Books, Routines, and Habits: The Founders’ Guide to Self-Improvement

The Art of Manliness

Society & Culture, Education, Philosophy

4.7 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Note: This is a rebroadcast A lot of self-improvement advice and content feels empty. And there’s a reason for that. It often offers routines and habits to practice, but doesn’t offer a strong, overarching reason to practice them. That’s why the self-improvement advice of the Founding Fathers is particularly compelling. Though they were imperfect men, they had a clear why for trying to become better than they were. For the Founders, life was about the pursuit of happiness, and they equated happiness with excellence and virtue — a state that wasn’t about feeling good, but being good. The Founders pursued happiness not only for the personal benefit in satisfaction and tranquility it conferred, but for the way the attainment of virtue would benefit society as a whole; they believed that political self-government required personal self-government. Today on the show, Jeffrey Rosen, a professor of law, the president of the National Constitution Center, and the author of The Pursuit of Happiness, shares the book the Founders read that particularly influenced their idea of happiness as virtue and self-mastery. We talk about the schedules and routines the Founders kept, the self-examination practices they did to improve their character, and how they worked on their flaws, believing that, while moral perfection was ultimately an impossible goal to obtain, it was still something worth striving for.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey, this is Brett.
0:00.8	We're taking a break from new episodes this week for Independence Day.
0:03.6	So we've got to rebroadcast for you.
0:05.2	It's an Independence Day themed episode, episode number 103,
0:09.0	The Founders Guide to Self-improvement.
0:11.3	Hope you enjoy it.
0:12.4	Happy Independence Day for those who live in the United States,
0:14.4	and we'll see you next week with a brand new episode.
0:28.3	Boy. Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
0:31.7	A lot of self-improvement advice and content feels empty.
0:33.1	And there's a reason for that.
0:38.1	It often offers routines and habits to practice, but doesn't offer a strong, overarching reason to practice them. That's why the self-improvement advice of the founding fathers is particularly
0:42.2	compelling. Though they were imperfect men, they had a clear why for trying to become better
0:46.7	than they were. For the founders, life was about the pursuit of happiness, and they equated
0:51.2	happiness with excellence and virtue, a state that wasn't about
0:54.4	feeling good, but being good. The founders pursued happiness not only for the personal benefit
0:59.5	and satisfaction and tranquility it conferred, but for the way the attainment of virtue would
1:03.5	benefit society as a whole. They believe that political self-government required personal self-government.
1:09.4	Today on the show, Jeffrey Rosen, professor of Law, the President of the National Constitution
1:13.3	Center, and the author of The Pursuit of Happiness, shares the book the Founders
1:17.1	read that particularly influenced their idea of happiness as virtue and self-mastery.
1:21.1	We talked with the schedules and routines the founders kept, the self-examination practices
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 27 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Art of Manliness, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Art of Manliness and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.