The Pursuit of Happiness with Jeffrey Rosen

The Preamble

Sharon McMahon

Government, History, Storytelling, Education

4.9 • 15.1K Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2024

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’ve heard it before: Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But what did the nation’s Founders mean when they identified “the pursuit of happiness” as an unalienable right? And what role does moral philosophy play in understanding the virtues that accompany the pursuit of happiness? Today we’re joined by Jeffrey Rosen, President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, to explore these questions, as well as to dive deeper into the history and meaning of the pursuit of life-long virtue. Learn how six of the Framers and Founders – flaws and all – embody different virtues, and consider the importance of electing leaders who will be virtuous and uphold the principles of Democracy.

Special thanks to our guest, Jeffrey Rosen, for joining us today.

Host/ Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon

Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder

Production Coordinator: Andrea Champoux

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey friends, welcome. Delighted you're with me today. I am joined by the
0:07.6	director of the National Constitution Center Jeffrey Rosen and gosh what an interesting conversation I have for you today.
0:17.2	Jeff has written a book called The Pursuit of Happiness and he takes such an interesting deep dive into what the founders of the United States
0:26.7	meant when they wrote the pursuit of happiness into our original documents. It's probably not what you think. So let's dive in.
0:38.2	I'm Sharon McMahon and here's where it gets interesting.
0:45.2	Well, I'm very excited to be joined today by Jeffrey Rosen.
0:46.2	Thank you so much for being here.
0:47.5	Wonderful to be here.
0:48.4	I'm always excited to chat with fellow Constitution nerds, so it's a delight to have you here and
0:56.3	congrats on your upcoming book. Thank you so much. I would love to hear more about
1:01.1	how you conceptualized the pursuit of happiness and what was it about these topics related to virtue that you felt like this is a topic for today.
1:16.9	The world needs this message now.
1:19.3	I mean you could have written about quite a few things Jeff. Why this and why now? Well this was a labor of
1:26.8	love and the topic came to me unexpectedly. It was during COVID and there was just a synchronicity I noticed that set me down this path of trying to understand what the founders meant when they talked about the pursuit of happiness.
1:41.5	It started with Ben Franklin's 13 virtues. I knew from previous
1:48.5	reading that when he was in his 20s he set out to achieve moral perfection.
1:54.0	And he came up with a system of self-improvement,
1:56.2	where he had a list of 13 virtues
1:58.2	and would make X marks every night
2:00.6	next to the virtues where he fell short. And he found that this was very depressing and gave it up but
2:05.2	probably he was a better person for having tried. So I knew about this system because I've tried it with a friend of mine a couple years ago,
2:10.8	a rabbi of ours recommended basically a Hebrew version of the Franklin 13 virtues.
	...

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