Publication Details

Abstract

The essay is commemorating the 250th anniversary of B. Franklin’s birthday. In the introductory part the author gives a short description of the social surroundings where Franklin lived and worked, as well as of the conditions which gave the talented thinker, scientist and politician the chance of doing so much good for his coutry and for all mankind. Quite contrary to the general opinion prevailing in bourgeois literature that the essential feature of Franklin’s legacy consists in his practical and utilitarian trend of his views on life, the author tries to show that the most important part of what is left of his work be firmly connected with the most progressive ideas of his time: the ideas of scientific progress, humanity, democracy and tolerknce. Franklin didn’t make it a matter of his to solve only the problems of every-day life or those ones of the present situation. Being an adherent of Newton’s philosophy of nature, Locke’s sensualism and sympathising with liberalism and deism he was cherishing the lofty ideals of the time of Enlightement. His work is marked by these ideas, that work, which he performed as a champion striving to widen the knowledge of his people, as a politician fighting against colonial policy, struggling for social justice and democratic rights of all inhabitants and for abolishing slavery. It was those ideas that inspired his creative work in the branches of knowledge where his name became immortal. The author, however, calls to our attention the fact that Franklin took sometimes a narrow view upon matters and there we must take for allowance that he was the representative of the ideology of the ruling class in the forming bourgeois state.