On Presidents Day 2024,National Constitution Center President and CEO Jeffrey Rosen launches his new book at the NCC in conversation with Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic. 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.
This program is in partnership with The Atlantic.
Video
Podcast
Participants
Jeffrey Goldberg is the editor in chief of The Atlantic and the moderator of Washington Week With The Atlantic. He joined The Atlantic in 2007 as a national correspondent and in 2016 was named the magazine’s 15th editor in chief. Before joining The Atlantic, Goldberg served as the Middle East correspondent, and then the Washington correspondent, for The New Yorker. Earlier in his career, he was a writer for The New York Times Magazine. He began his career as a police reporter for The Washington Post. He is the author of Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror.
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
Additional Resources
- Jeffrey Rosen, The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America
- Cicero, The Tusculan Disputations (ca. 45 BC)
- The Quill Project
- The King James Bible (1611)
- Pythagoras
- The Webster-Hayne Debates
- Colorado v. Anderson
- "Should President Trump Be Allowed on the 2024 Ballot?," National Constitution Center's We the People Podcast (Jan. 11, 2024)
- "Rhetoric of Freedom," The Atlantic (Sept. 1999)
Excerpt from Interview: Jeffrey Rosen discusses John Quincy Adams' journey of self-awareness, from his early academic pursuits inspired by Cicero to his presidency, personal tragedies, and eventual dedication to abolitionism, finding solace and inspiration in Stoic philosophy.
Jeffrey Rosen: Well, I mean, he thought he was drinking too much. But, he never stops. He's so self-aware. In these very vivid raw passages, is describing and recording his feelings. It's a spiritual diary. He has a first phase where he's the boyleston professor of Oratory at Harvard reading Cicero, and reading the literature and quoting from it, and taking as his motto, Cicero's motto from the Tusculanae Disputationes, the same book that inspired Jefferson, and the same book that Locke and Bella Mackie quote "as their inspiration." actually his motto from Cicero is, "I plant trees for another century." In other words, the fruits of my laborers won't come to fruition now, it's for the future. It's always delayed gratification. He becomes president. Of course, his term ends and begins with a defeat by Andrew Jackson and the popular vote.
So he views Jackson as a demagogue, but he insists on this program of national Republican internal improvements and envisions of national university and lighthouses in the sky that become the Smithsonian Institution. But he's repudiated by his party, and he's devastated and feels that the world has ended. Then he's been writing these letters to his son about how to be perfect, letters to a Christian, constantly exhorting George Washington Adams to live up to their ideals and the pressures too much. George Washington becomes an alcoholic and kills himself. Adams is devastated. He's lost the presidency, he's lost his son. He prays for consolation from Cicero. Reading the stoics allows him to determine to be more useful and serve his country in some ways, to make some use of the gifts he's been given. Then he becomes the greatest abolitionist of his time.
He denounces the gag rule in Congress, and he proposes an anti-slavery amendment to the Constitution. This is before the wig party is, is fully abolitionist, inspires Frederick Douglas, who acclaim him as the greatest of the American presidents, and dies on the floor of Congress after denouncing the war with Mexico, and murmurs, "I am composed," which is a passage from Cicero suggesting finally he's achieved, not contentment, some think he said, "I'm content." But it was almost certainly, I'm composed, 'cause it's the self-mastery and self composure that defines the virtuous pursuit of happiness. Plus, I mean, there's so much more.
I'll stop. But he argued the Amistad case for four days, the triumph for the enslaved Africans. But it's so interesting a friend of mine just read the book and also resonated to John Quincy Adams and said, maybe I'll beat up on myself a little bit less or my own efforts to try to make some use of myself. I'll be a little more forgiving. But it's reassuring to see how hard he drove himself. Of course, he went far too much, but it's so beautiful what he achieved. The sonnets are really good too. He wrote this anti-slavery sonnet, and he didn't even transcribe it, 'cause he said it's in shorthand. If it were better, I would maybe transcribe it. We, too, shall find how fierce is the prize. Freedom will remain. It's just gorgeous. So he's my favorite founder.
Excerpt from Interview: Jeffrey Goldberg and Jeffrey Rosen discuss the influence of Christian thought versus Stoic philosophy on America's founding.
Jeffrey Goldberg: I was going to ask you though, because to the extent that you've gotten any pushback at all, which I'm sure you deal with equanimity and stoicism. The pushback you've gotten is that you are scanning the Christian influence over their philosophy and the creation of the founding documents in favor of the stoics. That though they were, some of the founders were theists not traditional Christians, they were all more profoundly influenced by Christian thought than by stoical thought.
Jeffrey Rosen: Yes. That pushback is so interesting bcause it's a remarkable effort to exaggerate and misrepresent America as a Christian nation. It's not supported by the sources, because the point is that all of the sources, including the Christian ones, all cite Cicero, the point isn't that the founders were stoics. It's that the reasonable Christians, and that's what they call themselves who were rejecting dogma.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Yeah, wait. Just pause on that, because I don't want people to think that you mean there's unreasonable in the current language of the day.
Jeffrey Rosen: No, reasonable Christianity is a term of art in the enlightenment for people like the liberal Christian preachers who are the most popular preachers in America like Woolston and Toolson and Samuel Johnson, for goodness sake. It's a really tendentious effort to misrepresent the core of America's founding as Christian, because Samuel Johnson, who's the major textbook writer who Ben Franklin assigns at the University of Pennsylvania for their core curriculum uses the phrase the pursuit of happiness many, many times. He gets it from Woolston, who Franklin Prince and all of them think that Christianity is consistent with reason. That reason is virtue, which is living in accordance with our best interests.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Reasonable Christianity, then being the synthesis of enlightenment, understanding of reason, and Christian doctrine?
Jeffrey Rosen: Completely in no way denying the Christian faith, arguing that it's completely consistent with.
But rejecting dogma and ritual, and what Jefferson called monkish superstition. These people are very opposed to the authority of the established national church. But what's so striking is that the people today who are insisting that America was Christian at its founding, cite an alien tradition that comes from Augustine. They're neo Augustinians, and they invoke a natural law tradition that remarkably doesn't appear in this book 'cause the founders never cited it. They cited the liberal Christian thinkers as well as all the others, ones the stoics, the civic Republicans, the Blackstone legal theorists and the wigs. Again, all of these are citing, and it's not just stoics, Cicero is a synthesizer of Greek and Roman philosophy. So he's sometimes called a stoic, sometimes a skeptic more technically precise.
But he's getting it all from Pythagoras, who turns out to be the core innovator of all Greek and Roman moral philosophy. Instigates the reason, passion distinction that Plato then epitomizes in the metaphor of the charioteer. Then they all, like legal schools today of Originalism versus Textualism, the stoics and the skeptics and so forth dispute on matters that are not ultimately important to the consonants, the agreement about the importance of using our reason to moderate and master our unreasonable emotions.
Full Transcript
View Transcript (PDF)
This transcript may not be in its final form, accuracy may vary, and it may be updated or revised in the future.
Stay Connected and Learn More
Continue the conversation on Facebook and Twitter using @ConstitutionCtr.
Sign up to receive Constitution Weekly, our email roundup of constitutional news and debate, at bit.ly/constitutionweekly.
Please subscribe to Live at the National Constitution Center and our companion podcast We the People on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.
