinion, I think it is pretty much impossible to be absolutely perfect, so I do not think that Benjamin Franklin was one hundred percent with this study. Although I do not think he was perfect, I do believe that by practicing his thirteen virtues as much as he did, that he became a better version of himself.