"There is no path to happiness; happiness is the path."
– Buddha
As Americans, we demand our pursuit of happiness. A clause in the Declaration of Independence sets forth the freedom of citizens to pursue happiness …
“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.”
Borrowing the idea of pursuing virtue or happiness from Scottish moral philosophers, such as Henry Home and Lord Kames, Thomas Jefferson went so far as to substitute the phrase the pursuit of “happiness" for the word "property" in his litany of unalienable natural rights.
In 1689, Locke argued in Two Treatises of Government that political society existed for the sake of protecting "property,” which he defined as a person's "life, liberty, and estate.” In A Letter Concerning Toleration, he wrote that the magistrate's power was limited to preserving a person's "civil interest,” which he described as "life, liberty, health, and indolency of body; and the possession of outward things". He declared in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding that "the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness".
(James H. Tully, James H editor. John Locke. A Letter Concerning Toleration.1689.)
According to those scholars who saw the root of Jefferson's thought in Locke's doctrine, Jefferson replaced "estate" with "the pursuit of happiness" although this does not mean that Jefferson meant the "pursuit of happiness" to refer primarily or exclusively to property. Under such an assumption, the Declaration of Independence would declare that government existed primarily for the reasons Locke gave, and some have extended that line of thinking to support a conception of limited government.
(Michael P. Zuckert, The Natural Rights Republic. 1996.)
If Jefferson's “happiness” was not about hedonism, it was about fostering virtue and tranquility. However, since its inception, the “pursuit of happiness” has floated free and become a vague version of an American promise. To most now, it means pretty much what anyone wishes it to mean. To many citizens, that “pursuit” means the freedom to do whatever one wants to do at a given moment.
Of course, following materialism – considering material possessions and physical comfort as more important than spiritual values – many Americans believe happiness is sold as a commodity. In the modern world, happiness is the closest thing we have to a summum bonum, the highest good from which all other goods flow. In this logic unhappiness becomes the summum malum, the greatest evil to be avoided. There is some evidence that the obsessive pursuit of happiness is associated with a greater risk of depression.
(Brett Q. Ford et al. “Desperately seeking happiness: valuing happiness is associated with symptoms and diagnosis of depression.” J Soc Clin Psychol. 2014.)
In his recent book, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, historian Ritchie Robertson, former Germanic Editor of The Modern Language Review and co-director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre – argues that the Enlightenment should be understood not as the increase in value of reason itself, but instead as the quest for happiness through reason.
(Ritchie Robertson. The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness. 2021.)
Whatever it does or doesn't entail, the “pursuit of happiness” is protected by law. As used in constitutional law, this right specifically includes the following:
“Personal freedom,
Freedom of contract,
Exemption from oppression or invidious (prejudicial) discrimination,
The right to follow one’s individual preference in the choice of an occupation and the application of his energies,
Liberty of conscience, and
The right to enjoy the domestic relations and the privileges of the family and the home.”
(“Pursuit of Happiness.” TheLaw.com. Law Dictionary & Black's Law Dictionary 2nd Ed. 1995.)
Would you please carefully reread the guarantee to the unalienable right of happiness in the Constitution and the laws pertaining to that document that express absolute freedoms. The key word in the happiness promise is “pursuit” – meaning “seeking to attain.” Nowhere does it provide for the secure attainment of absolute contentment, and nowhere does it guarantee the acquisition of happiness.
“The right to the 'pursuit of happiness' affirmed in the Declaration of Independence is taken these days to affirm a right to chase after whatever makes one subjectively happy,” says James R. Rogers, associate professor of political science at Texas A&M University and Contributing Editor at Law & Liberty.
“Further, the Declaration doesn’t guarantee the right to happiness, the thought usually goes, but only the right to pursue what makes you happy. This reading of the Declaration’s ‘pursuit of happiness’ is wrong on both scores.”
(Joe Carter. “The Meaning of the 'Pursuit of Happiness'” Acton Institute. June 19, 2012.)
To better understand a positive “pursuit” of happiness, psychologist and survivor of four Nazi death camps,, wrote, “Happiness cannot be pursued; it must 'ensue' (occur afterward or as a result). One must have a reason to 'be happy.'”
(Viktor E. Frankl. Man's Search for Meaning. 1992.)
“Only when the emotions work in terms of values can the individual feel pure joy.”
– Viktor Frankl
According to Frankly, it is a futile effort to pursue happiness. Happiness must ensue from the search and practice of a meaningful life.
