This Constitution

Season 1 Extra, Episode A | The Pursuit of Happiness: Virtue in the Founding Era

• Savannah Eccles Johnston & Matthew Brogdon • Season 1 • Episode 12

Share episode

What does the "pursuit of happiness" really mean? It’s a question we often skim over, but the Founding Fathers had a very specific idea in mind—one deeply rooted in classical virtue and self-mastery. In this episode, Matthew Brogdon sits down with Jeff Rosen, President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, to unpack this phrase from the Declaration of Independence and its implications for personal and political life.

Rosen shares insights from his latest book, The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America, exploring how figures like Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams connected happiness with moral improvement and self-discipline. From Aristotle to Cicero and beyond, we discuss how ancient philosophy shaped the Founders' vision of a flourishing life and a well-ordered republic.

What lessons can we learn from the Founders’ emphasis on virtue? And how do we reconcile their moral aspirations with their glaring contradictions, such as the perpetuation of slavery? Join us for a thought-provoking discussion on how the pursuit of virtue can inform our understanding of happiness, freedom, and modern democracy.

In This Episode:

  • (00:03) Introduction to the podcast
  • (00:15) Purpose of the episode
  • (00:43) Overview of Jeff Rosen’s book, The Pursuit of Happiness
  • (01:02) How the Founders viewed happiness and virtue
  • (02:25) Key classical virtues: temperance, prudence, courage, and justice
  • (03:45) The role of self-mastery in personal and political governance
  • (05:20) Jeff Rosen’s COVID-era experiment: Reading Jefferson’s inspirations
  • (08:10) The habits of lifelong learning and deep reading
  • (10:35) Virtue is both a personal and civic duty
  • (12:00) Examples of virtue and hypocrisy among the Founders
  • (15:40) The moral contradictions of Jefferson and other Virginian enslavers
  • (18:30) How figures like Frederick Douglass embodied virtuous self-improvement
  • (20:25) Reconciling freedom and virtue in a democratic society
  • (22:15) Jefferson, religious liberty, and freedom of conscience
  • (24:50) Lessons from ancient Stoic philosophy for modern life
  • (27:05) Virtue as an answer to modern political challenges


Notable Quotes

  • [00:01:02] "For the Founders, the pursuit of happiness meant not feeling good, but being good." — Jeff Rosen


  • [00:05:20] "I spent a year reading Jefferson’s favorite books. It changed my life by making me a deeper thinker and better citizen." — Jeff Rosen


  • [00:15:40] "Jefferson recognized the evil of slavery but lived like a Caligulan emperor, surrounded by enslaved labor." — Matthew Brogdon


  • [00:27:05] "The Founders believed personal self-government was essential to political self-government." — Jeff Rosen


Resources and Links

Matthew Brogdon

   Jeff Rosen

Matthew Brogdon:

[00:00:37–00:01:14]

Welcome to This Constitution. I'm Matthew Brogdon, and I'm joined today by a very special guest to talk about the pursuit of happiness, one of the most memorable phrases from the Declaration, but perhaps one we don't fully understand. I have with me today Jeff Rosen, who is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. It's chartered by Congress, supported by generous gifts from the public to help the public, much like the Center for Constitutional Studies, engage with and understand our constitutional tradition. Welcome, Jeff. I'm glad to have you on.


Jeff Rosen:

[00:01:14–00:01:19]

Thank you. It's wonderful to be here and wonderful to see all the great work you're doing here at the Center for Constitutional Studies.


Matthew Brogdon:

[00:01:19–00:02:03]

Well, thank you. We're talking today about the book that Jeff has recently published, The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America. Now, you connect virtue and the pursuit of happiness. When we argue over the Declaration of Independence, every undergraduate class I've ever taught, you ask people what the Declaration of Independence means, and immediately the debate jumps to liberty versus equality. Is the Declaration about liberty or is it about equality? Very modern Enlightenment ideas in many respects, not entirely. But you want to focus on virtue. How does the notion of virtue help us understand the Declaration of Independence? Where does it fit?


Jeff Rosen:

[00:02:03–00:02:09]

Well, it's so interesting. As you say, people usually say the Declaration is about liberty or equality. Sometimes they add the third big value of the Declaration—democracy or government by consent. But then there's that fourth central phrase, "the pursuit of happiness." And what I learned by looking at the classical writers on virtue who inspired the phrase is that for the founders, the pursuit of happiness meant not feeling good, but being good; not the pursuit of pleasure, but the pursuit of virtue.


