The Pursuit of the Pursuit of Happiness

Question

Came across this on a site called (believe it or not) pursuit-of-happiness.org
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What did Thomas Jefferson mean when he enshrined the "pursuit of happiness" as a basic right in the Declaration of Independence? One influential theory is that Jefferson plagiarized the English political thinker John Locke, who championed ³life, liberty and estate (property).² According to this view, Jefferson¹s replacement of the word ³estate² with the ³pursuit of happiness,² was essentially cosmetic. The ³pursuit of happiness² was code for the pursuit of wealth. From this point of view, Jefferson¹s vision of happiness was the ³rags to riches² version of the good life.
There is a good chance that this theory is wrong, because we have misunderstood Jefferson¹s view of happiness. One reason is that we have misunderstood the Greek thinker Epicurus, who had a major impact on his thinking.
In a letter to William Short, an ex-neighbor and private secretary who served him in Paris, Jefferson bluntly states that ³I am an Epicurean.² At the end of the letter he outlines a syllabus of Epicurus¹ philosophy. This includes the topic ³Happiness is the Aim of Life.²

It turns out that Epicurus¹ idea of happiness was strangely similar to that of Buddha. He did not teach in a lavishly funded Academy. Instead he conversed with his students in a cozy, well-tended garden. Jefferson felt that Epicurus had been badly misunder-stood. Epicurus was not an "egoistic hedonist," as he is still portrayed in many textbooks. He treated his followers like family, emphasized simplicity and the need to tame desires, (especially those not aimed at the ³necessities² of life), and pretty well equated happiness with peace of mind.

In other words, if he was around now, you wouldn¹t see Epicurus on Wall Street. He was not a proponent of the ³rags to riches² view of happiness. Far from it. You could call it the ³riches within rags² view of happiness. Simply put, if you cultivated close friendships, limited your desires to the essential necessities of life, and rejoiced in the moment, happiness was yours to keep.
Assuming he was an Epicurean, Jefferson's ³Pursuit of Happiness² is much more than an economic slogan.

Words are all we have.
Samuel Beckett

Usenet · Accepted Answer

Here's David McCulloch on the subject (duelling Historians!)

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But what did they, the Founders, mean by the expression, "pursuit of happiness"?
It didn't mean long vacations or material possessions or ease. As much as anything it meant the life of the mind and spirit. It meant education and the love of learning, the freedom to think for oneself.

Jefferson defined happiness as "tranquility and occupation." For Jefferson, as we know, occupation meant mainly his intellectual pursuits.

Washington, though less inclined to speculate on such matters, considered education of surpassing value, in part because he had had so little. Once, when a friend came to say he hadn't money enough to send his son to college, Washington agreed to help providing a hundred pounds in all, a sizable sum then and with the hope, as he wrote, that the boy's education would "not only promote his own happiness, but the future welfare of others ?." For Washington, happiness derived both from learning and employing the benefits of learning to further the welfare of others.
John Adams, in a letter to his son John Quincy when the boy was a student at the University of Leiden, stressed that he should carry a book with him wherever he went. And that while a knowledge of Greek and Latin were essential, he must never neglect the great works of literature in his own language, and particularly those of the English poets. It was his happiness that mattered, Adams told him. "You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket."

Words are all we have.
Samuel Beckett

Usenet · Answer

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Jefferson thought a great deal of "happiness," a word which in the eighteenth century carried connotations of a sense of personal and societal security and well-being that it has since lost. Jefferson thought enough of happiness to make its pursuit a natural right, along with life and liberty. In so doing, he dropped "property," the third member of the natural rights trilogy generally used by followers of John Locke.Jefferson's writings made it evident that he, like Franklin, saw accumulation of property beyond that needed to satisfy one's natural requirements as an impediment to liberty. To place "property" in the same trilogy with life and liberty, against the backdrop of Jefferson's views regarding the social nature of property, would have been a contradiction, Jefferson composed some of his most trenchant rhetoric in opposition to the erection of a European-like aristocracy on American soil.

To Jefferson, the pursuit of happiness appears to have involved neither the accumulation of property beyond basic need, nor the sheer pursuit of mirth. It meant freedom from tyranny, and from want, things not much in abundance in the Europe from which many of Jefferson's countrymen had so recently fled. Jefferson's writings often characterized Europe as a place from which to escape a corrupt place, where wolves consumed sheep regularly, and any uncalled for bleating by the sheep was answered with a firm blow to the head.

Words are all we have.
Samuel Beckett

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Assuming he was an Epicurean, Jefferson's ³Pursuit of Happiness² is much more than an economic slogan.[/nq]
The only problem here is that Jefferson only espoused Epicureanism in his later life, long after he wrote the Declaration of Independence.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Jefferson defined happiness as "tranquility and occupation." For Jefferson, as we know, occupation meant mainly his intellectual pursuits.[/nq]
Nothing here excludes Locke's view of property rights.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Jefferson's writings made it evident that he, like Franklin, saw accumulation of property beyond that needed to satisfy one's natural ... consumed sheep regularly, and any uncalled for bleating by the sheep was answered with a firm blow to the head.[/nq]
Johansen is a freaky-deaky professor of communication and Indian Studies. He provides opinion without any citation and has been widely criticized.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Jefferson defined happiness as "tranquility and occupation." For Jefferson, as we know, occupation meant mainly his intellectual pursuits.[/nq]
[nq:1]Nothing here excludes Locke's view of property rights.[/nq]
I've really had enough of this.
You win.

Words are all we have.
Samuel Beckett

Usenet · Answer

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Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Jefferson's writings often characterized Europe as a place from which to escape a corrupt place, where wolves consumed sheep regularly, and any uncalled for bleating by the sheep was answered with a firm blow to the head.[/nq]
As he did in his first Inaugural Address (too bad Paul can't read more than out of context excerpts):"Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafterâ??with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people?

A "happy and prosperous" people? Isn't that redundant? And what's this?... "the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter..." So Jefferson you could "take your 'happiness' with you?"

Thanks for the quotes. Neo-Cons seem to love Locke.

RonB
"There's a story there...somewhere"

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Jefferson's writings often characterized Europe as a place from which to escape a corrupt place, where wolves consumed sheep regularly, and any uncalled for bleating by the sheep was answered with a firm blow to the head.[/nq]
As he did in his first Inaugural Address (too bad Paul can't read more than out of context excerpts):"Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafterâ??with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people?

A "happy and prosperous" people? Isn't that redundant? And what's this?... "the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter..." So Jefferson you could "take your 'happiness' with you?"

Thanks for the quotes. Neo-Cons seem to love Locke.

RonB
"There's a story there...somewhere"

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Jefferson's writings often characterized Europe as a place from which ... sheep was answered with a firm blow to the head.[/nq]
[nq:1]As he did in his first Inaugural Address (too bad Paul can't read more than out of context excerpts): "Let ... this?... "the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter..." So Jefferson you could "take your 'happiness' with you?"[/nq]
Nope, you just got happier in the hereafter. Here on Earth, we are entitled to the "the acquisitions of our own industry" (among other things) to make us happy. Wealth, in other words.

Now, Jefferson did believe in spreading opportunity around, and he contrasted the opportunity in America with the lack of opportunity in Europe.

The Pursuit of the Pursuit of Happiness

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