The Pursuit of Happiness How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America

It's called the Pursuit of Happiness. As we're celebrating 250 years, that phrase in the Declaration, we all understand what life is. Liberty, that's freedom. But the pursuit of happiness, we misunderstand. It dates back to the Stoics, back to Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius.

She is a historian and she wrote a book about Madison and the framers and she just he would just ask her questions and she just she's fascinating woman fucking brilliant historian and she talked ad nauseum about all the people we did in the first one.

I think there's a great book about this called The Pursuit of Happiness.

In his new book, The Pursuit of Happiness, how classical writers on virtue inspired the lives of the founders and defined America, explores the lives of some of our most influential founders including Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and Alexander Hamilton.

And what those words, The Pursuit of Happiness, actually meant to them.

I feel intimidated by your book, to be honest.

I didn't know that these documents were the foundation of the founding either.

And it's my job to know.

It's absolutely central and the basic idea of the takeaway is that happiness is self-mastery, self-improvement, character improvement, being your best self so that you can use your talents to the best of your ability and serve others.

I just noticed that both Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson had offered for their definition of happiness a quotation from a book by Cicero I'd never heard of called The Tusculin Disputations that said, without virtue, happiness cannot be.

In the book, The Pursuit of Happiness, the reader has given a deeper look at the profiles of Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, and more. It explores what the pursuit of happiness actually meant to each of these gentlemen and what impact this crucial phrase had on our system of democracy.

And then I found this amazing reading list that Thomas Jefferson would send out to kids who were going to law school and wanted to know how to be an educated person.

It had on it Cicero and these other works of classical Greek and Roman moral philosophy that I'd never read before.

So when I saw Jeffrey Rosen's new book, I was like, finally, it's called The Pursuit of Happiness, How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America.

And when he's talking about classical writers on virtue, he's largely talking about the Stoics.

In fact, he's almost exclusively talking about the Stoics and it's a fascinating book.

He talks about Franklin and Washington and Adams and Jefferson and Madison, Hamilton, and what the pursuit of happiness meant to them and specifically what the Stoics taught them about this.

It's a super important book.