Jeff Rosen:

[00:02:29–00:02:58]

By virtue, they meant self-mastery, self-improvement, and character improvement. Essentially, they thought that personal self-government was necessary for political self-government. As you say, when you view the pursuit of reason, virtue, self-improvement, and happiness as the core of the Declaration, then you see its various values not as different elements in tension, but as one harmonious whole.


Matthew Brogdon:

[00:02:58–00:03:32]

When the founders thought about virtue, when that generation—folks like the ones you talk about in the book, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John and Abigail Adams, and even later figures like Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass—what would they have understood the term virtue to mean? If you asked 10 Americans today, "What’s virtue?" you might get a lot of different answers. Is there a common definition for virtue, a common understanding of what virtue is for that generation?


Jeff Rosen:

[00:03:32–00:04:27]

There was a common sensibility, and it was rooted in the classics, particularly in the classical virtues of temperance, prudence, courage, and justice. The founders would add different variations on that, like industry, patience, order, or resolution. But all of these are forms of self-mastery. It comes from Aristotle, and it has to do with moderation—the golden mean—and emotional moderation: moderating our unproductive passions or emotions like anger, jealousy, and fear so we can achieve productive emotions like the classical virtues. It takes a moment to explain because it’s not intuitive. When Aristotle said that happiness is an activity of the soul in conformity with excellence or virtue, people back then understood what that meant. We don’t, because the phrase now means something else. But, you know, if you had to sum it up in a single phrase, it would really be being a lifelong learner.


Matthew Brogdon:

[00:04:34–00:04:57]

That’s quite an aspiration. Now, the lifelong learning part—taking up this subject wasn't just an academic study for you. You actually, in the midst of COVID, decided to emulate an experiment that some of the founding generation had undertaken. Tell us a little bit about that, and maybe that will point us toward what this lifelong learner business is all about.


Jeff Rosen:

[00:04:57–00:05:54]

Well, that really was the takeaway and the endpoint. During COVID, as you said, I set out to read the books on Thomas Jefferson's reading list that he said inspired his understanding of the pursuit of happiness. I was moved to do it because I had noticed that both Jefferson and Franklin had picked this book by Cicero that I hadn’t heard of, The Tusculan Disputations, for their definition of happiness as virtue rather than pleasure. I thought I should read the book because it was so important to both of them. What else to read? And I found this incredible reading list that listeners have to check out if they really want to have a great reading project. It includes classical moral philosophers like Cicero, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius—who's a really great philosopher to start with if you want to get into this stuff—and some Enlightenment thinkers as well. I basically set out to read it because I thought it was a gap in my education, and I spent a year doing it. Jefferson says you have to get up early, watch the sunrise, and read for a couple of hours. That’s what I did. It completely changed my life, my understanding of how to be a good person and a good citizen. But the biggest takeaway is that it got me back into the habit of being a deep reader, which I had kind of gotten out of the habit of because I’m so addicted to these darn screens. Setting aside a few hours in the morning to read is a habit I’ve tried to keep up. And that’s what being a lifelong learner is for the founders. They read until they were old, and for them, that was part of being your best self and achieving self-mastery.


Matthew Brogdon:

[00:06:19–00:07:10]

That sounds like quite an undertaking. I mean, the investment of time and discipline involved in devoting yourself to that kind of self-criticism, self-examination, and then learning from other sources. You know, it occurs to me that the founding generations engaged in that because many of these people lived lives as part of society where they occupied fairly elevated social status and were people of means. Is it possible for a democratic society to continue that? I mean, in a way, the founders are sort of moving from a very hierarchical society, where they occupied chief positions of influence. Is it possible in democratic life for the average citizen to actually engage in that kind of reflection? I guess the Greeks would have said this was leisure, right? You've got leisure to improve yourself, to engage in intellectual formation, self-examination, and learning. How do we implement that in a democratic age?