Meaning, according to Frankl, can be found in one of three places:
by creating a work or doing a deed;
by experiencing something or encountering someone; and
by the attitude one takes towards unavoidable suffering.
“If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.”
– Viktor Frankl
This explanation alone makes little sense of Frankl’s work. To simply read these conclusions, which Frankl arrived after a long and prodigious practice and after surviving three years of Nazi imprisonment, is like learning the plot twist at the end of a good thriller without having read the book.
Frankl says …
“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”
Frankl points to research indicating a strong relationship between “meaninglessness” and criminal behavior, addiction and depression. He argues that in the absence of meaning, people fill the resultant void with hedonistic pleasures, power, materialism, hatred, boredom, or neurotic obsessions and compulsions
“Viktor Frankl: Pursuit of Happiness.” The Will to Meaning: Foundations and Applications of Logotherapy. 2021.)
“Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.”
– Viktor Frankl
Your Pursuit of Happiness
To me, living in the pursuit of happiness simply as a God-given right to pursue joy freely, as long as you don't do anything illegal or violate the rights of others, can be shallow and likely to lead to a less meaningful existence. Too many people believe in using a right to gain a personal advantage. Just because you have the right to do something, doesn't make it the right thing to do. I fear it makes a lot of people genuinely happy to prevail, and they misuse and even abuse privilege, no matter their obligation to examine the truth presented by the opposition.
As an American, do you think you should always be happy? Such an attitude can lead to self-focus and disengagement. Surely maintaining happiness requires hard work and dedication. The liberty we are given to pursue happiness is just that – being free within society from oppressive restrictions.
Higher-level happiness is connected to what ancient Greek philosophers called aretḗ and Romans called virtus – both meaning “virtue.” The "virtue" of anything was what made it excellent. Aristotle enshrined happiness as a central purpose of human life and a goal in itself. He believer happiness is identified with “activity of the soul in accord with virtue.”
Aristotle gives us his definition of happiness:
“…the function of man is to live a certain kind of life, and this activity implies a rational principle, and the function of a good man is the good and noble performance of these, and if any action is well performed it is performed in accord with the appropriate excellence: if this is the case, then happiness turns out to be an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.”
(Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by W. D. Ross. 350 B.C.E.)
On the other hand, very often fleeting, low-level happiness is associated with wealth and worldly success. The acquisition of such pleasure may ignore any consideration of virtue and the generous activity of the soul. For those who seek happiness in the possession of wealth and success, there is no intrinsic value in the pursuit. And there is the difference in meaning.
It may be difficult for many to accept that our citizenship does not guarantee personal happiness. But, it does not. One of the greatest paradoxes in American life is that while, on average, existence has gotten more comfortable over time, happiness has fallen. Although income inequality has risen, this has not been mirrored by inequality in the consumption of goods and services.
Average happiness is decreasing in the U.S. The General Social Survey, which has been measuring social trends among Americans every one or two years since 1972, shows a long-term, gradual decline in happiness – and rise in unhappiness – from 1988 to the present.
(Arthur C. Brooks. “Are We Trading Our Happiness for Modern Comforts?” The Atlantic. October 22, 2020.)
Studies show we are NOT becoming happy through consumerism, technology, or bureaucracy. If you expect happiness by buying it, upgrading for it, or voting for it, you will probably be disappointed.
Want some good advice to girder your pursuit of happiness? Arthur C. Brooks is a contributing writer at The Atlantic, the William Henry Bloomberg professor of the practice of public leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a professor of management practice at the Harvard Business School. Here is what Brooks suggests:
“A famous study followed hundreds of men who graduated from Harvard from 1939 to 1944 throughout their lives, into their 90s. The researchers wanted to know who flourished, who didn’t, and the decisions they had made that contributed to that well-being. The lead scholar on the study for many years was the Harvard psychiatrist George Vaillant, who summarized the results in his book Triumphs of Experience. Here is his summary, in its entirety: “Happiness is love. Full stop.
“What this means is that anything that substitutes for close human relationships in your life is a bad trade. The study I mentioned above uses money to make this point. But the point goes much deeper. You will sacrifice happiness if you crowd out relationships with work, drugs, politics, or social media.
“The world encourages us to love things and use people. But that’s backwards. Put this on your fridge and try to live by it: Love people; use things.”
(Arthur C. Brooks. “Are We Trading Our Happiness for Modern Comforts?” The Atlantic. October 22, 2020.)
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