The Pursuit of Happiness
How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America
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4.3 • 16 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times bestseller and an “enriching…brilliant” (David W. Blight, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Frederick Douglass) examination of what “the pursuit of happiness” meant to our nation’s Founders and how that famous phrase defined their lives and became the foundation of our democracy.
The Declaration of Independence identified “the pursuit of happiness” as one of our unalienable rights, along with life and liberty. Jeffrey Rosen, the president of the National Constitution Center, profiles six of the most influential founders—Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton—to show what pursuing happiness meant in their lives, and to give us the “best and most readable introduction to the ideas of the Founders that we have” (Gordon Wood, author of Power and Liberty).
By reading the classical Greek and Roman moral philosophers who inspired the Founders, Rosen shows us how they understood the pursuit of happiness as a quest for being good, not feeling good—the pursuit of lifelong virtue, not short-term pleasure. Among those virtues were the habits of industry, temperance, moderation, and sincerity, which the Founders viewed as part of a daily struggle for self-improvement, character development, and calm self-mastery. They believed that political self-government required personal self-government. For all six Founders, the pursuit of virtue was incompatible with enslavement of African Americans, although the Virginians betrayed their own principles.
“Immensely readable and thoughtful” (Ken Burns), The Pursuit of Happiness is more than an elucidation of the Declaration’s famous phrase; it is a revelatory journey into the minds of the Founders, and a deep, rich, and fresh understanding of the foundation of our democracy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rosen (Conversations with RBG), a professor of law at George Washington University, travels "into the minds of the Founders, to understand their quest for the good life on their own terms," in this fast-paced romp through early American political thought. Profiling six well-known founders, as well as other contemporaries such as Abigail Adams and Phillis Wheatley, Rosen attempts to illuminate what "the pursuit of happiness" meant to them. For instance, he suggests that Benjamin Franklin was inspired by Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, a kind of "self-help book," from which Franklin learned that "without Virtue Man can have no Happiness in this World." A recommended reading list compiled by Thomas Jefferson forms the backbone of a chapter on "Industry," and in the concluding chapter on "Silence," Rosen contends that the founders' lessons of self-mastery have lived on through notable figures such as Supreme Court justices Louis Brandeis and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, both subjects of his earlier books. He recalls that Ginsburg told him that her mother gave her "precisely the same Stoic advice" that Abigail Adams once gave to her son John Quincy Adams: "Emotions like anger, remorse, and jealousy are not productive," she said. "They will not accomplish anything, so you must keep them under control." Rosen's account sometimes runs thin, with complex authors such as Epictetus and Seneca condensed in rudimentary ways. Still, this is an entertaining window on the American founders' reading lives.
Customer Reviews
A Long but Useful Read
While it was a long slog this book was very informative. Learned not only of the Founders’ classical (often self-taught) education, but also the original meaning of “In pursuit of happiness”. Also a good primer into the classical philosophers. For the ambitious, a heavy-duty reading list is included.