Jeff Rosen:

[00:07:22–00:09:14]

Well, you're so right about the Greek definition of leisure, and Louis Brandeis, who I think is a hero of both of ours, was so excited to learn that the Greek definition for leisure was unemployment, because you're supposed to use your unemployment time to elevate yourself—not to work less, but to work more on things like deep reading. Is it possible in a democratic society? Absolutely. My answer is two words: Frederick Douglass. Think about the moment when Douglass felt most enslaved—not only when his body was enchained but when his cruel master told him he wasn’t allowed to read or learn how to read. What does Douglass do? He goes onto the streets of Baltimore, buys reading lessons with bread, pays boys to teach him how to read, and buys with bread a book called The Columbian Orator. This was basically the most popular textbook of its time. Millions of copies were sold. It has short excerpts from moral philosophy and a dialogue on slavery that inspires Douglass to become a freedom fighter. Excerpts from Ben Franklin—this is what Douglass and Abraham Lincoln learned as the core of their education in the 19th and up to the 20th century. Based on this one book, Douglass becomes the greatest freedom fighter of his age. Every time I wake up in the morning and try to keep to my rule and swipe left to my Kindle rather than right to browse, I think, "My God, think of the sacrifices made by a towering figure like Frederick Douglass just to learn to read and have access to books. Surely I can find the discipline to read these things, which are all free and online." I very much think this is the core of the American idea: that all citizens, no matter their privilege or background, have an equal capacity to develop their talents—and today, we have an inspiring opportunity to do it, now that all the books are online.


Matthew Brogdon

[00:09:16-00:09:41]

I kind of tremble to think about what it would be like if I added up all of the hours I've spent watching TV shows and listening to podcasts—yours and mine excluded, of course. And, uh, you know, when you add up all that time, what could it have achieved if invested in self-examination and deep reading, as you call it in the book?


Jeff Rosen

[00:09:41-00:10:54]

It's striking how all of the founders—and basically anyone who ever encountered this philosophy—were constantly making schedules, trying to figure out how they used their time. You're supposed to get up and read at a certain time. Jefferson even tells you what to read and when: two hours of moral philosophy, then breakfast, then history, then lunch, then politics, then science, then dinner, and finally, Shakespeare. They're always beating themselves up for wasting time. My goodness, we have so much leisure now with so many conveniences. It’s really up to us to use time wisely. Time is a gift, repaid by industry, and wasted is foolish. As Seneca says in his Letters to Lucilius, “What fools these mortals be.” Washington reads this and becomes obsessed with timepieces and having meals at set times, as well as with exercise. It really takes so little to take advantage of not wasting time—just being mindful about it. And this doesn’t mean you have to read moral philosophy all the time. They were all big on exercise and hiking. Jefferson even prescribes that when you hike, you're not supposed to bring a book—though you can bring a gun, he said. But you just don’t want to get too distracted.


So that’s why Stoic philosophy is so helpful in this age when, for all the demands on our time, we also have freedom to structure our schedules. Hybrid work and other modern conveniences offer things people in history never had. It just requires being mindful about time.


Matthew Brogdon

[00:11:11-00:11:58]

I’m intrigued by this moral seriousness involved in the experiments these founders undertake. You point out particularly that Franklin, very famously, as he recounts in his autobiography, undertakes this method of self-improvement. He lists out virtues and keeps daily records of where he fails. Eventually, he gives it up because there are too many black marks against his name. I actually wonder, is that where the phrase "black mark against your name" comes from? I don't even know. But Franklin undertakes this; Jefferson does too. Who would you say had success in this? I mean, Franklin gives it up, saying it’s a worthwhile endeavor, but he really fails in many areas. Where do you see success among these people in implementing this kind of moral seriousness?


Jeff Rosen

[00:12:06-00:14:01]

Well, they were human, and to be human is to fall short of perfection. As Franklin said, Jesus and Socrates may approach moral perfection and embody it, but not humans like the rest of us. But the one who most came closest in my book was John Quincy Adams. It’s just amazing. His parents, John and Abigail Adams, really drilled this into him. He was constantly beating himself up for squandering time. He says, "If I only had more self-discipline, I might have ended war and slavery." He set a very high bar for himself but did come close to achieving some of his goals. He became the greatest abolitionist of his time. He hadn’t opposed slavery before, but two personal challenges caused him to change: he loses the reelection for president, and his oldest son, George Washington Adams, commits suicide. This happens partly because he can’t deal with the pressure of John Quincy always telling him to be perfect and writing letters of a Christian father to his son. It’s too much pressure. George becomes an alcoholic and eventually kills himself. To assuage his guilt and find a new sense of purpose, Adams rededicates himself. He rereads Cicero in the original, and after reading the Bible, he becomes convinced that Jesus prophesied the freeing of the captives and that the Bible prophesies the end of slavery. He becomes the greatest abolitionist of his time, according to Frederick Douglass. He introduces a constitutional amendment to end slavery, forbids the gag rule in Congress, which blocks abolitionist petitions, and later dies on the floor of Congress. He yells "No!" in a vote against the Mexican-American War. He collapses, and his last words are, “I am composed,” a phrase from Cicero. It’s just amazing. He achieved so much with focus and moral purpose.


