Books, Routines, and Habits： The Founders' Guide to Self-Improvement
Episode Stats
Summary
The founders pursued happiness not only for the personal benefit and satisfaction and tranquility it conferred, but for the way the attainment of virtue would benefit society as a whole. They believed that political self-government required personal self-governance, and that the pursuit of happiness was a state that wasn't about feeling good but being good.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast
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a lot of self-improvement advice and content feels empty and there's a reason for that it
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often offers routines and habits to practice but doesn't offer a strong overarching reason
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to practice them that's why the self-improvement advice of the founding fathers is particularly
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compelling though they were imperfect men they had a clear why for trying to become better than
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they were for the founders life was about the pursuit of happiness and they equated happiness
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with excellence and virtue a state that wasn't about feeling good but being good the founders
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pursued happiness not only for the personal benefit and satisfaction and tranquility it conferred but
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for the way the attainment of virtue would benefit society as a whole they believe that political
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self-government required personal self-government today on the show jeffrey rosen professor of law
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the president of the national constitution center and the author of the pursuit of happiness
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shares the book the founders read that particularly influenced their idea of happiness as virtue and
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self-mastery we talked about the schedules and routines the founders kept the self-examination
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practices they did to improve their character and how they worked on their flaws believing that
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while moral perfection was ultimately an impossible goal to obtain it was still something worth striving for
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after the show's over check out our show notes at awim.is slash pursuit of happiness
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all right jeffrey rosen welcome to the show great to be here so you got a new book out called the
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pursuit of happiness how classical writers on virtue inspire the lies of the founders and defined america
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and this is a really fantastic book i really loved reading it it was great getting into the minds of
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the founding fathers and what you do is you take readers on a journey through the books that the
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founding fathers read that shaped their thinking as they were trying to figure out what is this new
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government going to be in the united states and specifically you wanted to figure out what thomas
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jefferson meant by the pursuit of happiness in the declaration of independence what led you to take
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this exploration it was a series of synchronicities during covet that led to this project first i was
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rereading ben franklin's attempt to achieve moral perfection in his 20s he made a list of 13 virtues
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that he tried to live up to and practice every day classical virtues industry temperance prudence he
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saves the ones he finds hardest for last which is humility and puts x marks next to the virtues where
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he fell short he tried it for a while he found it was depressing because there were so many x marks but
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he was a better person for having tried i noticed during covet that he chose as his motto a book by
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cicero that i'd never heard of called the tusculent disputations and he said without virtue happiness
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cannot be a few weeks later i was at the boars head inn in charlottesville virginia which is on the uva
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campus and on the wall i noticed this list of 12 virtues that thomas jefferson had made for his
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daughters they looked a lot like franklin's silence resolution industry and so forth jefferson leaves
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off one that's on franklin's list which is chastity but jefferson chooses as his motto also this cicero
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book the tusculent disputations so basically during covet i thought i've got to read cicero because it's so
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important to hamilton or rather to franklin and to jefferson but what else to read and then i found
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this amazing reading list that jefferson would send to anyone who asked him when he was old how to be
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educated and it's very comprehensive it has literature and political philosophy and science and history
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and a very rigorous schedule about when you read which books at what time it's kind of 12 hours of
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reading starting before sunrise and going until evening but what caught my eye was the section
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called moral philosophy or natural religion or ethics and there was cicero the tusculent disputations
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along with marcus aurelius and seneca and epictetus other stoic and classical philosophers as well as
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enlightenment philosophers like francis hutcheson and bolingbroke and david hume so basically i thought
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i've got to read these books i've had this wonderful liberal arts education i've studied
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history and politics and english literature and american literature and law with great teachers
