American Antiquarian Society
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Join us in person or virtually as Jeffrey Rosen discusses his newest book, The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America. The Declaration of Independence identified “the pursuit of happiness” as one of Americans' unalienable rights, along with life and liberty. In his book, Rosen profiles six of the most influential founders of the United States—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 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.
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.