This is a response to Barry’s post “Descartes ≠ Franklin”.

I understand the difference between Descartes and Franklin as you explained. Another way that they differs from each other is that Descartes only wants to discuss his method; he is not telling us to imitate him. In Discourse on the Method, Descartes describes “although my own satisfaction with my work has led me to present here a draft of it, I do not by any means therefore recommend to every one else to make a similar attempt” (pt.2, par.3). According to Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Franklin urges people to follow his method. He says “I hope, therefore, that some of my descendants may follow the example and reap the benefit” (ch. 9, par. 17). He believes that his method can be “fully persuaded of the utility and excellency” (ch.9, par.18) and that “each person to be initiated should not only declare his assent to such creed, but should have exercised himself with the thirteen weeks’ examination and practice of the virtues, as in the beforemention’d model” (ch.9, par. 44).

I also notice that they have similar ideas. Franklin thinks “I judg’d 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” (ch.9, par.4). This is similar to the third law Descartes formulates. Descartes says “The third, to conduct my thought in such order that, by commencing with objects the simplest and easiest to know, I might ascend by little and little, and, as it were, step by step, to the knowledge of the more complex” (pt.2, par.9). They both believe that a subject should be approached slowly starting with simple analysis towards more complex propositions.
Descartes says “imitating in this the example of travellers who, when they have lost their way in a forest, ought not to wander from side to side … they will come at least in the end to some place that will probably be preferable to the middle of a forest” (pt 3, par.3). He suggests that wrong decision is better than indecision. A person will not regret if he had tried. In the case of Franklin, he feels good about himself by attempting to perfect all thirteen virtues even though he fails.

Furthermore, Descartes says “of those who, possessed of sufficient sense or modesty to determine that there are others who excel them in the power of discriminating between truth and error, and by whom they may be instructed, ought rather to content themselves with the opinions of such than trust for more correct to their own reason” (pt.2, par. 4). They have the same opinion about modesty.