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in wonderful universities i missed these books because they'd just fallen out of the curriculum by
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the time i was in college during covet i i resolved to read the books i followed jefferson's schedule
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got up before sunrise read for an hour or two watch the sunrise and what i learned transformed
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my understanding of the pursuit of happiness how to be a good person and how to be a good citizen and
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all of these books confirmed what cicero said that for the classical philosophers happiness meant
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not feeling good but being good not the pursuit of immediate pleasure but the pursuit of long-term
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virtue and they define virtue as self-mastery self-improvement character improvement being your best
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self and mastering your unreasonable passions or emotions so you could achieve the calm tranquility
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that for them defined happiness so that was a wonderful experience in rediscovering jefferson's
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understanding of the pursuit of happiness okay so i hope we can dig into some of these books and
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their schedules because it's just it was really fascinating to get a peek at how these guys thought about
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self-improvement how they scheduled their days in order to fulfill those goals let's talk about the
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intellectual environment these guys were growing up in that caused them to turn to classical writers
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in order to figure out what it means to live a good life so they were products of the enlightenment
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how did the enlightenment shape the founders reading habits it shaped it completely all of their
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their reading habits their whole worldview their political and their moral philosophy is based in
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this shining faith in the power of reason and the in the ability of individuals thinking for
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themselves to discover the truth and align their lives with divine reason which they thought was a
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synonym for the divine and there's just such a inspiring faith in the power of reason the ability of
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reason to be reconciled with faith and the ability of reason to achieve self-mastery this this antithesis
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that you find constantly in the enlightenment literature between reason and passion comes from pythagoras of
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all people the in addition to creating the triangle and inventing the harmonic system of triads and fifths
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it was pythagoras who drew this antithesis between reason in the head and passion in the heart and
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desire in the stomach and he said the goal of life is to use our powers of reason to moderate or temper
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our unreasonable passions and desires so that we can achieve calm tranquility self-mastery and live
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according to reason which is not only a a right but a divine duty and the enlightenment philosophers like
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lock and hutchison and the whig critics of the english tyranny all pick up this antithesis between reason and
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passion sometimes they disagree about whether or not reason is strong enough to overcome passion in particular
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circumstances but it's all in the service of moderation the aristotelian mean they're not saying that we should
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avoid passion or emotion but just that we should moderate our unproductive passions or emotions
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in particular anger and jealousy and fear so that we can achieve productive emotions like tranquility
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prudence justice and fortitude those are the classical virtues that were so important to all the founders
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so just this this wonderful consonance between the classical and the enlightenment faith in reason
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and a tremendous belief that the individual applying his or her powers of reason is able to achieve calm
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self-mastery and another theme you see in the enlightenment they've picked this up from
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the ancient writers from rome in ancient greece was that you had to you had a i don't want to say
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maybe yeah you had a duty to improve yourself because you wanted to live a flourishing life yourself
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but the idea is that as individuals pursued this idea of excellence or erite or eudaimonia of flourishing
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that will allow for a flourishing society exactly you're so right to phrase it as a duty to improve
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yourself and erite as you say is the core of aristotle's famous definition of happiness in the
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nicomachean ethics he defines happiness as an activity of the soul in conformity with excellence or
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virtue and because the phrase excellence arete is not self-defining and nor is virtue it can be confusing to us
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but it really means an excellence of the soul a moderation of the soul a self-control so that as you say
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we can achieve our potential and we have not only a right to achieve our potential but a duty to use our
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gifts and talents to as best we can so that we can be our best selves to use the modern formulation of
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it and to serve others and in so doing we're living a life according to reason aligning ourselves with
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the divine harmonies of the universe and fulfilling our highest purpose and you know in going back to the
