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What Does the "Pursuit of Happiness" Mean? · Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: 250 Years of the Declaration of Independence

• 0:08
  Speaker 0: We hold these truths to be self-evident.
• 0:10
  Speaker 0: That all men are created equal, that they're endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights... ...that among them is life and liberty in the pursuit of happiness.
• 0:20
  Speaker 0: To secure those rights governments are instituted amongst men deriving just powers from consent of government.
• 0:27
  Speaker 0: Whenever any form of government becomes destructive it's right for people to alter or abolish it and institute new government laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: First, we hear the claim that one of our three inalienable rights is the pursuit of happiness.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: And then later we hear that it's right for people to abolish a bad government and create good governments so they can secure their safety AND happiness.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: The Declaration also suggests that bad governments are bad because they make us suffer!
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: In other words...they prevent from experiencing happiness.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Indeed, suffering is mentioned three times in the opening of the Declaration.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: So one more time than happiness!
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Jefferson writes that we are more inclined to suffer while evils are sufferable then to become happy by overthrowing our government and creating a good government that frees us from pursuing happiness.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Bad governments are bad because they make us suffer And Good Governments Are Good Because They Make It Easier For Us To Be Happy.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, great.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: But after revolting against the bad government and creating a good one then what are we supposed to do?
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: How exactly Are We Supposed To Pursue Happiness?
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Is There A Right Way To Do It In Wrong Way?
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: And What Does Happiness Mean?
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Anyway is happiness The Same As Pleasure The Opposite Of Suffering Or Is Something Else?
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: And Are We Really Responsible For Our Own Happiness Through Our Own Efforts Our Own Agency And Our Own Free Will?
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Or is true happiness really out of our hands?
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Something that just happens to us due to sheer chance, luck or divine providence.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: What did Thomas Jefferson even mean by this?
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: and what did other colonials mean by it?
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Did they have a religious concept of happiness—a philosophical concept, political concepts, psychological concepts, scientific concepts —and all these concepts conflicted or overlapped in support each
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: other?"?
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Lastly, of course.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: What did happiness mean for women?
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: For enslaved Africans and for native peoples?
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Was the pursuit of happiness an inalienable right reserved exclusively for white men with property or Did it apply to others as well?
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: As you might have guessed our theme today is happiness And I'm delighted to have with me a fantastic scholar who literally wrote the book on happiness Professor Darren McMahon.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: welcome Darren.
• 3:32
  Speaker 0: Thanks, Andy.
• 3:33
  Speaker 0: It's great to be here.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Are you feeling happy?
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: To Be Here?
• 3:38
  Speaker 0: I am indeed.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Darren McMahon is the David W little class of nineteen forty-four professor of history at Dartmouth.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: He Is The Author Of Numerous Books Including Divine Fury A History Of Genius And Equality The History Of An Elusive Idea.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Most Importantly For Our Theme Today Professor McMahon Is The author of Happiness a History which has been translated into twelve languages and was awarded Best Books of the Year honors by The New York Times, Washington Post, Library Journal & Slate magazine.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Links are in show notes.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: So Darren happy!
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: How do we start unpacking that rich and mysterious word happiness?
• 4:19
  Speaker 0: Well all kinds things to say but let me just talk about the word happiness you alluded.
• 4:24
  Speaker 0: I love to make the point that in every Indo-European language, without exception... ...the word for happiness is cognate with luck.
• 4:33
  Speaker 0: So an English root is the old Norse and Old English term hap.
• 4:38
  Speaker 0: You find it in Shakespeare.
• 4:40
  Speaker 0: Shakespeare says you know hap what hap may.
• 4:42
  Speaker 0: It's the root of if a word happens But essentially means luck or fortune And right across as they say the Indo European languages this holds In German as we know Gluxelikkeit Gluc II means fortune or luck and going all the way back to Greek.
• 4:58
  Speaker 0: in Latin this connection holds.
• 5:00
  Speaker 0: And that seems to point out a view of happiness you find in almost all traditional societies.
• 5:08
  Speaker 0: That is, happiness isn't in our hands.
• 5:10
  Speaker 0: Happiness is what happens and individuals don't control it – the gods do fate does fortune does.
• 5:17
  Speaker 0: we're the victims of circumstance and what happens to us….
• 5:21
  Speaker 0: In most traditional society what happened was often unpleasant – famine, plague war disease suffering.
• 5:30
  Speaker 0: I always point to the first work of history in Western tradition, Herodotus who uses this line from Greek tragedy.
• 5:36
  Speaker 0: He called no man happy until he is dead.
• 5:39
  Speaker 0: and then In The Mouth Of A Persian Sage Artibonis has a riff where it says that there's No One Alive Who Hasn't Wished On Many Occasions To Be Dead Rather Than To Be Alive Because Life Is Just So Full Of Suffering And What Not?
• 5:53
  Speaker 0: That's An Ancient And Received Idea Very Much Contested In The Eighteenth Century.
• 5:59
  Speaker 0: But there are a couple of other things that we could say about happiness because in really... every major religious or wisdom tradition.
• 6:06
  Speaker 0: This is true of Greek and Roman philosophy, especially in the Western tradition but really all the religious traditions suffering's problematized.
• 6:13
  Speaker 0: In other words people begin to ask why is it that human beings suffer?
• 6:17
  Speaker 0: And if there anything we can do about this.
• 6:19
  Speaker 0: so Plato as a great example Plato specifically contests an older view of happiness I just referred.
• 6:25
  Speaker 0: you know happiness what happens with us when have no control over?
• 6:29
  Speaker 0: And Plato seeds the thought that actually our own actions, our own virtue in life has a lot to do with how happy we will be at the end.
• 6:39
  Speaker 0: This is picked up by his student Aristotle and then becomes kind of received point-of-departure.
• 6:44
  Speaker 0: classical philosophy.
• 6:45
  Speaker 0: but as I say really so many religious traditions broach this subject.
• 6:50
  Speaker 0: A couple things you can see.
• 6:51
  Speaker 0: one they don't conceive of happiness as a kind of, you know, summation of pleasure.
• 6:56
  Speaker 0: They think of happiness or in the Greek term eudaimonia is life well-lived over the whole of life—life that will necessarily involve setbacks and sufferings.
• 7:07
  Speaker 0: but we can optimize.
• 7:09
  Speaker 0: so Aristotle uses the metaphor for plant right.
• 7:12
  Speaker 0: if good, rich soil and we give it water and nutrients in sunlight.
• 7:19
  Speaker 0: It will
• 7:19
  Speaker 0: flourish.".
• 7:20
  Speaker 0: And he posits that if we raise human beings in certain ways then we give them the right inputs an environment... ...and teach to live in a flourishing manner.
• 7:31
  Speaker 0: they will!
• 7:32
  Speaker 0: That's their goal.
• 7:33
  Speaker 0: so really all religious traditions have this view of human flourishing obviously different in certain way but kind-of point departure is there.
• 7:42
  Speaker 0: But other corollary Happiness is not something that just happens of its own.
• 7:49
  Speaker 0: It takes work, it takes discipline and cultivation And there's a recognition.
• 7:54
  Speaker 0: many people or even most are probably going to be up for that.
• 7:58
  Speaker 0: The example I always use when i make this point Is that of Buddhism.
• 8:03
  Speaker 0: Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha teaches all human beings have capacity but the first of his four noble truths is that all life is suffering.
