11 For interest, see Steven C. Bullock,“What Ben Franklin Could Teach Us about Civility and Politics,”The
Wall Street Journal,November 7, 2016. http://www.wsj.com/articles/what-ben-franklin-could-teach-us-about-
civility-and-politics-1478564982.
12 To put this more sharply, the utility of the Socratic method in America, one could say, is in its preserving
sociability and politeness while having difficult conversations about religion. The ideal form of Socratic
style is one of ironic modesty, the kind used by Socrates inEuthydemus.
13 For a comparison, see Lorraine Smith Pangle,“Ben Franklin and Socrates,”inBenjamin Franklin’s
Intellectual World, Paul E. Kerry and Matthew S. Holland, eds. (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University
Press, 2014).
14 Temperance, for example, would not require debate or dialectical scrutiny. Its ambiguity would be defined
away by the philosopher Franklin in advance. Temperance is:“Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.”
It does not mean, and does not need to include, the moderating of“every other pleasure, appetite,
inclination, or passion.”
15 Which Socrates had argued was the source of his humility.
16 Temperance, for example, notoriously hard to define in Plato’sCharmides, means“Eat not to Dulness.
Drink not to Elevation.”Justice, the central theme of Plato’s second longest dialogic masterpiece, requires
memorizing a fairly simple rule of thumb:“Wrong none, by doing Injuries or omitting the Benefits that are
your Duty.”How does one know if one is virtuous? Franklin recommends everyone to ask two questions
every day. In the morning: What good shall I do this day? In the evening: What good have I done today?
17 Jerry Weinberger,Benjamin Franklin Unmasked: On the Unity of his Moral, Religious and Political
Thought(Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2008), 16–42.
18 This is not to say that Franklin did not value formal education (e.g., Franklin’s plan for an English-language
grammar school).
19 “From Thomas Jefferson to John Trumbull, 30 August 1787,”Founders Online,National Archives, last
modified June 29, 2017, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-12-02-0076. [Original
source: Julian P. Boyd, ed.The Papers of Thomas Jefferson,vol. 12,7 August 1787–31 March 1788,
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), 69.]
20 Paul Johnstone,“The Rural Socrates,”Journal of the History of Ideas,5/2 (April 1944): 151–175.
21 In Thomas Jefferson,Writings, Merrill D. Peterson, ed. (New York: Library of America, 2011), 1431.
22 The scholarly opinion of Jefferson in relation to education is summarized by Merrill D. Peterson, who
noted that public education was“the backbone of Jefferson’s republic.”The importance of public edu-
cation to Jefferson’s vision is clear: from the transfer of the College of Geneva, to the Constitutional
amendment for public education funding, to Jefferson’sworkto establish a library, and a national curric-
ulum, to his accomplishment as“father of the University of Virginia.”Darren Staloff,“The Politics of
Pedagogy:Thomas Jeffersonand the Educationof a Democratic Citizenry,"inThe Cambridge Companion
to Thomas Jefferson, Frank Shuffleton, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 127.
23 See Paul Woodruff,“Socrates and the New Learning”inThe Cambridge Companion to Socrates,Donald
R. Morrison, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 95.
24 Woodruff,“Socrates,”96.
25 To John Adams, in Jefferson,Writings, 1342.
26 Woodruff,“Socrates,”103.
27 What this means is that Socrates could only believe a subset of what is commonly believed to be true about
the gods given a particular view of the gods, specifically, the gods“as moral exemplars.”A“Socratic
method”approach to religious truth is entirely consistent with Jefferson’s thoughts on education. Indeed,
this is the program outlined in the above letter to John Vaughan, where Jefferson describes his project for a
fundamental rewriting of the Christian Bible.
Bibliography
Bullock, Steven C. November 7, 2016.“What Ben Franklin Could Teach Us about Civility and Politics.”The
Wall Street Journal. http://www.wsj.com/articles/what-ben-franklin-could-teach-us-about-civility-and-politics-
1478564982.
Jefferson, Thomas. 1787.“From Thomas Jefferson to John Trumbull, 30 August 1787.”Founders Online,
National Archives, last modified June 29, 2017, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-12-
02-0076. [Original source: Boyd, Julian P. ed. 1955.The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 12, 7 August
1787 – 31 March 1788.Princeton: Princeton University Press].
Jefferson, Thomas. 2011.Writings. Merrill D. Peterson ed. New York: Library of America.
Johnstone, Paul. 1944.“The Rural Socrates.”Journal of the History of Ideas5/2: 151–75.
The Americanization of the Socratic Method 79