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social element of this i think the founders were thinking you know we're going to try this republican
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form of government where there's more direct participation by individuals in their government
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in order for that to work we need everyone to be like i think jefferson called this like you have to
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be kind of an aristocrat of virtue and an aristocracy of virtue and talent you couldn't just be this sort of
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dolt to just like passively lived life if you're going to participate in government you yourself had to
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have sort of this aristocracy of the soul absolutely very very well put and it's this deep connection
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between personal self-government and political self-government i really hadn't understood this
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before reading the moral philosophy but the founders think that unless we can achieve a harmony of soul in the
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constitution of our own minds we won't be able to achieve similar harmony in the constitution of the state
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and more specifically unless we can restrain ourselves from being our angriest selves and you
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know tweeting uh and attacking and and retreating into our tribal factions uh we won't be able to
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deliberate in common and pursue the common good the founders are not at all sure that the experiment
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will work never before in human history have as a as a nation tried to test the experiment of whether
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we can be governed by reason and conviction not force or violence as hamilton says but that's the
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whole purpose of the experiment and it's all based on republican virtue okay so the founders believed this
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idea that you could develop yourself you can improve yourself through reason and they called it faculty
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psychology right where you try to use reason to temper your passions you don't kill your passions you use
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reason to direct your passions to the good let's talk about some of these books that influenced their
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thinking let's talk about that first one you mentioned cicero's tusculent disputations all the founders
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read this book a lot of them quoted from it in their commonplace books or in letters tell us about this
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book who was cicero and why did he write tusculent disputations cicero the great orator and political
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philosopher and moral philosopher of the roman era writes the tusculent disputations to console himself
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after the death of his daughter tulia he's also out of political favor and he retreats to his villa
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in tusculent and sets out to write a manual amazingly it's on grief and on the management of grief and it's
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really striking that the central source for the founders understanding of the pursuit of happiness
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was a book about grief management and it is divided into chapters about how to focus on controlling
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the only thing we can control which is our own thoughts and emotions and not the activities or
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fate that befalls others this is the famous stoic dichotomy of control and cicero is applying it to try
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to console himself after the death of his daughter in its most rigorous form the stoic advice about death
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was even grief over the loss of a loved one is not reasonable because if you look at things reasonably
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you want to accept whatever is as it ought to be and be grateful for the happy times you had with
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your daughter and recognize that things cannot be in any other way this is unrealistic for for most
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people abigail adams thought that the stoic advice of completely overcoming grief was too rigorous but
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jefferson finds it very consoling when his dad dies and he's about 14 years old and his beloved father
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peter jefferson has just died and jefferson copies out in his commonplace book passages from cicero
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to console himself and it's just remarkable to watch his mind work as he copies out these passages
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including the famous passage about how happiness is virtue which is tranquility of soul which is an old
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man in his 70s he would send out to young kids who wrote to him asking about the secret of happiness
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how did you think this book influenced you know thomas jefferson when he was developing the
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declaration of independence well when jefferson was developing the declaration he said he wasn't
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doing anything original but was just channeling the philosophy of the american mind by distilling
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ideas that were commonplace from public writers such as and he cited in particular cicero aristotle john
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lock and algernon sydney what i did is set out to read all the sources that jefferson relied on by
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looking first with the moral philosophy on his reading list and doing word searches for the pursuit
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of happiness and what just really was striking is that almost all of those sources the stoic and the
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enlightenment sources actually contained the phrase the pursuit of happiness and defined it as virtue rather
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than pleasure seeking and then i set out to read the other documents that jefferson had in front of
