“If the Wise be the happy man,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1815, “he must be virtuous too; for, without virtue, happiness cannot be.”
In two years, we Americans will be celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And we all know the opening lines: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
What is this happiness that we should be able to pursue? Jefferson answers clearly: “Without virtue, happiness cannot be.”
I should issue a travel advisory here. We’re going to take a stroll down the garden path of classic “deist” moral philosophy of antiquity, then hike into the mystical groves of Eastern Orthodox elders on the monastic isle of Mount Athos, just off the coast of Thessalonica. If this sounds unsettling, this is your last chance to turn around and go back.
“Today we think of happiness as something that results from the pursuit of pleasure,” writes Jeffrey Rosen. “But Classical and Enlightenment thinkers defined happiness as the pursuit of virtue — as being good, rather than feeling good.”
Rosen is a well-known legal scholar and president of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. He has recently written the book, “The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of Founders and Defined America.” In it, he examines the thinking of the founding fathers that lay behind the brilliant achievements of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.
Indeed, the Judeo-Christian tradition was a great influence. Benjamin Franklin said so just a short while before his death: “As to Jesus of Nazareth … I think the system of morals and his religion as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw, or is likely to see .…” But just as significant were the moral philosophers of antiquity like Cicero, Xenophon, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Enlightenment writers John Locke and David Hume.
What is this virtue of which the founding fathers thought so highly? The Scottish philosopher Adam Smith described virtue as “the temper of mind which constitutes the excellent and praise-worthy character.”
“Virtue” sums up the founders’ political philosophy. It means regulation of emotions and constant work at self-improvement. Controlling emotions is the secret of tranquility of mind, and tranquility of mind is the secret of true happiness. Daily habits are the secret of self-improvement. And, most importantly, personal self-government is the secret of political self-government.
You can turn that around for the negative, which is just as valid: political chaos is the not-so-secret product of personal chaos. If the irascible emotions of anger, fear and grievance are allowed to hold sway in an individual soul, then the same will emerge into politics and explode into tyranny.
It is true that the founders of our republic were mostly deists who preferred rationalism over “revealed religion.” It was the Enlightenment that constituted the intellectual culture of our nation’s foundation.
Still, the idea that private virtue produces democratic order is an old one — a very old one. The roots of democracy — the ordered government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” — lay equally in the personalist theology of the New Testament as well as in the democratic political philosophy of Athens.
About a thousand years ago, there was a school of monastic elders on Mount Athos called “the Hesychastic Fathers.” Hesychasm is the tradition of seeking tranquility of mind through silence, prayer, and self-regulation — especially the control of destructive passions like anger and pride. These elders taught that the best way to fight passions is to displace them through the practice of virtue.
It is at this point — the meaning of virtue — that the Judeo-Christian tradition improves upon the Enlightenment. Virtue — in revealed religion — is the practice of charity, forgiveness and peace-making, generosity and fidelity, kindness and softheartedness, empathy and respect.
It is not all that surprising, then, that the founding fathers were often embarrassed by contradictions of their own rationalist moral ideals. In 1775, Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress Patrick Henry said that it was “amazing” that he and his fellow Americans, who were so “fond of Liberty,” also allowed slavery, a practice “as repugnant to humanity as it is inconsistent with the Bible and destructive to liberty.” And Henry admitted that avarice made him choose not to follow his moral principles: “Would any one believe that I am Master of Slaves of my own purchase?” Henry asked. “I am drawn along by (the) general inconvenience of living without them. I will not — I cannot justify it.”
It is self-evident that Judeo-Christian virtue should never have permitted the practice of slavery — and whenever and wherever slavery was to be found, it would eventually be extinguished by Biblical virtue (as happened in the Epistle to Philemon, and later in the Roman Empire and Europe and Russia, and finally in America).
Still, the “pursuit of happiness” is what the founding fathers sought, above all, to be set at the foundation of the new nation. Not happiness as a feeling, not pleasure, but true well-being. The Hesychast Fathers, along with Plato and other philosophers of antiquity, believed that true freedom was not the base “freedom to choose” so much as it is the “freedom to be,” and to become what we were created to really be.
This “pursuit of happiness” is the goal of freedom. Biblical and Classical virtue demands that freedom and happiness must always expand and inevitably and eventually be afforded to all.
Only the unvirtuous tyranny of anger and fear stands in their way, as founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson knew so well and worried so much about for the future.
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