• 8:12
  Speaker 0: All Life Is Suffering because most people simply don't do the work necessary to achieve enlightenment.
• 8:19
  Speaker 0: They have misplaced desires and they are victims of those desires, their grasping... And so forth.
• 8:26
  Speaker 0: in this causes them happiness or unhappiness rather even if they had a capacity to be happy.
• 8:32
  Speaker 0: So In that Buddhist view like Christian views almost all religious traditions also wisdom traditions like Aristotelian or Stoic Happiness is you know a kind prize that's attained by The chosen few, the happy few as Aristotle says.
• 8:49
  Speaker 0: And it's not something that we just should necessarily expect out of life.
• 8:53
  Speaker 0: now That view gets challenged directly as well in the eighteenth century.
• 8:56
  Speaker 0: but will talk about that and do course?
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: so I'm really interested Darren.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: a lot of these concepts...the phrase In the declaration there at start that i am Interested is the pursuit Of happiness.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: So government cannot guarantee We be Happy.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: But Jefferson here makes a strong point that sort of the government should get out of our way or somehow create the conditions that allow us to be freer in our pursuit of happiness.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: So how are we to understand this concept of the pursuit, or pursuing
• 9:29
  Speaker 0: happiness?
• 9:31
  Speaker 0: Right well there're all kinds of things to say but let me begin by making a point that I make in my book That what one sees in the long eighteenth century is What i call a revolution and human expectations In other words, that older religious view of happiness and that older idea the happiness is out-of our hands something we don't have control over are challenged directly.
• 9:55
  Speaker 0: They're challenged by religious forces they're challenged with enlightenment thinkers.
• 10:01
  Speaker 0: The ideas presented human beings were supposed to be happy.
• 10:04
  Speaker 0: That was created in order for us as a benevolent creator by nature, and that when conditions are right we will pursue happiness.
• 10:14
  Speaker 0: And indeed find it.
• 10:17
  Speaker 0: one famous articulation of this is important for for Jefferson is that of John Locke, the English philosopher who writes about The Pursuit Of Happiness at some length in his essay Concerning Human Understanding.
• 10:30
  Speaker 0: And there he likens human beings to objects In a gravitational field.
• 10:34
  Speaker 0: and thats not coincidental.
• 10:36
  Speaker 0: He's an admirer and friend of Newton uh...and thinks of human being as attracted by pleasure and repulsed By pain And we are naturally let along in this way.
• 10:45
  Speaker 0: Now he has more to say on happiness as does Jefferson, but that's one way of conceiving the pursuit of happiness is something natural and indeed good.
• 10:55
  Speaker 0: if you start looking around for the phrase The Pursuit Of Happiness In The Eighteenth Century On either side of the Atlantic You'll find it all over different sources, and I think all of these are important to Jefferson.
• 11:08
  Speaker 0: Jefferson as i'm sure you know famously says in a number of instances most famously on the letter he writes an eighteen twenty five two his fellow virginian henry lee that when he was composing the declaration independence wasn't trying do anything new or original but rather capture the common sense at age like the common american mind.
• 11:30
  Speaker 0: And I think, you know part of that common American mind first and foremost are religious views.
• 11:36
  Speaker 0: The phrase pursuit of happiness is used all over the place by preachers in the eighteenth century who talk about human beings' pursuit of Happiness and God's desire That we are to be happy both in this life In the next life.
• 11:50
  Speaker 0: and there's a kind of new emphasis in religious apologetics in the Eighteenth Century Unlike, say a John Calvin who conceives of human beings the vast majority as vessels of wrath Who are brought into existence to suffer eternally That no God is benevolent.
• 12:08
  Speaker 0: God wants us To be happy to flourish in this life and then next And that religion Is In fact The way to that happiness?
• 12:16
  Speaker 0: So thats A received idea one would have heard Often from the pulpit in the eighteenth century Or read religious tracts or sermons.
• 12:25
  Speaker 0: Another major source is this kind of broader enlightenment discussion.
• 12:29
  Speaker 0: Locke, as just the tip of the iceberg all kinds of people talking about happiness in the eighteenth century and human beings indeed not only right to pursue it but even right to obtain it.
• 12:39
  Speaker 0: you hear talk a Right To Happiness In The Eighteenth Century which is unprecedented novel really quite dramatic.
• 12:47
  Speaker 0: People wouldn't have spoken that way prior to this point.
• 12:50
  Speaker 0: so one Obvious example here is the whole current of utilitarian philosophy.
• 12:56
  Speaker 0: We sometimes associate utilitarianism with English legal reformer Jeremy Bentham, and Bentham does indeed talk about argues that the point of government is to, you know increase happiness for as many people as possible and decrease suffering.
• 13:14
  Speaker 0: But that general way of conceiving utility it's a really widely received notion in Italy or France or Germany all over the place in the eighteenth century.
• 13:27
  Speaker 0: That too was important.
• 13:28
  Speaker 0: There's also a whole current of Scottish Enlightenment thought, common sense philosophy which argues that human beings are social creatures and they find their happiness in community.
• 13:40
  Speaker 0: And indeed they find there happiness pursuing virtue.
• 13:44
  Speaker 0: what is good for others is good to us.
• 13:47
  Speaker 0: So I think Jefferson drawing on all these currents as well the received tradition Classical thought and we can get into this at greater length.
• 13:59
  Speaker 0: But all the founders indeed anyone with an education in the eighteenth century, which is a relative minority of course but nonetheless The Founders are steeped in classical thought Greek and Roman thought And the connection between Living virtuously and living happily is absolutely central in their minds, And they're referring to that.
• 14:19
  Speaker 0: So classical philosophy Enlightenment philosophy and received Christian tradition are all really important.
• 14:26
  Speaker 0: I throw one other into the mix as well.
• 14:30
  Speaker 0: The scholar Carly Conklin has written a book about the pursuit of happiness in the founding era, and she makes the point that the legal thought of William Blackstone—the Oxford Legal Theorist and Reformer is central here as well?
• 14:44
  Speaker 0: Blackstone talks about the Pursuit Of Happiness, he talks about how law should align with natural laws to lead human beings.
• 14:55
  Speaker 0: And Jefferson himself wasn't a great fan of Blackstone.
• 14:59
  Speaker 0: He thought about him as kind of Tory, but nonetheless that general connection between law and the pursuit of happiness—natural law in the pursuit is widely shared with received notion it would have resonated for eighteenth-century folks
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: too.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: That was such an fascinating overview on different traditions sort of go into this phrase, the pursuit of happiness and I didn't quite realize how many different traditions that that phrase came out.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: We often think of The Declaration Of Independence in Jefferson's authorship as one that tried to include as many groups as possible.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: he needed it speak a very diverse group of American colonists.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: And I'm just beginning to realize now that the pursuit of happiness, that phrase if you are particularly religious.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: You get your religious hitting there.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: If you're more interested in political or legal theory bang!
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: You can read whatever you want into Pursuit Of Happiness In That Respect and if you like Your Classical Philosophy Or Whatever...you Can Be Like Oh That's What Jefferson Means By Pursued Of Happiness Here.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: So It'S Like A Really Clever Rhetorical strategy, to say pursuit of happiness.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: And then I can just now see that it's applying to lots of different demographic groups there.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: so really interesting.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: um i Just made want to focus on sort of the key ideas in that first sentence of The Declaration Of Independence and that's this tension between What you said?
