"The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason"
About this Quote
Franklin rarely wastes a sentence, and here he’s laying a trap with Puritan bait. “The way to see” promises enlightenment, but the payoff is perverse: to gain vision “by Faith,” you must “shut the Eye of Reason.” It’s a surgical metaphor that turns epistemology into anatomy. Reason isn’t debated; it’s an organ you deliberately close, like a lid over something inconvenient.
Coming from Franklin, this reads less like a devotional tip than a scalpel aimed at religious certainty. He was a politician of the Enlightenment, a printer steeped in argument, and a master of saying the unsayable while keeping plausible deniability. The phrasing mimics pious instruction, yet the internal logic is an indictment: faith, defined this way, requires self-blinding. That’s not neutral; it’s an accusation that belief, when it demands obedience, depends on a kind of chosen darkness.
The subtext is political as much as spiritual. In Franklin’s world, churches and civic authorities competed to define truth and discipline behavior. A citizenry trained to “shut” reason is easier to govern, easier to scare, easier to mobilize against outsiders. By framing reason as an “eye,” Franklin appeals to a commonsense physicality: you don’t “refute” blindness, you recognize it. The line works because it’s compact satire dressed as counsel, daring the reader to notice the cost of comfortingly certain beliefs.
Coming from Franklin, this reads less like a devotional tip than a scalpel aimed at religious certainty. He was a politician of the Enlightenment, a printer steeped in argument, and a master of saying the unsayable while keeping plausible deniability. The phrasing mimics pious instruction, yet the internal logic is an indictment: faith, defined this way, requires self-blinding. That’s not neutral; it’s an accusation that belief, when it demands obedience, depends on a kind of chosen darkness.
The subtext is political as much as spiritual. In Franklin’s world, churches and civic authorities competed to define truth and discipline behavior. A citizenry trained to “shut” reason is easier to govern, easier to scare, easier to mobilize against outsiders. By framing reason as an “eye,” Franklin appeals to a commonsense physicality: you don’t “refute” blindness, you recognize it. The line works because it’s compact satire dressed as counsel, daring the reader to notice the cost of comfortingly certain beliefs.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
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