Concept
Self-made man
Overview
A self-made man is a person whose success is of their own making.
Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, has been described as the greatest exemplar of the self-made man. Inspired by Franklin's autobiography, Frederick Douglass developed the concept of the self-made man in a series of lectures that spanned decades starting in 1879.
Originally, the term referred to an individual who arises from a poor or otherwise disadvantaged background to eminence in financial, political or other areas by nurturing qualities, such as perseverance and diligence, as opposed to achieving these goals through inherited fortune, family connections, or other privileges. By the mid-1950s, success in the United States generally implied "business success".
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Much of what is called the "individualism" of the early nineteenth century has in truth little to do with the nature of individuals. It goes back to a metaphysics which held that harmony between man and nature can be taken for granted, if once certain artificial restrictions upon man are removed. Hence it neglected the necessity of studying and regulating industrial conditions so that a nominal freedom can be made…
John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct
States what Self-made man is; the author is tied to Self-made man in the knowledge graph.
To demand in advance of voluntary desire and deliberate choice that it be demonstrated that an individual shall get happiness in the measure of the rightness of his act, is to demand the obliteration of the essential factor in morality: the constant discovery, formation, and reformation of the self in the ends which an individual is called upon to sustain and develop in virtue of his membership in a social whole…
John Dewey, Ethics
States what Self-made man is; the author is tied to Self-made man in the knowledge graph.
There is something ridiculous in the expression ‘master of himself;’ for the master is also the servant and the servant the master; and in all these modes of speaking the same person is denoted. Certainly. The meaning is, I believe, that in the human soul there is a better and also a worse principle; and when the better has the worse under control, then a man is said to be master of himself; and this is a term of…
Plato, The Republic
States what Self-made man is.
Related ideas
- Industrial Revolution
- Individualism
- John Dewey
- Library of Congress
- Ronald Reagan
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Sicily
- Thomas Jefferson
- Abraham Lincoln
- Benjamin Franklin
- Founding Fathers of the United States
- Charles Dickens
- Malcolm Gladwell
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Liberalism.