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him when he wrote the declaration that talked about happiness including george mason's virginia
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declaration of rights and james wilson's reflections on the extent of legislative authority in britain and
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they also contain the phrase pursuing happiness or pursuit of happiness and defined it in this sense of
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virtuous self-mastery so what's so striking is cicero is just one example and really the most frequently
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cited example because so many of the enlightenment sources themselves cite cicero but but one example of
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overwhelming consensus about the understanding of happiness as virtue shared by the classical sources the
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christian enlightenment sources whig revolutionary sources and civic republican sources and blackstone the
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legal commentator in other words this is everywhere it's completely a ubiquitous universally shared
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understanding of happiness but jefferson roots it in cicero okay so cicero had a very stoic idea
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of virtue and i i think it's interesting that he used in these other classical philosophers and
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as well as enlightenment philosophers and later thomas jefferson they said the pursuit it wasn't achieving
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happiness it's the pursuit like there's a virtue in just trying to be virtuous in
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if you think of virtue or being having a flourishing life as a practice instead of an acquisition
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that's what we're going for exactly and cicero himself says that the goal the quest is in the
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pursuit not in the obtaining because by definition perfect virtue is unattainable jesus enjoins us to
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attempt to be perfect but only jesus can be perfect or socrates there's a pythagoras a handful of sages
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throughout history can approach perfection but for ordinary humans it's just the quest and every day
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you're gonna fall short and fail but you can attempt to be more perfect as franklin so memorably said when
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he imagined life like a series of uh printer's errors that he hoped could be corrected in a future edition
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by the author it's a very humane but also demanding philosophy you have a duty as you said to try to become more perfect
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not only every day but every hour of the day to try to use your talents your time to stay focused live in the present
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so you can achieve your potential all the time recognizing that we're we're going to fall short and that the quest itself
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is the pursuit of happiness so one of the things that most the founding fathers did
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in this pursuit of happiness in this pursuit of using reason to temper their passions is they did
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self-examinations daily self-examinations you mentioned ben franklin's we can get into this a little bit more
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but the guy that inspired these daily self-examinations
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was pythagoras tell us about the pythagorean self-examination and what the founding fathers
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took from that pythagoras is so inspiring and i hope listeners will check out his 76 golden verses
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because they were really well read in the founding era they're really accessible and just good practical
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advice about how you can try to be more perfect and the core of the pythagoras system is
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daily self-examination every night before bed pythagoras says make a list of how you how well
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you've done and how well you've fallen short of trying to achieve the virtues of temperance prudence
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courage and justice and try to do better the next time a pythagoras you know i thought of him as the
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triangle guy but he lives on the isle of croton as a guru as a divine figure he's surrounded by
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disciples who emulate his rigorous asceticism in drink and eating he's a very committed vegetarian
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as ovid describes in his great account of pythagoras in the metamorphosis he has this weird exception for
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beans you're not allowed to touch beans and his disciples rather dive and touch beans which he
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thinks resemble fetuses and have the spirit of life in them but it's all about try to achieve
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perfection as a human being pythagoras tells his disciples to first be good and then live like
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gods and the way that you live like gods is by reverencing yourself that's pythagoras's motto and you do
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that through extraordinary mindfulness and self-discipline and moderation and that was his contribution and
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his central distinction between reason and passion as i said ends up being the core of classical moral
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philosophy we're gonna take a quick break for a word from our sponsors
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and now back to the show well tell us about some of the founding fathers pythagorean self-examinations
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they did so ben franklin famously had his 13 virtues and even developed this chart to track how he was
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doing we at we did a whole suit when i first started aom back in 2008 we did a whole series about ben
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franklin's 13 virtues i even made a um a ben franklin's virtue journal that people could buy but tell us more
