An Empire of Reason - The Pursuit of Happiness

American Political History · Oct 9, 2023 · 29m

Where do three of the most famous words in American life — the pursuit of happiness — actually come from? This episode follows the last great stream of the founding mind back to its source in Scotland, where a professor named Francis Hutcheson taught that every human being is born able to perceive right and wrong as directly as the eye sees light. It is the hidden philosophy behind “we hold these truths to be self-evident,” and the radical foundation of the whole democratic faith: that ordinary people, equipped by nature to know the good, can be trusted to govern themselves.

But a people that…