In Praise of Vanity

UATX Professor J. Michael Hoffpauir describes how Benjamin Franklin made a virtue of a vice.

Danielle and Professor J. Michael Hoffpauir discuss Franklin and Rousseau.

It is only natural that a conversation about an autobiography turn to a conversation about vanity. After all, who writes a book about himself? 

In Polaris Ideas, the first course in the Polaris Project academic sequence at the University of Austin, students study the origin of ideas and the moral, social, and economic preconditions for successful innovation. Students read The Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, where its author, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, argues the progress of the sciences and arts necessarily produces a decline in a people’s moral health. If Rousseau is correct, the students wonder, then how can their own desire to bring about progress in science be good. How can the desire to help others through technological advancement materialize in a morally upright manner? And how can their ambition to do great things and desire for fame ever coincide with morality?

This marks the turn to The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and the consideration of whether Rousseau’s argument holds true for this man on these shores. Benjamin Franklin shows how ambition, vanity, public spiritedness, scientific innovation, and the industrious life can be compatible with virtue. In particular, he vindicates vanity. Vanity, the desire for distinction above others, can bring about one’s own good and the good of others. 

Franklin offers his Autobiography to his posterity who might like to know “the conducing means [he] made use of” to attain his affluence and reputation in the world, might find some of these means fitting to their own situations, and might find these means worthy of imitation (43).¹ And the Autobiography is also a guide to future generations, including those interested in morality, leadership, and scientific progress. 

Franklin admits he, like most older people, indulges his inclination to talk of himself and his past actions in writing his Autobiography. But he then confesses something far more scandalous:

And lastly, (I may as well confess it, since my Denial of it will be believ’d by no body) perhaps I shall a good deal gratify my own Vanity. Indeed I scarce ever heard or saw the introductory Words, Without Vanity I may say, &c. but some vain thing immediately follow’d. Most People dislike Vanity in others whatever Share they have of it themselves, but I give it fair Quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of Good to the Possessor and to others that are within his Sphere of Action: And therefore in many Cases it would not be quite absurd if a Man were to thank God for his Vanity among the other Comforts of Life (44).

How could “The First American” confess something so undemocratic?² How could he confess his vanity—his ambition for distinction above others—to us all? This is no faux pas. This vain man is here to help, and he is armed with a hard-nosed realism. Most people despise the vanity of others, yes, and most people are themselves vain. After all, vanity is not merely my desire to stand above you, but it is also my resentment of those who think they ought to be, or are, placed higher than I. Franklin’s democratic character, then, is evident in his realism regarding human beings’ natural desires and his readiness to give them fair quarter where he meets them.

No matter what one makes of Franklin’s religion, he demonstrates his familiarity with Puritanism and the Bible throughout the Autobiography.³ This familiarity is at least due to his parents, but it is also due to his milieu. Any moral education must account for one’s milieu, and in this case, the Bible has much to say about vanity. It is said, “A man to whom God hath given riches, wealth, and honour, so that he wanteth nothing for his soul of all that he desireth, yet God giveth him not power to eat thereof, but a stranger eateth it: this is vanity, and it is an evil disease” (Ecclesiastes 6:2). A man with all the riches, wealth, and honor he desires does not benefit from these things. The wise man and the fool are no different: “For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten. And how dieth the wise man? as the fool” (Ecclesiastes 2:16). Material goods and life here, in this place, are vain, fleeting, and meaningless. It is only God who can provide meaning and joy, so it is vanity—an evil disease—to seek pleasure in riches, wealth, and honor (Ecclesiastes 2:26).

Yet Franklin says a man ought to thank God for his vanity! “And now I speak of thanking God, I desire with all Humility to acknowledge, that I owe the mention'd Happiness of my past Life to his kind Providence, which led me to the Means I us'd and gave them Success” (45). God is not the direct cause of Franklin’s felicity, but gratitude to God for giving Franklin (and all human beings) the means to bring about his own felicity. Opposite vanity is humility, and here, the humble Franklin thanks God for giving him vanity. Vanity leads people to act. One must act to bring about one’s own felicity. And vanity is often productive of what is good for oneself and for others (44). Thank God for blessing us with the vanity that propels us to act for our own betterment and the betterment of others. And thank God for our liberty, for vanity depends upon liberty. One must be free to be vain, and one must also be free to pursue one’s own happiness.

If vanity “is often productive of Good to the possessor and to others,” then vanity can also not be productive of good. Vanity can produce that which is good, produce nothing, or produce that which is bad. Perhaps like deceit, vanity is neither a vice nor a virtue but is something made beneficial or harmful according to how it is deployed (See “deceit” in “sincerity,” page 150, 115; Plato, Republic 331c, 414b). If so, then one must uncover and cultivate the good sort of vanity—vanity well used. Given Franklin’s argument, vanity is well used when it propels one to bring about some good for oneself and for others. Perhaps simply acting for oneself is good too, but it seems like what is good for oneself and bad for others is no better than what is good for others and bad for oneself. 