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about this for those who aren't familiar that's so great that you did that i first encountered the
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virtues a few years ago in the hebrew version it turns out there was a hasidic rabbi in 1808 who
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really admired franklin and translated the virtues into hebrew and offered them up for jewish seekers of
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character improvement or musar which is the hebrew word and a local rabbi in washington dc recommended
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it to a friend and i and we tried it for a bit making a list every night of how we've fallen short
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with the various virtues of temperance and prudence and so forth like franklin we found it really
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depressing because you're always losing your temper and falling short every day but it was helpful in
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creating mindfulness about how to live and franklin got it not only from pythagoras but also from john
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locke whose book on education recommends a kind of self-examination and virtue this led franklin to
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form his famous club or junto to join of of men who are devoted to self-improvement in the hope of
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creating a united party of virtue of fellow self-improvement seekers around the world and and
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the basis of it is they're they're kind of uh support groups you're supposed to do it with friends
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and look closely at yourself and share what you find with others and try together to engage in
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self-improvement uh franklin although he gave up the virtues project in his 20s because he found it
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so rigorous never abandoned his hope of writing a book called the art of virtue until the end of his
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days he hoped that he would bring all of his wisdom into one place he never quite did but the the virtues
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project is the most enduring legacy that he could give us because it tells us in a practical way how to
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practice the art of virtue yeah so he had these 13 virtues that he focused on and he developed a
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chart for himself where he would put a black dot if he didn't live up to that virtue and the idea was
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to have the chart as blank as possible the more dots on it the more bespeckled his character was and so
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yeah the 13 virtues for those aren't familiar we had temperance silence order resolution frugality
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industry sincerity sincerity justice moderation cleanliness tranquility chastity then he added
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humility at the end and as you said thomas jefferson jefferson had a similar set of virtues he tried to
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live in his own life and the other thing that franklin did in addition to you know developing this virtue
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chart and kind of being very rational about his moral development he had a schedule that he set for
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himself and as part of his daily examination in the morning he would ask himself what good shall i do this
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day and then at the end of the day he would ask the question to himself what good have i done today
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and he was just he's trying to do that pythagorean thing he's like how have i gotten better throughout
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this day and again thomas jefferson did a similar thing as well so true and it's all about the schedule
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that's the most striking practical takeaway from the way all of these founders lived they were very mindful
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of time and would make lists of their schedule and would stick to the schedule they developed habits
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starting in youth about waking up early franklin famously early to bed early to rise makes a man
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healthy wealthy and wise he kind of condenses that from a more lugubrious version in a english
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virtue source and jefferson's reading list has a really demanding schedule associated with it
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and all of the founders keep up this mindful schedule of rigorous reading and writing until
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the end of their days and there's something so moving about seeing jefferson and adams as old men
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still getting up early doing their reading trading ideas about the latest books that they've read
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keeping up their correspondence they fell short on so many levels in the pursuit of virtue as we all did
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but the one virtue that many of them practiced until the end was industry just because they
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developed the habits ever since they were kids yeah i found that the most inspiring thing from this
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book is how these these guys really believe they can improve themselves and they they set their time
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their schedule to make that happen a lot of times we have these sort of vague ideas like i want to
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become better and it doesn't go anywhere because we don't make it concrete all these guys set a very
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strict schedule for themselves yeah ben franklin he had a schedule he was up at five he says rise
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wash and address powerful goodness contrive business and take the resolution of the day that's when he
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asked himself what good shall i do this day that was from five until seven eight to eleven he worked
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from twelve to one he read and overlooked his accounts did some lunch had a working lunch two to five
