What is the true meaning of the pursuit of happiness? What can we learn from the Founding Fathers about achieving harmony, balance, tranquility, self-mastery, and pursuing the public good?

Jeffrey Rosen is 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 at The Atlantic. Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College, Oxford University, and Yale Law School. He is the author of seven previous books, including the New York Times bestseller Conversations with RBG: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law. His essays and commentaries have appeared in The New York Times Magazine; on NPR; in The New Republic, where he was the legal affairs editor; and in The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer. His latest book is The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America.

JEFFREY ROSEN

That idea of planting seeds for future generations came from the Tusculan Disputations. There’s something especially empowering about Cicero. And it's very striking that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and so many in the Founding Era viewed this manual about overcoming grief as the definition for achieving happiness. And I think it's because it's a philosophy of self-mastery, self-improvement, and self-empowerment.

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Can you describe the overall organizing principle of The Pursuit of Happiness, the 12 virtues, and how you went about selecting the Founding Fathers that you chose to write about?

ROSEN

I was moved to organize the book according to 12 virtues by noting the incredible synchronicity that both Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson made lists of 12 or 13 virtues for achieving happiness. And I knew about Franklin's famous system for achieving moral perfection, which he writes about in his autobiography, where he made a list of virtues for self-mastery. But I was just struck by the coincidence of seeing on the wall of The Boar's Head Inn in Charlottesville, Virginia, on the UVA campus, a list of 12 virtues that Jefferson had drafted for his daughters. And they were almost identical to Franklin's. And then, of course, I wanted to tell the stories through people because that's the best way to relate to and attempt to practice self-mastery and see how people achieved it in their own lives. Then, I chose different founders to associate with different virtues. You could have chosen a different organization there, but it seemed like a good way of telling the stories through their life's journeys.

The Importance of Deep Reading

The habits of deep reading are themselves the most tangible expression of the virtues. In that sense, the virtue of industry is the one that I still take with me. So many of the Founders did, too. They fell short of so many virtues, as we all do every day. But it was the habits of deep reading and writing, keeping up a consistent daily schedule, and setting aside time for deep reading and writing that they maintained until the end of their lives.

And that's the most tangible way in which the project changed my life. The pandemic is over, but each morning, I'm still setting aside time for deep reading and writing and creative work as well, where I'm not allowed to look at screens or to browse or do all the things that I'm tempted to do, of course, every, every minute. And that habit of industry is something that I'm really grateful for. 

Writing Sonnets for Personal Transformation and Reflection

Being moved to write the sonnets was an unexpected gift that I was given. I certainly didn't expect that unusual practice, but I found myself moved to sum up the wisdom in concise and distilled form just by taking notes on the daily reading that I'd done each morning after watching the sunrise. And I was surprised to learn after starting the project that many people who read this wisdom during the Founding Era were also moved to write sonnets, including Phillis Wheatley, the great poet, Mercy Otis Warren, Alexander Hamilton, and John Quincy Adams, who would read the Tusculan Disputations in the original and read Cicero in the original in the White House for consolation, write sonnets, and watch the sunrise and walk along the Potomac. That idea of planting seeds for future generations came from the Tusculan Disputations. There’s something especially empowering about Cicero. And it's very striking that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and so many in the Founding Era viewed this manual about overcoming grief as the definition for achieving happiness. And I think it's because it's a philosophy of self-mastery, self-improvement, and self-empowerment.

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Despite being aware of these virtues, the Founding Fathers, when faced with issues of slavery and abolition, couldn't find it within themselves to have that level of self-mastery.

ROSEN

Slavery is the most glaring, notorious, and important hypocrisy to discuss. How was it possible that these Founders, all of whom acknowledge that slavery violated natural rights and natural justice, themselves owned slaves? And it was striking to discover that they didn't even try. That Patrick Henry quote is so significant. He said: is it not amazing that I myself who believe that slavery is immoral, myself own slaves? I will not justify it. I won't attempt to. It's simple avarice or greed. I can't do with the inconvenience of living without them.

And that idea that these men who insisted that virtues like industry and frugality were so important and that avarice or ambition were such sins themselves just couldn't be bothered to give up the lifestyle, that it was indeed their addiction to the ease that enslavement made possible that led to this hypocrisy.

Practicing the Classical Virtues

When I tried to practice the Franklin 13 virtues, which I did a couple of years ago at the recommendation of a rabbi who suggested the Hebrew version. A Hasidic rabbi in the 19th century had translated Franklin's virtues into Hebrew. And a friend and I tried to practice them without actually knowing that they came from Franklin. I found that separating them or disaggregating them, as Franklin recommends, focusing on temperance one week, for example, and industry another, is less successful than thinking of them holistically. Really practicing the virtues, it's more of a vibe, if I can use that word, than a checklist. And in that sense, it's a feeling of alignment, harmony, balance, tranquility, self-mastery that you achieve once you've internalized the wisdom.

