In The Pursuit of Happiness, How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America, National Constitution Center president and CEO Jeffrey Rosen offers a fascinating 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. Rosen 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.
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. 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.
Jeffrey Rosen is the President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, where he hosts We the People, a weekly podcast of constitutional debate. He is also a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic. He was previously the legal affairs editor of The New Republic and a staff writer for the New Yorker.
Rosen’s new book is The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America. His other books include the New York Times bestseller Conversations with RBG: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law as well as biographies of Louis Brandeis and William Howard Taft.
Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College; Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar; and Yale Law School.
Monday, July 29th
5.30 pm
Harrison Room
Free
This event is now at CAPACITY
