The Pursuit of Happiness

September 1, 2023

Recalling Thomas E. Ricks's First Principles, National Constitution Center president and CEO Rosen looks closely at the classical Greek and Roman moral philosophers to understand the Constitution's ringing phrase, The Pursuit of Happiness. Prepub Alert.

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November 13, 2023
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.

November 15, 2023
A study of the Founding Fathers' search for self-mastery. Rosen, president of the National Constitution Center and author of Conversations with RBG, offers a revisionist perspective on the nation's values by examining how happiness was viewed by Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. From reading classical thinkers such as Cicero, Epictetus, and Xenophon, along with David Hume, John Locke, and Adam Smith (Rosen appends a reading list), the founders came to believe "that the quest for happiness is a daily practice, requiring mental and spiritual self-discipline, as well as mindfulness and rigorous time management." Far different from the self-serving gratification of desires, happiness results from having a balance between reason and passion. They thus believed that "moderating emotions is the secret of tranquility of mind; that tranquility of mind is the secret of happiness; that daily habits are the secret of self-improvement; and that personal self-government is the secret of political self-government." Each man, Rosen reveals, enacted a lifelong project of self-discipline. Adams, for example, struggled to subdue his vanity. Ridiculed "as one of the most self-regarding men of his age," he worked to cultivate humility. As for Jefferson, he strove for industriousness, "cultivating his mind, body, thoughts, and faculties in order to achieve the mental tranquility he was determined to maintain at all costs." Tranquility, the basis for happiness, comes "not in the success or failure of our efforts to achieve inner harmony but from the pursuit itself." Along with examining sources that were significant for the founders, Rosen reveals how those texts shaped the ideas of influential figures such as Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln. In their distinguishing between being good from feeling good, the founders, Rosen hopes, may inspire readers to redefine the meaning of a good life. A thoughtful rendering of America's history.

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February 1, 2024
Isolation and other woes during the pandemic inspired a renewed interest in classical philosophy. With insight and wit, legal scholar Rosen shows how classical philosophy inspired the Founders. Using a list of 13 virtues that Benjamin Franklin developed from reading authors such as Pythagoras and Cicero, Rosen explains how the Founders used philosophy for self-improvement and to better serve America, then extends his inquiry to examine how philosophy influenced John Quincy Adams, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and justices Louis Brandeis and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Though some passages may require re-reading, Rosen makes the philosophy understandable by deftly interweaving vivid, concrete examples of how the Founders applied these concepts and extends the sphere by including Phillis Wheatley, Abigail Adams, and Mercy Otis Warren. Anecdotes about Franklin ending his vegetarianism, Franklin and John Adams bickering, and Lincoln's quips are witty and illuminating. A key reveal is that philosophers and the Founders defined "happiness" in "pursuit of happiness" as seeking virtue, not pleasure. Rosen's noteworthy book offers a better understanding of philosophy and American history.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.