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did some more work and then six to nine he was kind of putting things in their place supper music or
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diversion or conversation and then do his examination of the day and then from ten to five he slept and
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then thomas jefferson he like you said he had this schedule that he started when he was a kid
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he was up early and not only was he doing the reading that he set for himself he also scheduled physical
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exercise absolutely that's the most inspiring thing for me too it's so remarkable to see how much
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these guys accomplished by mindfulness about time and keeping up their youthful schedules and it changed
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my life i mean i i followed the jefferson schedule got up did my reading watch the sunrise i found myself
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writing these weird sonnets to kind of sum up the wisdom that i'd learned just because i wanted to kind
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of encapsulate it in some form and found that lots of people in the founding era wrote sonnets or poems
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about this literature and since finishing the book i've tried to keep up a version of the jefferson
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schedule and the simple rule that i'm carrying forward is i'm not allowed to browse in the morning
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until i've done reading or some other creative work and you know there's a difference between reading
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books and browsing blogs and just being not allowed to check email or do anything else until
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i've read a real book it's changed my life because i've gotten out of the habit of reading for stuff
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that was outside of my immediate deadlines and now reading books just to learn is transformative
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and this is what would so inspired me about the founders i mean just adams and jefferson just think
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of it in their in their 70s and 80s still excitedly learning about pythagorean moral philosophy and
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adams exploring the connections between pythagoras and the hindu vedas and they never stopped learning
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and growing and that for them was the definition of the pursuit of happiness being lifelong learners
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and if they could find time with all the depredations of 18th century living and the freezing cold and
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the disease and just the sheer difficulty of life and the difficulty of having access to books which
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they they just had to you know yearn for to get imported and then i contrast that with the fact
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that i was able to write this whole book sitting on my couch because all the books in the world are
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free and online and all i need is the self-discipline to actually read them and to swipe left to the
00:27:38.960
kindle and not write to the blog or to email so it's very inspiring the founder schedules in their own
00:27:44.820
lifetime inspired others and i'm so grateful to have encountered their mindfulness about time
00:27:50.980
so yeah i think the big takeaway from the founders that i got is like yeah if you have a goal of
00:27:56.140
self-improvement you got to put it on the calendar if it's not on the calendar it's not going to happen
00:28:01.280
what i thought was interesting too and you hide you do this in the book is you focus on a founder
00:28:06.580
in each chapter and it seems like each founder had their own personal issues that they were trying to
00:28:15.560
sort out and master with their reading let's talk about john adams what was john adams biggest flaw
00:28:22.360
that he worked on during his entire life and then we'll talk about how his reading helped him
00:28:26.760
conquer that or master it his biggest flaw was vanity anyone who's a fan of the old musical 1776
00:28:34.100
remembers i'm obnoxious and disliked that cannot be denied and he's constantly ridiculed for his
00:28:39.820
self-importance he wants the president to be called his elective majesty and people mock adams as
00:28:45.200
his rotundity and he's losing his temper all the time and storming that he's not getting enough credit
00:28:51.320
for the revolution he says adams was the actual author of the declaration of independence you know he
00:28:56.860
speaks of himself in the third person and it's not fair that jefferson and the grand franklin are
00:29:02.220
getting all the credit and his wife abigail recognizes this as his flaw when they're courting
00:29:08.960
they decide to make a list of each other's faults which is a dangerous dating strategy but they in the
00:29:14.720
pythagorean spirit do that and the flaws that abigail notes for john are that people think that he's
00:29:22.320
intellectually intimidating and haughty because he's so brilliant you know she puts it in a generous way
00:29:27.420
and then he counters well your flaws or you're not practicing the piano or reading enough and you're
00:29:32.720
pigeon-toed and she says well a gentleman shouldn't comment on a lady's posture but adams recognizes his
00:29:38.460
own vanity and self-importance and is constantly trying to subjugate it ever since he was a student a
00:29:45.000
young student in college and copying passage from the classics into his diary and the most endearing
00:29:52.160
thing about adams is that he wears his heart on his sleeve and he in the end does conquer this
00:29:58.620
ruling passion of vanity he has terrible blowouts with two close friends mercy otis warren the
00:30:05.820
anti-federalist and jefferson who he fights with in the famous election of 1800 but the most significant
00:30:13.500
thing is that he reconciles with both of them and after falling out over politics he gets back together
00:30:19.480
with mercy otis warren and certifies to her poetical genius in writing the plays that sparked the
00:30:24.660
revolution and with jefferson it's just incredibly moving that he's able to set aside all the partisanship
00:30:30.240
that divided them in that election and to have this spectacular correspondence as old men where they
00:30:37.120
confess jefferson says i i you know i love you it's it's really very striking and beautiful so that's
00:30:45.320
adams and he is quite relatable to use our phrase in both his struggles with his own vanity and
00:30:53.300
ultimately his success in overcoming it yeah i mean in his diary he talks about this he says vanity i am
