The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Founders and Defined America

26th Annual Christopher Roberts Lectures at Dickinson College Friday November 1, 2024, 4:30 p.m.

Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor to The Atlantic. He has written books on Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Louis Brandeis and William Howard Taft. His most recent book is The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America.

Jeffrey Rosen profiles the Founders to show what pursuing happiness meant in their lives. 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 virtue, for developing character and calm self-mastery because, in their view, political self-government required personal self-government.