Personal Self-government and Political Self-government

The Founders thought it was imperative that people seek out information, listen to arguments of different perspectives, and deliberate with their fellow citizens before making up their own minds. That crucial right is also a duty to think as you will and speak as you think.

Challenges of Modern Media to Democracy

The idea of being moved by opinion rather than fact and expressing allegiance to an ideology rather than being open-minded to evidence is the definition of a faction. A faction is any group, either a majority or a minority, animated by passion rather than reason, devoted to self-interest rather than a public good. And that's exactly what the algorithmic rabbit holes and filter bubbles and echo chambers encourage. And it's a serious threat. 

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It’s interesting to hear you write about that note of beauty and harmony, which seems to be lost in political discourse these days. We’re so in conflict that the idea of being like artists all working together for a collective vision seems to be lost.

ROSEN

I love Leonard Bernstein's excitement in talking about how he says, for Beethoven, was he the best harmonist? No. Was it his orchestral abilities? Absolutely not. It was just that each note that he chose was exactly the right note to follow the note that proceeded it as if he had "a private telephone wire to Heaven" and that he was channeling the note that created and mirrored the divine harmonies of the universe.

And it was so striking to see John Adams compare the harmonies of a great piece by Handel to the harmonies of the State. And harmony is truth, which is reason, which is the Divine, according to the classical authority. And we have not only a right, but a duty to live according to reason in order to align ourselves with the divine harmonies of the universe.

And that's why seeking that kind of harmony through art and nature is as important, more important than trying to achieve harmony through politics. And that's why the quest for individual and collective self-mastery is really a search for harmony. 

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Well, it's important that although you can disaggregate the virtues, they're really clusters of the same quest that they're all glosses on the four classical virtues of temperance, prudence, courage, and justice. And they're all attempts to achieve self-mastery, and in that sense, tranquility, moderation, these are different ways of expressing the ideas of prudence and temperance. It's striking that Adam Smith translated the Roman word temperance with virtue as a kind of tranquility of the soul.

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What are your reflections about the beauty and wonder of the natural world and how does that inspire you as you plant trees for the next century?

ROSEN

There's no more beautiful experience in the world than watching the sunrise and the daily practice of waking up to watch the sunrise and being full of wonder at the extraordinary beauty that awaits us each day. Recapitulating each morning the harmony of Creation, it's incredibly exciting. And then, I just developed these practices of trying to do something creative along with the sunrise. During COVID, it was writing sonnets. Before that I'd been writing other kinds of poems. Recently, I've started writing songs, and there's just something about the golden hour of the sunrise that waits for us each day and, whatever else is going on in the world or in our lives, allows us to recommit to and experience once more the glorious beauty and harmony of the universe. 

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Given the way that you designate time away from technology for creative pursuits or the kinds of activities that strengthen self-mastery, to what extent do you believe that owning our attention makes us autonomous?

ROSEN

There's no more empowering act for me than simply turning the devices off. The simple rule that I'm not allowed to browse in the morning until I've done my reading has opened up worlds. So much of tech and the net are designed to capture our attentions, to turn us into consumers rather than citizens, to fan our base passions and emotions, and to send us down rabbit holes. That the best thing we can do is to turn it off.

"The pictures in our minds", I guess that was Walter Lippmann, are confirmed by the enlightenment empiricists like John Locke, who insists that our reality is shaped by our external sensations and what we put into our minds. And then, of course, we are what we think. Life shaped by the mind, as The Dhammapada states. And then, the great injunction that my dad used to quote from Paracelsus, "As we imagine ourselves to be, so shall we be." So it's so important to exercise autonomous self-control over the pictures and images that we put into our minds. And the best thing we can do is to turn them off.  

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Who have been the important teachers in your life?

ROSEN

I'm so grateful to these great teachers every day. They are with me every day. My father, the great hypnotherapist guru, who died at 95, just as I was finishing the book, was with me at every stage and his empowering message helped me see the connections between the hypnotherapy that he practiced and the great wisdom traditions. And then in college, I just had the extraordinary privilege of studying with great humanists in history and literature. Walter Jackson Bate, who wrote the towering biography of Samuel Johnson and taught the age of Johnson, insisted that the humanities could be put to use and could teach us how to live. And, through his love of poetry and prose of the 18th century, both taught me how to write and hear the music and language and also inspired in me this urgent belief in the necessity of the humanities to teach us how to live.

These interview highlights have been edited for clarity and concision.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and and Virginia Moscetti with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Sophie Garnier and and Virginia Moscetti. The Creative Process is produced by Mia Funk. Additional production support by Katie Foster.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).
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