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: The traditional view which is That It's not Really In Our Control To Be Happy Or Not.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Divine Providence or Fate makes it so.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: But what we see sort of politically and maybe even a little bit metaphysically in the Declaration of Independence is this idea that human beings have agency, right?
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: No!
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: We are not subject to mysterious
• 16:54
  Speaker 0: forces
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: or whatever...we can create the conditions that help us become happy.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: And for me when I look at awesome political relevance of the Declaration of Independence.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: It's in this huge change of views that now we have agency, it is not our fate to be happy or unhappy—we can do it ourselves.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: and I'll just note —this a letter that Jefferson wrote to someone he notes... But as always the result of a good conscience, good health occupation and freedom in all just pursuits.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: So again our greatest happiness is not based on this circumstances or birth but we have this agency over our happiness.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: so what do you make that declaration?
• 17:45
  Speaker 0: It's absolutely central to this broader understanding of happiness that emerges that human beings, yes have the capacity and the agency in their ability to not only pursue it but find it.
• 17:59
  Speaker 0: We can understand our world.
• 18:01
  Speaker 0: we can improve our world uh...we can improve out place innit?
• 18:06
  Speaker 0: It's a broadly received notion in the Enlightenment.
• 18:09
  Speaker 0: you know when were talking about Locke earlier I mentioned Newton.
• 18:14
  Speaker 0: Newton is great hero of enlightenment on both sides Atlantic.
• 18:18
  Speaker 0: why?
• 18:19
  Speaker 0: because He shows that we can understand God's creation, God's world using the power of reason.
• 18:25
  Speaker 0: We can understand god's laws and how he orchestrated the world.
• 18:29
  Speaker 0: God is not in Newton's conception a kind of whimsical being who sits up there on a cloud and casts thunderbolts down and you know operates in ways beyond our conception rather his predictable and noble through reason.
• 18:43
  Speaker 0: And what so many Enlightenment thinkers.
• 18:45
  Speaker 0: reason from that is, if we can understand God's world and God's creation then surely We can understand the world of our own making.
• 18:52
  Speaker 0: So you see in the eighteenth century The emergence all new fields like anthropology or political science Or economics right?
• 19:01
  Speaker 0: All which sort of posit their laws In human activities That we could understand and study to influence how we act in the world, in order to improve the world.
• 19:13
  Speaker 0: And that injunction to cultivate our garden as Voltaire famously says and to improve it and make life better richer more prosperous more comfortable or happy is again a broadly received notion of in the eighteenth century.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: It's interesting you mentioned there are laws on nature.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: there's this reference to the laws of nature and Nature is God.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: And I'll just read it for the audience again, to the separation.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: So again, here we're having the references to the Enlightenment and thinkers like Newton and Locke.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: but what's funny about this also is that they are saying Like This Is Not Some Feeling We Have That We Can't Prove With Facts?
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: People Expect Us To Use Reason To Create Some Sort Of Argument That Justifies This.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: We Are Not Just Going Be Like Oh!
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: Were Angry so Were Rebelling And Becoming Our Own Nation.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: They're like, you know it's respectful to the laws of nature.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: To The Laws Of Reason that we create a case That is A Logical Case That Is A Reasonable Case About Why We Do This.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: And So There What I'm Thinking Is there'S Also This Interesting Connection Between Reason Agency and Happiness too.
• 20:56
  Speaker 0: Yeah Absolutely!
• 20:58
  Speaker 0: As You Say The Invocation Of Nature In Nature's God Which would have resonated with many different kinds of audiences and this idea that you know, it's natural to pursue happiness.
• 21:10
  Speaker 0: And so we're simply reverting here from a situation.
• 21:13
  Speaker 0: That's making Many Americans unhappy too one in which they have the opportunity To do what comes to them naturally?
• 21:21
  Speaker 0: And should come naturally and that is to pursue Happiness.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: let's look at the sort of the opposite of happiness or pleasure and that suffering.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: What do you make of those passages in the Declaration right after The Happiness Section?
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: You know, Jefferson makes this claim about human nature.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: I guess we would call it a psychological claim these days that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to write themselves.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: How did he read that?
• 21:56
  Speaker 0: Yeah, that's really interesting and I you know it's funny.
• 21:58
  Speaker 0: I'll be honest and confess That i'd never sort of lingered over that passage in the way?
• 22:03
  Speaker 0: We're doing now a couple things come to mind.
• 22:06
  Speaker 0: one is that You Know effectively jefferson Is right.
• 22:10
  Speaker 0: My colleague, the psychologist Roy Baumeister has done really legendary work on human beings negative bias.
• 22:19
  Speaker 0: In other words we're wired probably through evolution to register negative or unpleasant experiences in a more powerful and lasting way than positive ones.
• 22:30
  Speaker 0: The way that the evolutionary psychologist explained this is if you're walking in a jungle and see a lion, and don't experience anxiety or fear.
• 22:40
  Speaker 0: You are probably going to get eaten right?
• 22:43
  Speaker 0: And so with all of those imprints on your mind... If it's in that part of the jungle next time.... To have caution and so forth.. Anxiety is protecting us!
• 22:52
  Speaker 0: happiness if it lasts too long makes us soft, right?
• 22:57
  Speaker 0: I always use the example of... If happiness didn't wear off we would you know just be lying on the grass eating fruit and basking in the sun.
• 23:06
  Speaker 0: And then get eaten by that lion Right.
• 23:08
  Speaker 0: so In other words modern psychologists would argue That We do in fact suffer and register suffering more than Then.
• 23:16
  Speaker 0: we register the positive experience.
• 23:18
  Speaker 0: The other thing i Would say here though is In this new eighteenth-century notion, there is a further problematizing of suffering.
• 23:26
  Speaker 0: I mentioned earlier that the religious traditions problematize suffering and they do.
• 23:31
  Speaker 0: They ask the question why isn't it human being suffer?
• 23:34
  Speaker 0: But they don't ever sort of imagine overcoming that entirely or only imagined doing so in kind limit cases.
• 23:45
  Speaker 0: In the Christian frame, why do human beings suffer?
• 23:47
  Speaker 0: Well because of original sin.
• 23:49
  Speaker 0: God created us in order to be happy... ...to flourish on the Garden of Eden.
• 23:52
  Speaker 0: but through our own willful disobedience we broke the law and we passed that onto our ancestors.
• 23:58
  Speaker 0: And so you know in the kind-of received Christian understanding Human Beings will suffer in this life.
• 24:05
  Speaker 0: Luther says all sadness comes from Satan.
• 24:07
  Speaker 0: right it's a consequence of Sin!
• 24:11
  Speaker 0: people begin to challenge that notion, including Christians and argue God didn't bring us into beings in suffering eternally.
• 24:18
  Speaker 0: He wants us be happy.
• 24:19
  Speaker 0: indeed we should be happy.
• 24:22
  Speaker 0: I love using this example of the kind frame when i refer.
• 24:29
  Speaker 0: a pamphlet was published in the seventeen sixties in America.
• 24:35
  Speaker 0: it's something like true pleasure, joy and happiness.
• 24:38
  Speaker 0: The immediate consequence of
• 24:40
  Speaker 0: religion.".
• 24:41
  Speaker 0: And the author makes the argument that I'm making.
• 24:43
  Speaker 0: God intends us to be happy...and What's the first miracle that Jesus performs?
• 24:54
  Speaker 0: Well, he turns water into wine at the wedding in Cana.