Matthew Brogdon

[00:14:05-00:14:09]

And yet, he's remembered as the man who stole the presidency from Andrew Jackson.


Jeff Rosen

[00:14:09-00:14:21]

It’s another reminder that our current fixations have precedence. Of course, Jackson did charge that there had been a corrupt bargain with Henry Clay to throw the election once it went to the House. Adams never did recover from that.


Matthew Brogdon

[00:14:24-00:15:11]

So Adams stands out as the shining example and an impressive paragon of liberty and self-examination. You summarize this well: virtue is an effort to be good rather than feel good. Adams truly embodied this. But there are so many other stories of people falling short. You talk about these in the book, especially with Jefferson and some of his Virginian colleagues. They were once very serious about conforming to their conscience, about doing what they thought was right, but they were also guilty of real travesties, such as owning slaves. How did they reconcile that? How did someone who was perpetuating slave ownership—owning human beings, trading in them—reconcile that with the project of virtue and self-examination?


Jeff Rosen

[00:15:26-00:16:58]

Through self-denial, hypocrisy, or in some cases, growth. I did find this speech that seems to encapsulate the dilemma. Patrick Henry, who’s just given the “Give me liberty or give me death” speech, says, "Is it not amazing that I, who believe slavery violates the Bible and natural law, own slaves? I won’t justify it, I won’t attempt to. It’s simple avarice or greed. I can’t do it." He acknowledges the inconvenience of living with that. And that’s the bottom line in a moment of brutal truth. They knew it was wicked and wrong, but they liked the lifestyle and didn’t want to give it up.


Different enslavers reconciled this hypocrisy to varying degrees. George Washington freed his enslaved people at his death. George Wythe, Jefferson’s mentor, became a real abolitionist and freed his slaves during his lifetime. Franklin himself grew and freed his slaves. But Jefferson was the worst of the bunch. He both said slavery should end in the distant future but kept pushing the date back, all while living like a Caligulan emperor at Monticello. He surrounded himself with his own children by Sally Hemings, who were serving him in his home, even as he denounced debt. The degree of his personal racism was unusual, even by the standards of the day. He belittled the talents of the great Black poet Phyllis Wheatley, claiming that Black people were intellectually inferior. It’s really an unfortunate blot on Jefferson’s legacy. He recognized the hypocrisy at some level; he knew it was wrong and didn’t want to live that way. But in the end, he liked the lifestyle and didn’t want to give it up.


Matthew Brogdon

[00:17:05-00:18:12]

So it raises a question for me: with the prevalence of people who attempt this effort at moral perfection—really trying to bring themselves fully into conformity with what they know to be the right way to live—it seems to end in frustration for many. This points to a question about the virtues listed. It was interesting to me that in the list of virtues that Jefferson, Franklin, and some of the others would list—the virtues that made it into the book—the virtue of mercy, or recognition of human inability to live up to a morally perfect standard, seems to be absent. Is that right? Where was the place for this? How does a person so serious about achieving moral perfection reconcile with the inability to fully live up to that standard? I mean, we’ve talked about the answer over slavery, but slavery was hardly the only issue. Franklin himself felt like he fell short in essentially every area, especially humility, which he had to add later. It was actually suggested by a Quaker friend, wasn’t it?


Jeff Rosen:


[00:18:30-00:20:11]

It’s significant that it was a Quaker friend, and their emphasis on freedom of conscience and toleration was deeply rooted in their beliefs. It's such an interesting question. The classical virtues—it's true they're exacting, but they are virtues of the soul and heart, and they’re meant to be practiced daily. There’s no expectation that you'll actually succeed. It’s really about developing habits, like trying to be more industrious or not losing your temper. Of course, you're going to fall short. To be human is to fall short. But you don’t have to be perfect like Jesus. In the scriptures, Jesus' disciples say, "Be perfect, even as Jesus is perfect." I studied with a great Puritan scholar, Sac Van Bercovitch, in college. When discussing that passage, he said, “I shouldn’t say this perhaps, but isn’t the disciple right? Shouldn’t we try to be as perfect as Jesus?” The Christian exhortation to be perfect is combined with, as you say, empathy, forgiveness, and the possibility of grace when we fall short. Whether you do this in a classical, Christian, Jewish, or different faith tradition, there are different ways of dealing with the inevitable fact that to be human means we’ll never achieve these virtues. But what’s so striking about the founders is that, for them, it really was about virtues in daily life—using your time well, minute by minute. It wasn’t about doctrinal enforcement. It wasn’t the idea that you’d be damned if you didn’t perform rituals correctly, nor questions of heresy or blasphemy or faith orthodoxy. In that sense, it’s more forgiving because it’s all about the individual and our own efforts to try to be more perfect, recognizing that we will always fall short.


