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For many, the Fourth of July is a celebration of America's promise that each individual has the right to pursue happines. The idea of the pursuit of happiness is found in the Declaration of Independence. But what this actually means has been perverted in modern society.
The 17th century Englishman John Locke listed four essential rights—life, liberty, health, and property. These formed the basis of what became the liberal democratic idea as found in the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson accepted the first two of Locke’s propositions, but changed the final two to read “the pursuit of happiness.” This is a significant change, for it took the more static idea of property and transformed it into something dynamic, paving the way to social mobility, religious freedom, and creative expression. Jefferson’s formulation was more democratic and fluid.
Jefferson didn’t define happiness, and many have taken this as a good thing. After all, no two people are alike in taste or experience, and each experiences happiness in his or her own way. Some are extroverts, others introverts; some prefer the life of the mind, others that of the body. Even within one religion, denominations approach the desired state differently. Some are contemplative, others are centered in ritual, and there are those who focus upon direct experience.
By making happiness open-ended, Jefferson raised the curtain on a new way of life, one that left behind the tyranny of the church and crown. Jefferson’s reformulation, by being non-specific, indicates that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all happiness formula, but that the ways of and to happiness are many. This reformulation paved the way for an expansion of both personal freedom and social tolerance. A New England Anglican wasn’t going to legislate proper worship for a Pennsylvania Quaker; a New York merchant didn’t insist that Virginia patricians live the commercial city life. With some major exceptions, the American experiment allowed individual conscience to replace legislated morality. The open-ended pursuit of happiness also opened the way to competitiveness, individualism, and restlessness, three qualities that tend to undermine happiness itself.
While the pursuit of happiness may have led to the relentless yearning of higher standards of living, Jefferson was no godfather of selfishness, supporter of self-interest, or indifference to one’s neighbor. Jefferson, like all the philosopher/politicians of the American Revolution, was a product of the Scottish Enlightenment. Happiness was inconceivable without others. For all Enlightenment thinkers, happiness was the balance and interaction between the individual and community, personal pursuits and civic obligations. Personal good rested upon public good, and happiness was reflected in the public welfare.
Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul explains, “The Enlightenment theory of happiness has absolutely nothing to do with the 20th century theory of happiness. The former views happiness as an expression of the public good, of the public welfare, of the contentment of the people because things are going well; the latter reduces happiness to: ‘Smile! You’re at Disney Land!’ One should not confuse these two ideas. Moreover, it’s very important to keep reminding people that in the phrase ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,’ happiness refers to the public good; it does not mean that you can go away and look after yourself and make yourself happy.”
America’s founding fathers held an assumption that behind the pursuit of happiness stood a developed and mature sense of ethics. "The order of nature is that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue," Jefferson said. In a letter to Amos J. Cook, in 1816, he wrote, “Without virtue, happiness cannot be." Jefferson dissolved moral conflicts—between oneself and others, between one value and another, between one principle and another—by equating duty with happiness and self-interest with service to others.
Jefferson makes more of service to others than it can bear. Real conflicts remain between the self-interests of people differently situated in society. For example, in the Federalist Papers, James Madison, a friend of Jefferson, worries that the self-interest of those without property will lead them to confiscate the property of the well-off. This anticipates the political analysis of vested interests and class conflict. And there remains the tension between various moral values, as, for instance, the trade-off between freedom, and security.
But the larger point remains. The link, while not perfect, is clear—happiness is dependent upon virtue. You must live decently in order to approach happiness. Jefferson believed that truth, happiness, and morality belonged to each other. One wasn’t possible alone. For him the pursuit of self-interest led to the goodness of all because self-interest rested upon a benevolent human nature and your interest always took the interests of others into account.
For Jefferson and others who make the connection between virtue and happiness as I do, people have the propensity for goodness because it is in the nature of human beings to find deepest satisfaction by living virtuously.
