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Author: Jeffrey Rosen
Reviewed by: Shelby Grubbs, Arbitrator, Mediator & Special Master at JAMS and principal at GrubbsADR
Jeffrey Rosen is the President and CEO of the National Constitution Center. The Pursuit of Happiness is the product of Rosen’s COVID-era dive into the reading and writing of the folks who launched the U.S. in the late 18th century and sustained it through difficult times in the 19th century. I picked up the book after hearing Rosen speak at the Atlanta History Center.
“Happiness,” as envisioned by the Declaration of Independence, Rosen contends, was virtuous contentment, as opposed to a state of bliss. To the Founders, he argues, the pursuit of happiness “was a quest for self-improvement and moral perfection,” a quest not to “feel good” but to “be good.”
Rosen examines the libraries, speeches and correspondence of eight founders – Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, James Wilson, George Mason, Washington, Madison and Hamilton – plus two women – Abigail Adams and freed slave and poet Phillis Wheatley. He also looks at three 19th-century men – John Quincy Adams, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. Most were directly or indirectly impacted by Stoic philosophy, classical reading and John Locke. All were committed to self-examination and self-improvement.
“Happiness,” as envisioned by the Declaration of Independence, Rosen contends, was virtuous contentment, as opposed to a state of bliss.
Shelby grubbs
Each of 12 chapters is organized around a virtue – order, temperance, humility, industry, frugality, sincerity, resolution, moderation, tranquility, cleanliness, justice and silence. All, except the final chapter, focus on one or more individuals.
The final chapter – “Silence” – takes up the “pursuit of happiness” today. Rosen suggests that “personal self-government [i]s necessary for political self-government” and quoting Brandeis, concludes that democracy succeeds “only where the process of perfecting the individual is pursued.”
I recommend this book. It is serious and relevant but accessible and enriched with biographical facts I had not previously encountered. For those inclined to go to sources, there is an appendix of most-cited books on happiness from the founding era.
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