Matthew Brogdon:


[00:20:21-00:21:53]

A lot of folks would say if we’re going to focus on virtue, if the pursuit of happiness is really the center of political good, and at one point in the book you say you could almost take the idea of virtue and interpret it as human flourishing. The idea of virtue that the founding generation had, if in fact the government exists to secure the right to pursue happiness as well as life and liberty—and of course, placing it last in the list almost suggests a sort of ascending order—right? Everyone wants life, of course. Liberty, to be free. Putting happiness last in the order almost suggests that it’s a kind of progression, right? Ascending from mere life to liberty to the pursuit of happiness to being good rather than just feeling good. If that’s the case, I think our modern, instinctive reaction in the current moment would be, if you were describing this to a typical room full of people, they’d say, “Well, if politics is about virtue, I thought politics was about freedom, about doing what people want, or about equality—recognizing some kind of equality. Those are things that don’t require a lot of moral judgment.” And by bringing virtue in, or by saying that the Declaration places virtue at the center of political good and political life, do we risk returning to something older, maybe something more despotic than modern freedom? We’re accustomed to modern liberalism, right? Politics is about freedom. How would you respond to that fear? People say, “You want to bring virtue back into politics. That sounds like we’re going to make politics more about morality now. We’ll all have to duke it out from our varying positions on moral values.” What would you say to the person who raises that kind of concern?


Jeff Rosen:


[00:22:16-00:24:41]

It’s a very important concern, and I would say, far from threatening liberalism, the pursuit of happiness, rightly understood, is central to it and crucial to it. For the founders, the pursuit of happiness was not only a right but a duty. We have both the liberty and the obligation to achieve human flourishing by fulfilling our potential, so we can best serve others and the common good. However, the state has no role in telling people how to pursue virtuous happiness. We must be protected in our right to think, will, and speak as we think. As Jefferson said, quoting Tacitus, freedom of conscience is the central and first of the unalienable rights. Why is freedom of conscience unalienable? Because, as Jefferson said, the opinions of men, being dependent on evidence contemplated by their own mind, cannot be controlled by others. I can’t tell you, or even myself, what to think. We can’t control our own thoughts; they’re the product of our reason. And even if we wanted to surrender the power to think to the government or a tyrant, we couldn’t. That’s why conscience is unalienable. Living according to right reason is both a right and a duty, but it can’t in any way be controlled by others. For Jefferson and the Founders, liberalism, toleration, and matters of faith were central to the idea of a free and flourishing society. Of course, there are fundamental political debates about how a state should react to virtue. The ancient Spartans, for example, had sumptuary laws and forbade people from buying expensive luxury goods because it would be degrading, while other republics took a different view. However, the Founders were centrally moved by their reading of ancient history. They feared that when citizens and leaders lacked virtuous self-mastery, republics would go the way of Greece and Rome and surrender their liberties to tyrants and dictators who would give them cheap luxuries in exchange for centralized power. The liberal vision, once again, is that virtuous self-mastery—standing up for liberty, calling out tyrants who threaten it, not voting for demagogic leaders who will subvert the Constitution, and defending the Constitution at all—is of a piece. That’s why there’s something so beautifully harmonious about the liberal idea, which says that personal self-government is necessary for political self-government.


Matthew Brogdon:


[00:24:51-00:26:34]

I hadn’t noticed before when I was reading this, but you connect this project of self-improvement and the focus on moral virtue that you find in some of the principal founders with the issue of religious conscience. And it seems to me the logic you’re articulating here shares a lot with the way some religiously devout Americans at the time of the founding have argued for expansive religious liberty and freedom of conscience, precisely because they take religion so seriously. You quote the notion that the mind can’t be coerced, which Jefferson articulates in defense of the Virginia Bill for Religious Freedom. Of course, Madison’s famous Memorial and Remonstrance against religious assessments articulates this too—that true faith can’t be coerced. We’re accustomed to that argument; it’s been very persuasive in the field of religious liberty. You say, “Well, if you want to persuade, to evangelize, to convert, then you have to be talking to a free person.” If the person on the other side of that conversation isn’t free to consider your arguments—either to reject them or accept them—then your efforts are in vain in some sense. So there’s a certain irony here—that the devoutness of the believer who wants religious liberty in order to evangelize and for themselves to flourish is analogous to the morally serious person who says, “I want virtue. I want human beings to be virtuous. I want them to flourish.” But in order to do that, you need a free people.