• 24:58
  Speaker 0: You know... In other words, Jesus is somebody who wants us to party!
• 25:01
  Speaker 0: He wants us rejoice and be happy.
• 25:04
  Speaker 0: And here are the evidence.
• 25:06
  Speaker 0: So you get religious voices sort of arguing we can overcome suffering.
• 25:10
  Speaker 0: We should and enlightenment voices too.
• 25:13
  Speaker 0: Enlightenment voices arguing.
• 25:14
  Speaker 0: human beings were brought into existence To pursue happiness.
• 25:19
  Speaker 0: Only we can remove the suffering, then.
• 25:22
  Speaker 0: We will be happy.
• 25:23
  Speaker 0: and so The point of good government as you alluded to earlier And Good Laws is To kind Of Clear the Way.
• 25:30
  Speaker 0: clear the way of the Obstacles that That get in In the path of our pursuits.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: Just one Point that I think it's important to remember about This Religious Concept of Suffering and Obedience.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: king or their divinely ordained ruler of the place.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: in The colonies.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: during the run up to the revolution Some pastors were finding passages and the Bible that very much said.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: no Jesus clearly said you need to submit to the ruler But other pastors who you know wanted were patriots or rebels.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: We're like, oh no Don't ignore those.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: There are these other passages in the Bible that you should pay attention to which say it's perfectly right God wants you to be happy and sometimes You might have a bad ruler And then you can overthrow that ruler so that religious debate is also packed into the Declaration of Independence with well No Maybe you're not supposed to suffer.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: maybe god doesn't want you to suffer.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: And the other point I would make which sounds a lot like Bentham, what you were talking about and this again is quotation from Jefferson elsewhere in one of his letters.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: The care.
• 26:58
  Speaker 0: Well, again a widely received notion.
• 27:01
  Speaker 0: You know when I lecture on this?
• 27:02
  Speaker 0: I have a slide in which i show you know citation after citation of the founders and then European thinkers making precisely The same point.
• 27:12
  Speaker 0: so one that i know off the top Of my head is joseph creasley the english philosopher And chemist and friend of jefferson who comes to america.
• 27:22
  Speaker 0: he writes that happiness is in truth the only objective legislation of intrinsic value.
• 27:28
  Speaker 0: John Adams makes this point repeatedly, you know?
• 27:31
  Speaker 0: That the happiness of society is end-of-government and it's really a commonly received idea.
• 27:37
  Speaker 0: now!
• 27:38
  Speaker 0: It has classical roots.
• 27:39
  Speaker 0: again Aristotle says something similar to Nicomachean ethics or politics But people double down on it in the eighteenth century that, The very litmus test of good government is... ...the happiness of the people.
• 27:55
  Speaker 0: Bentham you know puts a kind of finer legal point to this and People like Blackstone And others do as well.
• 28:01
  Speaker 0: but It's just broadly received notion and its Very effective rhetorically In declaration.
• 28:07
  Speaker 0: because effectively Jefferson is saying, are you happy?
• 28:13
  Speaker 0: And people say no.
• 28:15
  Speaker 0: Well we can do something about that We can change it and address the obstacles to our proper and just pursuit of happiness.
• 28:24
  Speaker 0: Now
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: I want to get another idea.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: That's the idea of prudence The connection between prudential behavior.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: I'm just close reading this paragraph in the Declaration of Independence after The Preamble, right?
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: After he says that we should create a government.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: That secures our safety and happiness.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: In the next sense He Says Prudence.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: So like to three words We have their Safety Happiness.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: And then the Next Where He Chooses is prudence Which i think Is Fascinating.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Prudents Will Dictate That Governments Long Established Should Not Be Changed for Light and Transient Causes.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: So when I see this prudence, that's a word with very deep religious and also classical philosophical reference.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: The idea that extremes of behavior are wrong —that you should be careful—I'm thinking of say Epicurus for example as prudent in how we do things because prudance is actually being prudent.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: change your government, rebel start a revolution without taking into account this other key feature of happiness which is being prudent.
• 29:46
  Speaker 0: Indeed and you only rebel after long train of abuses.
• 29:49
  Speaker 0: that famous line in Locke's second discourse on government as well Absolutely.
• 29:55
  Speaker 0: Prudence is a key cardinal virtue, as you say both in religious reflection and classical philosophy And it shows up time-in-time again.
• 30:04
  Speaker 0: Adam Smith when he talks about happiness makes prudence the central virtue.
• 30:09
  Speaker 0: He traces it to kind of stoic thought but its there an Epicurean thought as well.
• 30:15
  Speaker 0: It's really baked into whole Aristotelian way Of looking at world.
• 30:21
  Speaker 0: I think really reminds of the central point that when The Founders Think Of Happiness, they don't think first and foremost of pleasure although That's There And i think it Creates A Certain Tension With This Older Tradition Of Virtue.
• 30:34
  Speaker 0: But They Think Of The Virtues First And Foremost.
• 30:36
  Speaker 0: So Jefferson Says At One Point That Happiness Is The Aim Of Life but Virtue is The Foundation Of Happiness.And That'S a View That All The Founder Shared.
• 30:46
  Speaker 0: And They Go Back To The Ancients Here And they compile lists of virtues, of character virtues.
• 30:53
  Speaker 0: There's a really fine book by Jeffrey Rosen on how the founders conceived or The Pursuit Of Happiness and he makes this point centrally in Indeedy organizes his whole book around list of virtues.
• 31:06
  Speaker 0: Jefferson made them Franklin made them Adams and others make them.
• 31:09
  Speaker 0: They don't always live up to them but try you'll find prudence along with justice even things like cleanliness silence as lists of virtues that we need to follow in order to live a flourishing manner, and prudence is ability to make the right decisions.
• 31:29
  Speaker 0: Decisions will enhance our pursuits and mitigate suffering from bad choices.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: I'm happy you started unpacking this concept of virtue, because I think we should not lose sight of the fact that the founders in Jefferson could not really separate the concept of happiness from being a virtuous person.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: You know it was impossible to be happy without being virtuous.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: so that sort of deep connection goes back all the way again to ancient thought as Nicomachean ethics, but also I often think of in much what the founder said Stoicism.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: So stoicism is the idea that since we can't control external things and things happen without our control all we could do as control are attitude about whats happening around us its kind of maybe fatalistic to a certain extent but also it means what you can control is your virtue.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: So if you just focus every day on waking up like Marcus Aurelia saying the world is going to be a hectic place, But everyday I'm gonna focus on being kind and gentle and prudent And all of these other things.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: If i'm taking care of my virtue that's something I can control.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: That would be good.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: What strikes me as very interesting about this stoic version Of The virtues Is Again, the Declaration of Independence seems to be going against one of those central ideas of Stoicism and The Founding Fathers really love Stoicism.
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: Really loved virtue.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: And yet the Declaration Of Independence is rejecting that key idea of stoicism.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Not about the virtues but you don't have control over governments.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: You don't Have control Over these externalities.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: The founding fathers are like yay virtue But...you can Control the structures That that will shape your life.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: You can't abolish your government and create a new
• 33:34
  Speaker 0: one.".
• 33:36
  Speaker 0: Yeah, you're absolutely right.
• 33:37
  Speaker 0: that Stoicism is very important for so many of the founders.
• 33:41
  Speaker 0: I mean George Washington comes to mind immediately here.