00:30:59.900
sensible is my cardinal sin and cardinal folly and then he says this oh that i could conquer my natural
00:31:07.080
pride and self-conceit acquire that meekness and humility which are the sure marks and characters of a
00:31:12.540
great and generous soul and subdue every unworthy passion yeah i mean he was very self-aware and i
00:31:18.240
think that's the big key with all the founding fathers they were self-aware of their flaws they
00:31:24.540
might might have been successful all the time in conquering them but they kept working at it and i
00:31:30.100
want to talk more about abigail adams i thought it was really interesting their marriage is we have all
00:31:35.320
their letters so we could see their correspondences and a lot of the times they were talking about
00:31:39.800
moral philosophy and how we can become better people so that we can form this new country that
00:31:45.700
we're trying to do here and the takeaway i got from there is the importance of another person
00:31:50.880
in your own personal development you can't do it on your own you can't do it in a vacuum
00:31:54.880
that's a great way to put it yeah it's it's so moving to see john and abigail engaged in this mutual
00:32:02.000
quest for self-improvement they have a romantic partnership and intellectual partnership and a
00:32:07.860
joint commitment to self-improvement and abigail gets it from the same classical moral philosophy
00:32:14.360
and the same enlightenment novels and poems that john does and she's not allowed to go to harvard
00:32:20.100
the way the guys are um but she educates herself by reading books of the classics recommended by john
00:32:28.280
and by his friend richard cratch and she takes from her reading of alexander pope and lawrence stern
00:32:36.380
her favorite one of her favorite novelists and others the central importance of using your powers
00:32:42.800
of reason to subjugate your passions and she's always exhorting john and their son john quincy and their
00:32:49.680
other kids to be perfect and i thought that having a jewish mom was tough having a puritan mom was even
00:32:56.720
tougher for john quincy adams because she's constantly telling him subjugate your passions she loves to
00:33:02.460
quote the proverb he was slow to anger is greater than he who's conquered a village and endlessly
00:33:08.460
telling her kids her husband and herself to be better all the while rooted in this great moral
00:33:17.100
philosophy yeah abigail and john's marriage is very inspiring and again that idea of bringing in
00:33:24.140
another person into your personal development you see that with ben franklin right you mentioned he
00:33:28.100
started the the junto or the junto it's like a mutual self-improvement club where everyone got
00:33:32.840
together and they shared here's what i'm working on how can i get better so i think we're coming up
00:33:38.080
with a great formula here for like the founder's guide to self-improvement one read great books
00:33:44.000
two practice daily self-examinations and then three make sure you have another person you're doing
00:33:51.200
this with other people because you can't do it on your own exactly that's just it and read every day
00:33:57.600
and read deeply and rediscover the radically empowering practice of deep reading let's talk
00:34:04.360
about george washington so we think of george washington we see pictures of him or statues and
00:34:08.140
he's very regal stoic looking unflappable but this guy he's a redhead we see him in his white
00:34:16.100
wig but he was a redhead he he had a fire he was passionate tell us about how the classics
00:34:21.720
helped washington get a handle on his temper washington loves seneca whose essay on time is
00:34:30.560
so inspiring time is a gift repaid by industry by squandering it what fools these mortals be says
00:34:36.640
seneca in the famous phrase quoted by shakespeare and washington is obsessed with time he's got clocks
00:34:41.900
everywhere at mount vernon he keeps up a rigorous daily schedule always eating and exercising and doing
00:34:47.780
his work at the same times and he struggles ever since he was a kid to control his temper he's got
00:34:54.780
a very critical mother and ron cherno his great biographer thinks it may have been washington's
00:35:01.220
effort to control himself in the face of his mother's nagging that led to his devotion to self-mastery
00:35:08.740
he's observed to lose his temper in public on very few occasions it's so notable because it's so rare
00:35:15.260
both on the battlefield and in the white house or in the presidency and his power comes from his
00:35:22.760
self-mastery and the moments when he's viewed as greatest are these moments where he's mastering
00:35:29.060
himself at newberg when the soldiers are rebelling he exhorts them to achieve patience in not mutining but
00:35:38.140
waiting for congress to make them whole and give them their back pay and he mounts the temple of virtue
00:35:43.740
and makes an appeal for self-mastery and the soldiers weep because they've never seen him confess
00:35:50.100
weakness before as he does when putting on his reading glasses and and really it's just the force
00:35:55.280
of washington's towering character that makes him the greatest american of his age by all accounts he
00:36:02.920
presides over the constitutional convention he doesn't say much he practices silence and and self-control
00:36:09.460
but it's the self-mastered presence of his towering authority that allows the whole convention to
00:36:15.020
create a strong presidency because they know he's going to be the president and they trust him and
00:36:19.220
they revere him so washington really appears almost greater the closer you look at him and his greatness
00:36:25.900
comes from his self-mastery so one character that i found incredibly relatable was john quincy adams
00:36:31.580
this is john adams son tell us about john quincy's personality and disposition i think he's my favorite of the
00:36:39.340
bunch because he's both so relatable and so transparent about his own struggles to master his passions and to
00:36:48.120
achieve his potential as we said he's got his mom just on his case from the very beginning telling him to
00:36:55.320
master his passions and this creates this lifelong sense that he's not doing enough there's that amazing moment when
00:37:00.900
he's in his early 30s he's just turned down a supreme court appointment he's ministered to saint
00:37:06.160
petersburg and he writes in his diary i'm 30 something years old i haven't achieved anything i'm not working
00:37:12.640
hard enough i'm spending too much time at the theater and i'm drinking too much if only i could have more
00:37:18.200
self-discipline i might have ended war and slavery he puts a very high bar for himself but then he has this
00:37:25.340
incredible challenge as these knights of the soul he's in the white house and his oldest son george
00:37:31.740
washington adams commits suicide the the boy can't take the pressure of the name george washington adams
00:37:38.260
and also being adams's oldest son and he descends into alcoholism and jumps off a steamship and adams is
