The Art of Manliness - Books, Routines, and Habits： The Founders' Guide to Self-Improvement

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:10.900 a lot of self-improvement advice and content feels empty and there's a reason for that it

00:00:16.100 often offers routines and habits to practice but doesn't offer a strong overarching reason

00:00:20.520 to practice them that's why the self-improvement advice of the founding fathers is particularly

00:00:24.620 compelling though they were imperfect men they had a clear why for trying to become better than

00:00:29.280 they were for the founders life was about the pursuit of happiness and they equated happiness

00:00:34.100 with excellence and virtue a state that wasn't about feeling good but being good the founders

00:00:39.720 pursued happiness not only for the personal benefit and satisfaction and tranquility it conferred but

00:00:44.380 for the way the attainment of virtue would benefit society as a whole they believe that political

00:00:48.800 self-government required personal self-government today on the show jeffrey rosen professor of law

00:00:54.140 the president of the national constitution center and the author of the pursuit of happiness

00:00:57.860 shares the book the founders read that particularly influenced their idea of happiness as virtue and

00:01:02.560 self-mastery we talked about the schedules and routines the founders kept the self-examination

00:01:06.960 practices they did to improve their character and how they worked on their flaws believing that

00:01:11.520 while moral perfection was ultimately an impossible goal to obtain it was still something worth striving for

00:01:16.920 after the show's over check out our show notes at awim.is slash pursuit of happiness

00:01:21.120 all right jeffrey rosen welcome to the show great to be here so you got a new book out called the

00:01:37.300 pursuit of happiness how classical writers on virtue inspire the lies of the founders and defined america

00:01:43.400 and this is a really fantastic book i really loved reading it it was great getting into the minds of

00:01:49.460 the founding fathers and what you do is you take readers on a journey through the books that the

00:01:55.800 founding fathers read that shaped their thinking as they were trying to figure out what is this new

00:02:00.860 government going to be in the united states and specifically you wanted to figure out what thomas

00:02:06.200 jefferson meant by the pursuit of happiness in the declaration of independence what led you to take

00:02:12.380 this exploration it was a series of synchronicities during covet that led to this project first i was

00:02:20.420 rereading ben franklin's attempt to achieve moral perfection in his 20s he made a list of 13 virtues

00:02:28.420 that he tried to live up to and practice every day classical virtues industry temperance prudence he

00:02:34.800 saves the ones he finds hardest for last which is humility and puts x marks next to the virtues where

00:02:40.560 he fell short he tried it for a while he found it was depressing because there were so many x marks but

00:02:44.860 he was a better person for having tried i noticed during covet that he chose as his motto a book by

00:02:50.700 cicero that i'd never heard of called the tusculent disputations and he said without virtue happiness

00:02:56.440 cannot be a few weeks later i was at the boars head inn in charlottesville virginia which is on the uva

00:03:02.060 campus and on the wall i noticed this list of 12 virtues that thomas jefferson had made for his

00:03:08.800 daughters they looked a lot like franklin's silence resolution industry and so forth jefferson leaves

00:03:15.040 off one that's on franklin's list which is chastity but jefferson chooses as his motto also this cicero

00:03:22.540 book the tusculent disputations so basically during covet i thought i've got to read cicero because it's so

00:03:27.540 important to hamilton or rather to franklin and to jefferson but what else to read and then i found

00:03:33.500 this amazing reading list that jefferson would send to anyone who asked him when he was old how to be

00:03:40.380 educated and it's very comprehensive it has literature and political philosophy and science and history

00:03:48.240 and a very rigorous schedule about when you read which books at what time it's kind of 12 hours of

00:03:53.940 reading starting before sunrise and going until evening but what caught my eye was the section

00:03:58.980 called moral philosophy or natural religion or ethics and there was cicero the tusculent disputations

00:04:05.080 along with marcus aurelius and seneca and epictetus other stoic and classical philosophers as well as

00:04:13.140 enlightenment philosophers like francis hutcheson and bolingbroke and david hume so basically i thought

00:04:20.420 i've got to read these books i've had this wonderful liberal arts education i've studied

00:04:24.740 history and politics and english literature and american literature and law with great teachers

00:04:30.360 in wonderful universities i missed these books because they'd just fallen out of the curriculum by

00:04:36.100 the time i was in college during covet i i resolved to read the books i followed jefferson's schedule

00:04:42.060 got up before sunrise read for an hour or two watch the sunrise and what i learned transformed

00:04:49.620 my understanding of the pursuit of happiness how to be a good person and how to be a good citizen and

00:04:54.840 all of these books confirmed what cicero said that for the classical philosophers happiness meant

00:05:01.760 not feeling good but being good not the pursuit of immediate pleasure but the pursuit of long-term

00:05:07.500 virtue and they define virtue as self-mastery self-improvement character improvement being your best

00:05:14.060 self and mastering your unreasonable passions or emotions so you could achieve the calm tranquility

00:05:21.780 that for them defined happiness so that was a wonderful experience in rediscovering jefferson's

00:05:28.840 understanding of the pursuit of happiness okay so i hope we can dig into some of these books and

00:05:32.960 their schedules because it's just it was really fascinating to get a peek at how these guys thought about

00:05:38.700 self-improvement how they scheduled their days in order to fulfill those goals let's talk about the

00:05:44.020 intellectual environment these guys were growing up in that caused them to turn to classical writers

