In the Unites States Declaration of Independence there is a passage that is considered by many as one of the most well-crafted and influential sentences in the history of the English language:
“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.”
Thomas Jefferson, who penned the Declaration, was extremely careful in choosing the words of this document. After all, it was the formal justification for revolting from and overthrowing British rule and these were the “unalienable Rights” that were being denied by the Crown, hence justifying the revolution. Jefferson definitively states that all humankind has the God given right to life and liberty. Yet he does not say “Happiness” is also such a right. Rather, according to Jefferson, it is the pursuit of Happiness that our Creator endows upon us. What did he mean by “pursuit of Happiness?”
Jefferson’s intellectual heroes were Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton and John Locke, and some scholars believe that it was actually in Locke that Thomas Jefferson found and embraced the phrase. In his 1690 essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke wrote:
“The necessity of pursuing happiness is the foundation of liberty. As therefore the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness; so the care of ourselves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty. The stronger ties we have to an unalterable pursuit of happiness in general, which is our greatest good, and which, as such, our desires always follow, the more we are free from any necessary determination of our will to any particular action…we are, by the necessity of preferring and pursuing true happiness as our greatest good, obliged to suspend the satisfaction of our desires in particular cases.”
According to Locke, happiness is much more than attaining one’s every desire or having every need met. In fact, he postulates that in pursuing true happiness, in some cases we are “obliged to suspend the satisfaction of our desires.” Happiness, and it’s pursuit, is a complicated concept. It is not merely sensual or hedonistic, but engages the intellect. As such, it requires of its pursuer the careful discrimination of imaginary happiness from “true and solid” happiness. It is the “foundation of liberty” because it frees us from enslavement to particular desires.
In today’s society, happiness is too often equated with “living large”; surrounded by all of the indulgences and means that accrue to those who attain wealth, pleasure, and fame. Throughout history, the wisest of humanity have argued against such notion of happiness as being “true happiness.” True happiness is an end in itself, not the means to an end.
In a letter Jefferson wrote to a friend in 1819, he gave us further insight to what he meant by the term “pursuit of happiness” when he wrote:
Moral – Happiness the aim of life.
Virtue the foundation of happiness
Virtue consists in 1. Prudence. 2. Temperance. 3. Fortitude. 4. Justice.
To which are opposed, 1. Folly. 2. Desire. 3. Fear. 4 .Deceit.
Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible. ~St. Augustine
Have a wonderful and awe-full weekend!
William “Bill” Bacque