The Pursuit of Happiness with Jeffrey Rosen

Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, discusses his book, "The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America."

This program was part of‪@VirginiaHumanities‬ 2025 Virginia Festival of the Book (www.vabook.org), which takes place every March in Charlottesville, Virginia. I

ABOUT THE BOOK

In "The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America," Rosen offers a fascinating examination of what “the pursuit of happiness” meant to our nation’s founders and how that famous phrase defined their lives and became the foundation of our democracy.

The Declaration of Independence identified “the pursuit of happiness” as one of our unalienable rights, along with life and liberty. Rosen profiles six of the most influential founders—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 us 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. The Pursuit of Happiness is more than an elucidation of the Declaration’s famous phrase; it is a revelatory journey into the minds of the founders, and a deep, rich, and fresh understanding of the foundation of our democracy.'

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center where he is host of the weekly podcast, "We the People." He is also a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.

Rosen’s 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.