• 33:44
  Speaker 0: he's in many ways a kind of stoic character.
• 33:47
  Speaker 0: but the Stoics take what is initially an Aristotelian idea.
• 33:50
  Speaker 0: We can control our happiness, our flourishing through our own action.
• 33:55
  Speaker 0: Through our virtue and they take it to the ultimate extreme And they discount as you say circumstances external factors or external goods.
• 34:04
  Speaker 0: The reducto out absurdum of this is voiced by Cicero when he's talking about stoic claims and says, you know the man of perfect virtue could be happy even on the rack.
• 34:15
  Speaker 0: Even while being tortured right?
• 34:17
  Speaker 0: If everything is in place it doesn't matter what happens to at all.
• 34:21
  Speaker 0: none of the founders would have shared that view.
• 34:23
  Speaker 0: they would've been closer than this respect to Aristotle himself who as you know writes The Nicomachean Ethics named after his son a series of lectures about character virtues and at the very end he segues then to what will become the politics.
• 34:38
  Speaker 0: In other words, He sees the character virtues as setting up life in the polis.
• 34:44
  Speaker 0: and famously Aristotle says that human beings are you know zoan politic on we our political polis animals where social beings.
• 34:52
  Speaker 0: We can only flourish in good community.
• 34:55
  Speaker 0: And the founders share that view profoundly.
• 34:58
  Speaker 0: They don't imagine the pursuit of happiness as a purely individual pursuit,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: right?
• 35:04
  Speaker 0: We pursue happiness when we promote it for others.
• 35:08
  Speaker 0: Happiness is interrelational.
• 35:11
  Speaker 0: We flourish as human beings in community and this too is kind of widely received enlightenment view that human being are sociable creatures.
• 35:18
  Speaker 0: And then you know...we're our best selves When we are in flourishing communities.
• 35:23
  Speaker 0: So they would reject extreme stoic claim even while at the same time arguing it, yes a lot of things are in our own control and how we react to circumstances.
• 35:36
  Speaker 0: How we respond to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune is to some extent In our hands.
• 35:42
  Speaker 0: but that doesn't mean that We need to suffer just anything.
• 35:46
  Speaker 0: And in fact as people of agency, we can build communities.
• 35:51
  Speaker 0: We can build governments in which we can pursue our happiness more
• 35:55
  Speaker 0: optimally.".
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: I'm just focusing here now on a couple of quotations about Washington's Stoicism.
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: He says in the letter to Mary Ball Washington... And again, another address to the Episcopal Church.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: The consideration that human happiness and moral duty or virtuous duty are inseparably connected will always continue to prompt me to promote the progress of the former —that is to say—happiness by inculcating the practice and maybe you can respond to it now, if maybe want do later.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: A lot of these... Here's a passage from Jefferson that I was just looking at.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: It is neither wealth nor splendor but tranquility in occupation which gives you happiness.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: The one thing that strikes me about all the virtuous founding fathers who are like oh no!
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: You don't need wealth or any.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: this be happy?
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: I mean its easy for your say If you are extremely wealthy, that wealth doesn't give you happiness.
• 37:17
  Speaker 0: Yeah it's funny.
• 37:18
  Speaker 0: I sometimes make this point about a contemporary positive psychologist who often site data suggests and i think they're right in general That if you have nothing then money can infact buy your happiness.
• 37:35
  Speaker 0: Money can buy you a lot of happiness, but once you reach a certain point and it's not as high is one might think.
• 37:41
  Speaker 0: in couple years ago people were positing around seventy thousand dollars per year was the kind of optimal point.
• 37:47
  Speaker 0: Beyond that more money isn't going to be bought by your love happiness.
• 37:50
  Speaker 0: so they too make this point.
• 37:52
  Speaker 0: But its funny because often other people making their point are making alot of money.
• 37:56
  Speaker 0: And we do know if fact.
• 37:58
  Speaker 0: look at societies the Gallup reporting or other data that describes the subjective well-being, happiness of societies.
• 38:07
  Speaker 0: The happiest societies in the world tend to be well off and prosperous And if you look at individual countries... ...the happiest people in those cohorts tend to become richer not poorer.
• 38:20
  Speaker 0: I don't think any of the founders would have disputed this idea That having means was conducive to happiness That having property was conducive to happiness.
• 38:30
  Speaker 0: Now, you've probably heard this old can-ar that Jefferson really wanted to say life liberty and property but he cleverly crossed it out behind the pursuit of happiness.
• 38:44
  Speaker 0: This is what Marxists used to always say when they would deconstruct the declaration as an apology...
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: This was actually in my notes, so thank
• 38:51
  Speaker 0: you!
• 38:51
  Speaker 0: Okay great this is an apology for capitalism right?
• 38:56
  Speaker 0: There's no evidence whatsoever that Jefferson uh was thinking in those terms.
• 39:00
  Speaker 0: You can find the phrase life liberty and property.
• 39:03
  Speaker 0: In the eighteenth century James Otis uses it.
• 39:05
  Speaker 0: Uh in the seventeen sixties Locke talks about property or estate.
• 39:10
  Speaker 0: This would have followed, I think naturally from many people's first principles that having property was not a bad thing.
• 39:18
  Speaker 0: And it should be encouraged and indeed should be disseminated in...and i will say the eighteenth century is unique to making the case material prosperity good for us or our happiness.
• 39:34
  Speaker 0: you know, received idea in both classical thought and Christian thought that there's something dirty about lucre.
• 39:41
  Speaker 0: About money right?
• 39:43
  Speaker 0: It is the gateway to sin.
• 39:44
  Speaker 0: it leads to greed...it leads to gluttony..it leads Luxury.
• 39:49
  Speaker 0: in classical Republican thought is always slightly suspected.
• 39:53
  Speaker 0: You know, it saps our virtue Our discipline and so forth.
• 39:57
  Speaker 0: And one can find these strains floating around In an American republican thought on the eighteenth century to be sure and Jefferson himself sometimes voices them although he have Is also of course an Epicurean in many ways a man who likes his wine doesn't frown at the pleasures of the body and so forth.
• 40:15
  Speaker 0: And many people in the eighteenth century are arguing that, you know what?
• 40:18
  Speaker 0: These things are fine!
• 40:20
  Speaker 0: We should enjoy our body we should enjoy good food and we should work to materially improve our life...and they begin to make that case for economic improvement.
• 40:31
  Speaker 0: You know I always like to cite my colleague Cambridge Gareth Steadman Jones wonderful little book on poverty where he makes the point that until the eighteenth century people thought of poverty as something you just couldn't do anything about.
• 40:45
  Speaker 0: There were always going to be poor people, there was always gonna be poverty and not just the way the world was.
• 40:50
  Speaker 0: well that begins to change.
• 40:51
  Speaker 0: in the eightteenth century Adam Smith and others begin to imagine we can increase productivity ,we could increase wealth We can make um...the poverty disappear.
• 41:02
  Speaker 0: That's a novel idea And many of these Enlightenment thinkers are behind it.
• 41:06
  Speaker 0: but at the same time There's enough of that received wisdom from the ancients, from their religious traditions to suggest to them money is not going to buy happiness on its own.
• 41:18
  Speaker 0: Without virtue without regulation our characters and choices that money will be wasted on us.
• 41:25
  Speaker 0: so one hand a kind apology for wealth benefits it can bring but at same time recognition bring you happiness.
