This Friday (2/28) in Ruane 105 at 3:30pm, the Humanities Forum will host Jeffrey Rosen, President and CEO of the National Constitution Center. In his lecture, Rosen will demonstrate the influence of the Greek and Roman moral philosophers on the Founders, particularly with regard to the pursuit of happiness and the good.
What did “the pursuit of happiness” mean to our nation’s Founders, and how did that famous phrase define their lives and become the foundation of our democracy? Jeffrey Rosen examines the most influential founders—Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. By reading the classical Greek and Roman moral philosophers who inspired the Founders, Rosen shows us how they understood the pursuit of happiness as a quest for being good, not feeling good—the pursuit of lifelong virtue, not short-term pleasure. Among those virtues were the habits of industry, temperance, moderation, and sincerity, which the Founders viewed as part of a daily struggle for self-improvement, character development, and calm self-mastery. They believed that political self-government required personal self-government.
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center where he is host of the weekly podcast, We the People. He is also a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic. Rosen’s other books include the New York Times bestseller Conversations with RBG: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law, as well as biographies of Louis Brandeis and William Howard Taft.