This manner of understanding what makes desire and action good or bad persists throughout the Autobiography. For example, Franklin offers an account of his public spiritedness—his natural tendency to be a leader—“tho,’” in his youth, his leadership skills were “not then justly conducted” (54). Ten-year-old Franklin and his friends fished at a local marsh whose banks turned into a quagmire. Franklin proposed they build a wharf with stones acquired from the construction site of a nearby home. Under the cover of the evening, Franklin and his friends “brought [the stones] all away and built [their] little Wharff” (54). All seemed well thanks to the leadership of the enterprising young Franklin. Yet:

The next Morning the Workmen were surpriz'd at Missing the Stones; which were found in our Wharff; Enquiry was made after the Removers; we were discovered and complain'd of; several of us were corrected by our Fathers; and tho' I pleaded the Usefulness of the Work, mine convinc'd me that nothing was useful which was not honest (54).

Public spiritedness—leadership—is not in itself good. Leadership must be connected to justice to be good; or, as Franklin’s father taught him, nothing is useful that is not honest. Honesty, as relayed in this context, clarifies something of justice. Honest means not stealing stones from another’s home, which suggests justice is not a zero-sum game. It is not just to lead some to gain at the expense of others. What is good ought to be good for oneself and good for others, or at least not bad for others. The understanding that vanity is made good when it is “productive of Good to the Possessor and to others that are within his Sphere of Action” continues here with leadership. Leadership is made good when it is beneficial to oneself and to others. When leadership benefits oneself or one’s friends at the expense of others, then it, like vanity, is neither just nor honest, neither praiseworthy nor admirable. 

Vanity well used extends to the arts and sciences. Franklin and his friends in his Junto loved reading, but books were costly and had to be acquired from England. Franklin proposed they build a public library, the Philadelphia Public Library, to defray the costs. The Junto could get what it wanted by making the “benefit from Books more common” (142). Yet in soliciting subscriptions to establish the library, Franklin encountered resistance. Men are reluctant to support “any useful Project that might be suppos'd to raise one's Reputation in the smallest degree above that of one's Neighbours, when one has need of their Assistance to accomplish that Project” (143). Therefore, one should remove oneself from the limelight on such occasions and advance the proposal as “a Scheme of a Number of Friends, who had requested [one] to go about and propose it” (143). Franklin heartily recommends this practice, for “the present little Sacrifice of your Vanity will afterwards be amply repaid” (143). Admit the truth of your own vanity, admit the truth of the vanity of others, “use no hurtful deceit,” and benefit yourself, your fellow men, and your city (150). Franklin’s public library soon manifested its utility, was imitated by other towns, and “our people…became better acquainted with Books, and in a few Years were observ'd by Strangers to be better instructed and more intelligent than People of the same Rank generally are in other Countries” (142).

Regarding the sciences, Franklin invented the Franklin Stove, which better warmed homes and proved more fuel efficient than existing stoves. The stove was a remarkable success and yet Franklin declined to patent the design. He allowed others to benefit from his genius free of charge. Declining profit on this occasion was a matter of principle: “That as we enjoy great Advantages from the Inventions of others, we should be glad of an Opportunity to serve others by any Invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously” (192). When the opportunity arises, sacrifice material gain and be amply repaid in reputation and nourishment for your vanity.

Decades after Franklin, Alexis de Tocqueville in his great work, Democracy in America, witnessed “self-interest rightly understood” as the dominant moral doctrine among Americans. It is in one’s self-interest to labor for the common good, observed Tocqueville, and this is a doctrine that Franklin knew, practiced, and espoused in his Autobiography. Self-interest rightly understood is vanity well used. Praise vanity for producing a spirit of innovation and leadership that are “productive of Good to the Possessor and to others that are within his Sphere of Action” (44). Praise vanity for showing how, in America, scientific progress is compatible with morality.

Who writes a book about himself? A vain person. Who publicly confesses his vanity? A person who has been productive of his own good and the good of others; a person who, by way of his vanity, offers reflections on how he lived so that others may reflect on whether such a life is choiceworthy and good. This reflection opens us to the call of the greatest and most fitting study, the study of the good itself. Before students at UATX innovate, they must answer whether the things they want to innovate are good. This moral question is the primary question. This is why all UATX students receive a core liberal arts education and read works by Plato, Aristotle, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Frederick Douglass, William Shakespeare, Flannery O’Connor, and Saint Augustine, to name only a few, works by thinkers who help us grasp what it takes to do good things for ourselves and for others.

Benjamin Franklin reviews his Autobiography. (Wikimedia Commons)

1.  Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Yale University Press, 2003.

2. See https://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript956.html and Brands, H. W. The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin. Anchor, 2002.

3.  See pages 144, 147, 153, 158; 113-14, 145-46, 162-63.