00:37:45.040
crushed by the extraordinary sorrow of this loss and he doesn't know if he can continue what does he do
00:37:51.300
he spends a year rereading cicero in the original in particular his favorite book the tusculum disputations
00:37:57.600
he writes sonnets in the morning based on his reading and he emerges from this after losing the
00:38:03.720
presidency and determines to reinvent himself as the greatest abolitionist of his age and he denounces
00:38:10.160
slavery on the floor of congress he introduces a constitutional amendment to end slavery and he dies on
00:38:17.700
the floor of congress after voting against the mexican war he collapses of a stroke and while he's
00:38:22.980
on a couch his last words which he murmurs are i am composed and he gets this from cicero from the
00:38:30.260
tusculum disputations that the perfectly composed man is he who's achieved the tranquility of soul that
00:38:35.620
defines virtue and happiness it's this incredibly mindful brave and virtuous life and death all within the
00:38:45.800
framework of classical moral philosophy i think uh john quincy he probably had depression he seemed
00:38:52.560
like he was a depressive he's focused on the negative a lot you can see that in his diary entries
00:38:58.120
did a lot of rumination it's like oh i just i'm a total screw-up i i wasn't a supreme court justice
00:39:04.640
what's going on and i think that that's relatable and that's another thing about john quincy is he used
00:39:10.860
his diary or his journal as another tool in his self-improvement and all the other founders did
00:39:16.100
this as well they use their diary as almost like a therapist they use their writing as a way to use
00:39:22.860
reason to temper their passions completely i completely agree about how relatable he is and
00:39:31.800
it's perhaps the greatest diary of any american president because it's so candid and so transparent
00:39:37.700
and so he's really hard on himself but he is always trying to do better he did struggle with
00:39:43.700
depression and as you said he does use the diary as a antidote to it and he also uses cicero as an
00:39:49.740
antidote to depression because the whole point of the philosophy of course is to view things
00:39:55.520
realistically to focus on controlling your own thoughts and emotions which is all that you can
00:40:00.100
control he's the boylston professor of rhetoric at harvard and gives lectures on how to control the
00:40:07.100
passions to be an effective advocate as well as to be a happy person he uses those lectures and those
00:40:13.620
tips in arguing the great supreme court amistad case freeing the amistad captives which folks may
00:40:19.460
remember from the recent movie and he hadn't been a abolitionist before his reflection but he becomes
00:40:28.840
convinced that slavery violates the declaration of independence and the bible and he reads the bible very
00:40:35.280
closely and chooses a passage where jesus promises liberty to all the captives and says that that's
00:40:41.340
a prophecy of the end of slavery there's also this amazing speech that adams gave on the jubilee of the
00:40:48.460
constitution in 1839 about the urgent importance of studying the principles of the declaration of
00:40:54.180
independence and the constitution to save the republic and he says he quotes the book of deuteronomy and says
00:41:00.400
take these principles of the declaration of the constitution and put them as frontlets between
00:41:05.480
your eyes whisper them to your children before you sleep and while you wake and make them the very
00:41:12.120
keystone of the ark of your salvation it's done with such messianic fervor and he really believes that
00:41:18.260
these principles are key to ending slavery and preserving the republic okay so the founders we've talked
00:41:24.680
about it's all about developing your own personal virtue but the idea is that as individuals
00:41:29.560
pursued this idea of excellence or flourishing that will allow for a flourishing society so like we
00:41:37.500
said take away read great books never stop reading them reread them set a schedule for yourself for your
00:41:44.240
own virtue development have friends who can help you in that process and i think from john quincy
00:41:50.080
we can learn keep a diary use your diary as a way to work through this stuff i want to go back i just saw
00:41:56.860
i just came across this you mentioned that jefferson jefferson had this list of books that he would
00:42:01.900
recommend over and over again and here they are we'll put a link to this in the show notes as well
00:42:06.440
but you have a selected list here there's 10 books you have locke's conduct of the understanding in the
00:42:11.820
search of truth xenophon's memoirs of socrates epictetus stoic philosopher marcus aurelius
00:42:18.880
another stoic philosopher cynica another stoic philosopher cicero's offices another stoic cicero's
00:42:26.620
tusculin questions or disputations number eight lord bolingbroke i like that name bolingbroke's
00:42:32.860
philosophical works hume's essays and lord kame's natural religion so those are those 10 books if
00:42:38.860
there are those who want to check that out well jeffrey this has been a great conversation where can
00:42:43.460
people got to learn more about the book in your work constitution center dot org it's the most
00:42:49.880
amazing platform that the national constitution center offers the core of it is an interactive
00:42:55.700
constitution that's now gotten 70 million hits since we launched in 2015 and is among the most
00:43:00.620
googled constitutions in the world you can click on any clause of the constitution and find the
00:43:05.100
greatest liberal and conservative scholars judges and thought leaders in america exploring areas of
00:43:10.360
agreement and disagreement about every aspect of the constitution there's the weekly podcast i host
00:43:15.180
we the people which brings together liberals and conservatives to talk about constitutional issues
00:43:19.480
in the news and throughout history constitution 101 classes for learners of all ages and primary source
00:43:25.980
documents which are so crucial in learning and spreading light so it's just so meaningful to work at the
00:43:33.760
constitution center and to offer up all these great free resources and it's great to meet your
00:43:39.280
listeners and to be part of their quest for self-improvement well jeffrey rosen thanks for
00:43:44.560
your time it's been a pleasure thank you my guest here is jeffrey rosen he's the author of the book
00:43:49.520
the pursuit of happiness it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find more
00:43:53.520
information about his work at his website constitutioncenter.org also check out our show notes at
00:43:57.680
aom.is slash pursuit of happiness where you find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic
00:44:02.160
well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at
00:44:13.520
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00:44:17.260
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