• 41:35
  Speaker 0: And I think their founders again are fundamentally right about
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: that.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin, one of his trips to Europe before the revolution started went to Ireland and he wrote some letters describing how appalled he was by poverty there.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: He said even the poorest New England farmer has their own cows and sheep in their home.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: all this stuff the poverty of the Irish farmer.
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: And I think, you know back then certainly this idea we have.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: it's partly a myth but partly real of New England homesteader who chops down a forest and builds his own farm.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: It has to do with land in also this idea through productive work that can be happy or have cows and sheep.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: Again, we also see that in Aristotle and I can't remember where it was.
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: but Aristotle is like you know In order to be virtuous.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: You do need certain things.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: you need to be healthy?
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: You Also need to have a good deal or some at least some wealth because wealth allows you to do those virtuous Things like helping other people.
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: you can't help other People if your impoverished you only could worry about yourself.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: so virtue is definitely part of Being A Good Person Certainly in the Ancients.
• 42:59
  Speaker 0: Yeah, you're absolutely right and this is Aristotle's point of departure that one has to have means in order To be munificent.
• 43:07
  Speaker 0: Right?
• 43:07
  Speaker 0: To be generous to others to devote yourself to cultivating the good life Is a privilege.
• 43:13
  Speaker 0: The thing about Aristotle though as he sort of frowns on making money It's better to have it.
• 43:18
  Speaker 0: And this is an long-standing Eristicratic notion, right?
• 43:22
  Speaker 0: That aristocrats are defined in fact by the fact that they don't work.
• 43:26
  Speaker 0: In French law, aristocrates are barred from working with their hands because this is somehow lowly Right!
• 43:32
  Speaker 0: In Christian tradition Work Is God's Punishment for Adam's Sin.
• 43:36
  Speaker 0: He has to work the land and it kicked out of abundant flourishing Garden Of Eden Because of sin.
• 43:43
  Speaker 0: That idea too is contested.
• 43:44
  Speaker 0: Work increasingly seen as something noble Something worthy of upright virtuous human beings.
• 43:50
  Speaker 0: And so that would be the slight twist here, but yes The basic idea that one can't pursue happiness in utter poverty is a widely shared notion.
• 44:00
  Speaker 0: you mentioned You know Irish farmers.
• 44:02
  Speaker 0: I mean my ancestors were irish peasants and they come to the United States In the nineteenth century because they were literally starving and They saw America as along land of abundance.
• 44:11
  Speaker 0: an opportunity You know, we spend a lot of time deconstructing that myth and it's important to remind ourselves the land of the yeoman farmers in the eighteenth century was taken from The Indigenous.
• 44:25
  Speaker 0: It depended on slave labor.
• 44:27
  Speaker 0: but all this is true.
• 44:29
  Speaker 0: yet there were also certain truths to the myth about the Land Of Opportunity.
• 44:35
  Speaker 0: The idea that America can make your dreams... written.
• 44:41
  Speaker 0: this book called Equality, The History of an Illusive Idea.
• 44:45
  Speaker 0: And I make the point there that for the transplanted European population America in the eighteenth century is one of the most equal places on earth.
• 44:56
  Speaker 0: Ordinary people have land and have opportunities.
• 44:58
  Speaker 0: now again they're major exclusions.
• 45:01
  Speaker 0: uh...and that equality's in fact based upon those exclusions.
• 45:05
  Speaker 0: but among the white european population america's an equal place and it's an abundant.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, my next question for you just has to do with the general tone of The Declaration Of Independence.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: We've been talking a lot about happiness and then a little bit about suffering.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: but You know...you couldn't describe this document as a happy document after This opening section.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: basically the next two-thirds of it is a long train of listing grievances.
• 45:36
  Speaker 0: Yeah, I love the Yiddish word Kovetch and that's appropriate here.
• 45:40
  Speaker 0: Right?
• 45:40
  Speaker 0: I mean Jefferson is Koveching.
• 45:43
  Speaker 0: Americans are Koveching.
• 45:44
  Speaker 0: it's a long list of complaints an outrageous right.
• 45:47
  Speaker 0: And you're absolutely right.
• 45:48
  Speaker 0: You know if they were talking that way all the time They wouldn't be happy at this like all just tell us That you know focusing on On The negative All the Time Is not good for our happiness.
• 45:58
  Speaker 0: But they certainly aren't kind of blithe-optimists either.
• 46:01
  Speaker 0: They recognize that America is in a less than happy situation, and there are specific actions the king's taking to impede their flourishing... ...and they're going to address them head
• 46:14
  Speaker 0: on.".
• 46:14
  Speaker 0: And so yes!
• 46:15
  Speaker 0: The Declaration is a list of grievances….
• 46:18
  Speaker 0: …a statement why America is seceding from an empire which was something of unprecedented situations.
• 46:27
  Speaker 0: I emphasize that here.
• 46:29
  Speaker 0: to make the point, you know my friend David Armitage at Harvard makes in his wonderful little book on The Declaration of Independence is first and foremost a statement an international law.
• 46:40
  Speaker 0: It's not First and Foremost A Rights Document.
• 46:43
  Speaker 0: we focus as We are Here Today On Discussion Of Rights And That Is There.
• 46:48
  Speaker 0: But Really Until Lincoln Most People Didn't Read The Declaration As statement of rights first and foremost, but rather a declaration to a candid world.
• 46:58
  Speaker 0: Of the reasons why America was seceding from an empire.
• 47:03
  Speaker 0: beginning again
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: Some people today are still angry with the Declaration of Independence in this passage about our inalienable rights And that all men are created equal.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: so I think it might be appropriate now To look at as we've already discussed The fact that while the founders were like, yes you can have your own land here in North America.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: Of course it might be or was taken from native peoples who had their own concepts of happiness and who may not have been included in Jefferson's concept.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: Ofcourse gender perspectives are maybe implicit in the Declaration of Independence.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: In fact I think gender is only mentioned explicitly once when referring to the merciless Indian savages whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: And of course enslaved people again only tangentially mentioned.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: what do we make off these three perspectives about happiness or unhappiness?
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: Or exclusion of happiness ideas in this document?
• 48:11
  Speaker 0: Yeah An awful lot to unpack there.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: Sorry
• 48:15
  Speaker 0: Um...and I almost don't know where to begin.
• 48:18
  Speaker 0: Well, let's start with the phrase all men are created equal.
• 48:23
  Speaker 0: Famously Martin Luther King will describe this as a promissory note and he is echoing Frederick Douglass in the nineteenth century who thinks of The Declaration too as kind of list of ideals that Jefferson and the founders don't fully live up to at times hypocritical yet our noble in them themselves.
• 48:41
  Speaker 0: so since the eighteenth century, we've tried to live up that enunciation all men are created equal.
• 48:49
  Speaker 0: I make a point in my book on equality where actually the idea of all men who were created equals is an hackneyed phrase and another one of these received notions.
• 48:59
  Speaker 0: you can trace this phrase back to Stoic thought and Roman law where it's often uttered in the same discussion of slavery.
• 49:09
  Speaker 0: In other words, The idea that all men are created equal is not an inherent tension with the existence of slavery and the equality that's posited I think at the declaration... ...is really built upon a notion of difference and inferiority and exclusion.
• 49:27
  Speaker 0: That said And I mentioned earlier, the eighteenth century witnesses a revolution in human expectations and people are presented for the first time with this novel idea that they're supposed to be happy.