Jeff Rosen:


[00:26:36-00:27:58]

That is beautifully put. And you’ve so well expressed the deep connections at the time of the founding between religious liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We see it in the Quaker insistence on freedom of conscience and the light within, in people like John Dickinson, who argued for gender equality and racial equality as a result, and also forswore any attempt by the state to compel conscience. We see it with the Baptists who wanted total separation in order to protect religion from the state, and from the deep sense of religious seriousness of all the Founders who had different understandings of orthodoxy or different relationships to Christianity. But all of them embraced this Enlightenment conviction that total freedom of conscience and devotion to public reason were compatible with faith. No incompatibility between them. There are illiberal manifestations of it, but attempts to impose theocratic dogma by authority rather than persuasion were rejected by the Framers. And that indeed was the point of the First Amendment, as Madison and Jefferson articulated in their shining example. It became accepted by the Supreme Court. For me, learning about this deep core of conscience helps you understand why John Adams and Madison said the greatest sources of faction are politics and religion. Religion, because people fight and kill each other over doctrinal matters of orthodoxy. But the ultimate devotion to freedom of conscience through public reason is far more important and is shared by all faiths, rather than dividing them.


Matthew Brogdon:

[00:28:22-00:29:40]

So, on the point of the compatibility of freedom and virtue, you quote, and this is the only place I've seen you quote this passage from Justice Louis Brandeis in his concurring opinion in the Whitney case. This is a free speech case. If you don't mind, I’m going to read the excerpt you like to quote. Brandeis writes:


"Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free, to develop their faculties, and that in its government, the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth, that without free speech and assembly, discussion would be futile, that with them discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine, that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people, that public discussion is a public duty, and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government."


[00:29:00] That’s such a profound meditation on the ends of liberty. What do you take him to mean there, where he says, "Liberty is not only an end but a means to the discovery and spread of political truth," which is the right reason, the divine?


Jeff Rosen:

[00:29:54 - 00:31:27] I read two documents that are focusing his mind: Jefferson’s Virginia Bill on Religious Freedom, which he reread over the summer of 1926, and Alfred Zimmern’s The Greek Commonwealth, which was his favorite book. Brandeis thought 5th-century Athens was the apotheosis of reason. Zimmern quotes Pericles’ funeral oration, which talks about liberty as the secret of happiness and courage as the secret of liberty. Brandeis is getting that from Pericles via Alfred Zimmern. What is Pericles meaning when he talks to the citizens of Athens? He says that it is courage to pursue the truth fearlessly. That is the core of Athens’ greatness. We don't give each other black marks. We respect each other's privacy, but we are devoted to the public pursuit of truth and are not distracted by demagogues, cheap popularity, or others.


And that’s why, for Brandeis, the pursuit of happiness is both a right and a duty. To fulfill the duty requires courage in the face of the temptations of error. But he has confidence that, given our ability to use our faculties and powers of reason, those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free, to develop their faculties, and that in its government, the reasonable forces should prevail over the arbitrary. He has faith that reason will prevail. It’s this extraordinary faith in reason—an Enlightenment faith, channeled through the Greeks—that we have the divine spark within each individual, giving us the capacity, through reason, to access the divine. It’s glorious.


[00:31:00] And I want to thank you in closing for giving us a way of thinking differently about the Declaration as we approach the 250th anniversary of that document of American independence.


Matthew Brogdon:

[00:31:54 - 00:32:15] In 2026, this is a wonderful way to deepen our consideration of the civilization that supports and results in the Declaration of Independence. It’s so much richer than just a distillation of John Locke, profound as he is.


Jeff Rosen:

[00:32:15 - 00:32:22] Well, thank you for reading the book so deeply and for all the wonderful work you’re doing here at UVU. This has been a great conversation.


Matthew Brogdon:

[00:32:22 - 00:32:23] Thank you, Jeff.


[00:32:24]

We’re just beginning to explore the rich legacy of America’s Constitution. If today’s discussion deepened your understanding, share this episode with a friend or student and subscribe to continue learning with us. For more insights and exclusive content, visit https://www.uvu.edu/ccs/. Thank you for joining us, and we look forward to exploring more with you on This Constitution, brought to you by the UVU Center for Constitutional Studies, home to Utah's Civic Thought and Leadership Initiative.