• 49:39
  Speaker 0: Not because of their superior virtue or good fortune But because they are human beings, that human beings have a right to pursue happiness or maybe even have a Right To Happiness itself.
• 49:53
  Speaker 0: Now That idea doesn't just you know reach the world.
• 49:57
  Speaker 0: in one statement You Know if your a Jew and The Shtetl If Your A Woman In A Bad Marriage If You're an Indigenous Person Moved Off Your Land If You'Re An Enslaved Person You Don'T Just Wake Up In The Eighteenth Century And Say Oh My Gosh Wow I Have A Right To Happiness And Now Im Gonna Go Pursue It!
• 50:16
  Speaker 0: The idea is powerful, and so in the nineteenth century you start to see social movements women's movement workers' movements claiming and desiring their happiness.
• 50:27
  Speaker 0: I quote at length in the book this wonderful passage from Thomas Carlisle, who was a kind of crabby person complaining in the middle-of-the-nineteenth century that every pitifulist whipster as he put it has had his head filled with the notion that He is—and by divine right ought to be
• 50:44
  Speaker 0: happy.".
• 50:45
  Speaker 0: And he traces that about the end of the seventeenth century.
• 50:48
  Speaker 0: so makes my point perfectly for me —that this idea In America, you find in the nineteenth century.
• 50:57
  Speaker 0: and Howard Bumford Jones a Harvard scholar earlier in the twentieth century wrote a wonderful book on this called The Pursuit of Happiness.
• 51:04
  Speaker 0: And he shows that you get people bringing suit in state courts-of law against State governments for impeding their pursuit of happiness or indeed there ability to obtain it.
• 51:15
  Speaker 0: now This is something we haven't talked about but The Declaration of Independence famously only talks about the pursuit of happiness, but many state constitutions talk about pursuing and obtaining happiness as an alienable right.
• 51:29
  Speaker 0: So George Mason in the Virginia Declaration of Right in the preamble which is written just a couple months before the Declaration of independence itself by Jefferson's good friend George Mason uses precisely that language and obtaining happiness as safety.
• 51:46
  Speaker 0: The same language is picked up in the state of New Hampshire where I am now at Dartmouth College, right across the river in Vermont or other places like New Jersey and Massachusetts so forth.
• 51:57
  Speaker 0: So you find cases of African Americans bringing suits against State governments for denying their rights to happiness.
• 52:06
  Speaker 0: That's to make that point.
• 52:08
  Speaker 0: you know, even if Martin Luther King exaggerates by calling the Declaration of Promissory Note for The Future there's a certain truth to the idea that immediately already in seventeen seventy-six African Americans are picking up on that language and asserting it right?
• 52:24
  Speaker 0: In defense their rights.
• 52:26
  Speaker 0: Are we not human beings too?
• 52:28
  Speaker 0: Women begin to do the same thing again immediately but with increasing power in the nineteenth century uh...and other excluded groups.
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: I do want to get to Native Americans and women as well, but just the one point that i thought was interesting about The enslaved person experience.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: And I just learned this through talking some scholars of African American history is This idea divine provenance was very much connected to their experience of life.
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: Because when we think about, for example the Dunmore Proclamation so that British Governor Dunmore it's like if you're an enslaved person and you join our lines So If You would flee your slaveholder or your rebel slave holder and Join Us.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: I will free you.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: Well joint That decision which frees you maybe allows you to pursue happiness isn't necessarily a great one.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you could stay enslaved or you can join the British army and they'd also treat me poorly.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: And you might get killed.
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: so within all of the bad choices have of enslaved people their concept really was well divine providence will make that decision at the end whether I live a happy life because i only had bad decisions right
• 53:44
  Speaker 0: Absolutely.
• 53:44
  Speaker 0: And then that kind of received Christian notion, you know the ultimate happiness is in next life and this life less important is reiterated and reaffirmed.
• 53:54
  Speaker 0: I've just written an article it's not out yet but written the article on The Trope of the Happy Slave.
• 54:00
  Speaker 0: And sadly, this is a trope that has re-emerged in the United States and the twenty first century.
• 54:06
  Speaker 0: to talk about the history of enslavement as if it weren't so bad somehow... ...and that you know the enslaved were really actually fairly happy which was kind of widespread notion among slaveholders in the nineteenth century.
• 54:19
  Speaker 0: there's whole literature can justify this.
• 54:21
  Speaker 0: We thought we had reached the point where we didn't have to make the case as Tanahisi Coates puts it anymore, but apparently do.
• 54:29
  Speaker 0: That got me interested though... The re-emergence of this idea of a happy slave got my interest in the origins and so I've kind written a genealogy on that concept.
• 54:37
  Speaker 0: It actually emerges from Europe in the seventeenth century to describe European captives who were taken by Muslim pirates in the Mediterranean.
• 54:47
  Speaker 0: It draws on classical roots as well.
• 54:49
  Speaker 0: You mentioned the Stoics before, one of the most famous Stoic epictetus was himself enslaved and Epictetus in this extreme stoic way will say that really our day-to-day circumstances don't matter a whole lot it's how we react to them.
• 55:16
  Speaker 0: this life is less important than the next that will be rewarded for our sufferings here below in The Life After, gets wielded.
• 55:24
  Speaker 0: But of course all this then is applied to Africans and the enslaved To effectively sort-of.
• 55:31
  Speaker 0: you know these are people without rights who were excluded from the pursuit of happiness And the freedom That it's often thought of as necessary to pursue happiness.
• 55:41
  Speaker 0: and Then granted this other kind of happiness It's interesting people feel the need to even justify their emotional states in terms of happiness or unhappiness, but they do so in this quite insidious and powerful way.
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: Fascinating!
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: Okay why don't we talk then a little bit either about The Native American Concepts Of Happiness?
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: And this is something I know much about... But obviously native Americans then-and now have a different tradition.
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: So how do we even begin to sort that out?
• 56:18
  Speaker 0: so I'm not at all an expert on Native American history, but when i was thinking about this question put it to my colleague Colin Calloway, who is a great expert in authority on Native American history and the eighteenth century.
• 56:32
  Speaker 0: And his quick answer was I don't really think its'a thing!
• 56:35
  Speaker 0: In other words there's not lot of conversation about happiness per se.
• 56:40
  Speaker 0: What i would add to that, and Collin Wood as well Is that you know mentioned earlier That all religious traditions and wisdom tradition have lots to say about how human beings thrive and flourish, if not resist suffering outright then learn notions without question.
• 57:11
  Speaker 0: A great emphasis on community, which psychologists will tell you is one of the number-one predictors about how happy human beings are and how many friends they have or how embedded they feel in social networks—a sense meaning purpose that has cultivated a devotion to family…and a sense virtue acting into others' service not simply for yourself.
• 57:34
  Speaker 0: All these things reaffirm We know in psychological terms and they're reaffirmed And reinforced by Native American spiritual practices as well.
• 57:48
  Speaker 0: So I think there is a absolutely kind of received thought or Received traditions that deal with some of these questions.
• 57:55
  Speaker 0: What would be really interesting to know?
• 57:57
  Speaker 0: Is what happens when those receive traditions then come head-to-head With the articulations of the pursuit of happiness that you find on the declaration, and elsewhere.
• 58:06
  Speaker 0: You know we focus with justice on the trail of tears and that kind of unhappy story, The Fortunes Of Native Americans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
• 58:17
  Speaker 0: But I'd be curious to investigate further.
• 58:21
  Speaker 0: thinking around this And about ideas of human flourishing.
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah it's a fascinating subject.
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: Then maybe we'll just now take look at women.
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: At the time is Jefferson thinking Women are somehow,
• 58:36
  Speaker 0: and
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: I was thinking of white European women with property or who have husbands with property.
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: Can they experience happiness in the same way a man can?
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: Can they be virtuous?
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: in the
• 58:51
  Speaker 0: Right, so you know all the way back to The Ancients there is a kind of patriarchal bias built into the pursuit of virtue.
• 58:59
  Speaker 0: Aristotle was the clearest about this.
• 59:01
  Speaker 0: He says that women have different kinds of virtues and they're different virtues for women.
• 59:06
  Speaker 0: This is reinforced by Romans and Roman thought.
• 59:09
  Speaker 0: Aristotle also famously, you know posits that women don't have the same capacity for reason and therefore can aspire to The same kind of flourishing.
• 59:17
  Speaker 0: That men Can?
• 59:18
  Speaker 0: And I think that idea whether it's articulated outright or not is passed on in a sort Of baked into many of the pronouncements In the eighteenth century where you do in fact see a reemergence of A clearly articulated notion of two spheres Public life and the pursuit of virtue in public, for founders' virtue is a public thing.
• 59:40
  Speaker 0: It's about contributing to public welfare and not about your own domestic life, that public life is for men.
• 59:47
  Speaker 0: And that private or domestic life is-is for
• 59:50
  Speaker 0: women.".
• 59:51
  Speaker 0: These two spheres are different!
• 59:53
  Speaker 0: So woman's happiness in this conception would involve family and children and homemaking and the like... ...and a man's happiness would be something different.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 0: I think it was widely received idea being reaffirmed and strengthened in the eighteenth century on into the nineteenth.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 0: That said, there are clearly people who were contesting this in the eighteenth century and their voices get stronger on the nineteenth.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 0: And they begin to argue a very pointed way that we need have these same opportunities for happiness of our own making right?
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 0: We needed an agency to control things like property which is necessary for our pursuit of happiness.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 0: but in the eighteen-century explicit appeal is, I think less present than one finds later.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 0: Although i always like to draw attention to this wonderful little discourse on happiness written by Madame de Châtelet who was a thinker or philosopher-scientist in the eighteenth century.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 0: she had an long standing affair with Voltaire.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 0: She's the principal French translator of Isaac Newton, Principia Mathematica And she writes a discourse on happiness, and the opening paragraph has this wonderful line where she says that in order to be happy one must have illusions.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 0: She's writing this later-in.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 0: life maybe had fewer of those illusions than she did as a younger woman but Châtelet sees kind of self imposed illusion or refusal to see everything in life necessary for the pursuit of happiness.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: Fascinating!
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, we're coming to an end.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: And I just thought maybe we'd look at the last sentence of The Declaration Of Independence because having talked to you and sort-of done a close reading focused on happiness now in this entire document...I really think that the Last Sentence is fascinating as it ties together a bunch of things we've been talking about.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: So for the support with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives are fortunes and our sacred honor which I just read as we mutually pledged to each others happiness.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: And that when you think about not only the Divine Providence in first half of this sentence but life fortune and Sacred Honor smiles kindly on us, or allows us to be happier God.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: But then when we pledge each other our lives you know We hear this idea that-that we see in Bentham.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: but also Jefferson said the number one goal of government is To protect life.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: You Know That's This Idea Of Security and Safety We See In The Declaration Of Independence?
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: They Also Pledge To Each Other Because They're Wealthy Landowners Their Fortunes Which Is Fascinating.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: ancient thought says you need to be wealthy, right?
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: You need have some wealth to be virtuous and not pledging to each other their fortunes.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: And of course all this is tied up in the concept sacred honor or virtue which might have religious connotations as well.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: so I've just totally re-read that last sentence.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: we're actually pledging together by citing everything.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah,
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 0: that's wonderful.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 0: And you've reframed those lines for me as well.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 0: I think it does reaffirm this point too That when the founders conceived of happiness again they thought about in terms community and This is important because the religious origins of the phrase, The Pursuit Of Happiness.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 0: The classical philosophical underpinnings of that understanding in the eighteenth century and how the founders could not have conceived or the pursuit of happiness without But at the same time, there is this new idea that emerges in the eighteenth century.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 0: That happiness and pleasure go hand-in-hand.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 0: I mentioned Jeremy Bentham before and Bentham says out right that happiness simply pleasure Right?
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 0: And so what makes pleasure for one person?
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 0: It's not going to be the same as What makes pleasure or happiness.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 0: another lock has already on This.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 0: in the seventeenth century he had his wonderful line where it says you know Happiness For some men will be lobster for others for cheese if we're just calculating purely on pleasure.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 0: And I think what happens in the eighteenth century, and you find this in a declaration is that tension between individual pursuit of pleasure through wealth, commodities, luxury or purchasing has put intention with an older idea of happiness as the pursuit of virtue.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 0: The founders don't fully see it because they are so steeped their religious and classical inheritance, but as we move forward in time into the nineteenth century that religious and a classical tradition phrase somewhat.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 0: And there's more and more emphasis on individual pursuit of happiness.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 0: here I like to call attention.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 0: Samuel Johnson in his dictionary of the English language describes The verb to pursue as To follow in hostility.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 0: and if you think Of, You know pursuing In fact a criminal prosecutor in Nineteenth-Century Scotland is called A pursuer right?
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 0: And If you Think of Pursuing happiness in these terms It takes on a different inflection.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 0: I think it's captured a little bit in the German phrase Gluch, right?
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 0: Zenzuk has a sense of anxiety.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 0: A little bit French talk about la chasse aux baneurs the hunt for happiness and I love that because when you hunt something what happens is when you find it...you kill it!
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 0: And if we think about the pursuit of happiness as this individual pursuit of modicums or pleasure We run up against what the psychologists call, The Hedonic Treadmill.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 0: You get a bit of pleasure and it wears off really soon And then you feel anxiety and need more.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 0: Our economy today thrives on that very notion.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 0: I think founders in some ways unwittingly set that monster.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 0: And then
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: funnily enough though, we were talking about prudence earlier and Epicurus was mentioned.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: The ancients actually had the solution to this Hedonic trap saying everything in moderation.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: you don't want to get too used to your luxuries because that it's painful for You when you lose them?
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: Professor McMahon We're coming to an end I always ask my guests.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: Here we are celebrating the two hundred fifty year anniversary of The Declaration Of Independence.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: What do you think about?
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: what's your big takeaway as You're thinking About this this anniversary?
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 0: Yeah, I have to say it's wonderful To read the declaration.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 0: It also makes me a little sad.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 0: Frankly its Wonderful because Its wonderful.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 0: remember America that fought against tyranny and injustice That articulated ideals that maybe it didn't always live up to, that may be at times were hypocritical but nonetheless we're ideals.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 0: Nonetheless equality liberty justice.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 0: It's wonderful to remember America that still considered the candid opinion of The world and thought that was important And sought to justify its actions in the World before the world.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 0: That america is harder-to see these days.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 0: so I read this with powerful emotion but also a certain sadness.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: Professor
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 0: Darren McMahon, thank you very much!
• 1:08:33
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• 1:08:45
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• 1:08:55
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• 1:09:15
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