00:05:51.660 in order to figure out what it means to live a good life so they were products of the enlightenment

00:05:56.960 how did the enlightenment shape the founders reading habits it shaped it completely all of their

00:06:05.040 their reading habits their whole worldview their political and their moral philosophy is based in

00:06:10.240 this shining faith in the power of reason and the in the ability of individuals thinking for

00:06:16.920 themselves to discover the truth and align their lives with divine reason which they thought was a

00:06:25.320 synonym for the divine and there's just such a inspiring faith in the power of reason the ability of

00:06:33.060 reason to be reconciled with faith and the ability of reason to achieve self-mastery this this antithesis

00:06:42.340 that you find constantly in the enlightenment literature between reason and passion comes from pythagoras of

00:06:49.140 all people the in addition to creating the triangle and inventing the harmonic system of triads and fifths

00:06:57.260 it was pythagoras who drew this antithesis between reason in the head and passion in the heart and

00:07:04.700 desire in the stomach and he said the goal of life is to use our powers of reason to moderate or temper

00:07:11.480 our unreasonable passions and desires so that we can achieve calm tranquility self-mastery and live

00:07:18.280 according to reason which is not only a a right but a divine duty and the enlightenment philosophers like

00:07:24.860 lock and hutchison and the whig critics of the english tyranny all pick up this antithesis between reason and 0.91

00:07:33.460 passion sometimes they disagree about whether or not reason is strong enough to overcome passion in particular

00:07:39.240 circumstances but it's all in the service of moderation the aristotelian mean they're not saying that we should

00:07:47.980 avoid passion or emotion but just that we should moderate our unproductive passions or emotions

00:07:54.660 in particular anger and jealousy and fear so that we can achieve productive emotions like tranquility

00:08:01.920 prudence justice and fortitude those are the classical virtues that were so important to all the founders

00:08:08.380 so just this this wonderful consonance between the classical and the enlightenment faith in reason

00:08:15.520 and a tremendous belief that the individual applying his or her powers of reason is able to achieve calm

00:08:24.980 self-mastery and another theme you see in the enlightenment they've picked this up from

00:08:29.440 the ancient writers from rome in ancient greece was that you had to you had a i don't want to say

00:08:36.220 maybe yeah you had a duty to improve yourself because you wanted to live a flourishing life yourself

00:08:40.500 but the idea is that as individuals pursued this idea of excellence or erite or eudaimonia of flourishing

00:08:48.980 that will allow for a flourishing society exactly you're so right to phrase it as a duty to improve

00:08:56.600 yourself and erite as you say is the core of aristotle's famous definition of happiness in the

00:09:03.240 nicomachean ethics he defines happiness as an activity of the soul in conformity with excellence or

00:09:10.080 virtue and because the phrase excellence arete is not self-defining and nor is virtue it can be confusing to us

00:09:18.000 but it really means an excellence of the soul a moderation of the soul a self-control so that as you say

00:09:26.260 we can achieve our potential and we have not only a right to achieve our potential but a duty to use our

00:09:32.900 gifts and talents to as best we can so that we can be our best selves to use the modern formulation of

00:09:40.020 it and to serve others and in so doing we're living a life according to reason aligning ourselves with

00:09:45.700 the divine harmonies of the universe and fulfilling our highest purpose and you know in going back to the

00:09:52.180 social element of this i think the founders were thinking you know we're going to try this republican

00:09:57.340 form of government where there's more direct participation by individuals in their government

00:10:03.120 in order for that to work we need everyone to be like i think jefferson called this like you have to

00:10:08.480 be kind of an aristocrat of virtue and an aristocracy of virtue and talent you couldn't just be this sort of

00:10:14.940 dolt to just like passively lived life if you're going to participate in government you yourself had to

00:10:21.360 have sort of this aristocracy of the soul absolutely very very well put and it's this deep connection

00:10:28.440 between personal self-government and political self-government i really hadn't understood this

00:10:32.980 before reading the moral philosophy but the founders think that unless we can achieve a harmony of soul in the

00:10:41.340 constitution of our own minds we won't be able to achieve similar harmony in the constitution of the state

00:10:46.700 and more specifically unless we can restrain ourselves from being our angriest selves and you

00:10:53.660 know tweeting uh and attacking and and retreating into our tribal factions uh we won't be able to

00:11:00.420 deliberate in common and pursue the common good the founders are not at all sure that the experiment

00:11:06.100 will work never before in human history have as a as a nation tried to test the experiment of whether

00:11:13.280 we can be governed by reason and conviction not force or violence as hamilton says but that's the

00:11:18.720 whole purpose of the experiment and it's all based on republican virtue okay so the founders believed this

00:11:25.100 idea that you could develop yourself you can improve yourself through reason and they called it faculty

00:11:30.500 psychology right where you try to use reason to temper your passions you don't kill your passions you use

00:11:36.580 reason to direct your passions to the good let's talk about some of these books that influenced their

00:11:41.420 thinking let's talk about that first one you mentioned cicero's tusculent disputations all the founders

00:11:46.760 read this book a lot of them quoted from it in their commonplace books or in letters tell us about this

00:11:53.380 book who was cicero and why did he write tusculent disputations cicero the great orator and political

00:12:03.340 philosopher and moral philosopher of the roman era writes the tusculent disputations to console himself

00:12:11.080 after the death of his daughter tulia he's also out of political favor and he retreats to his villa

00:12:17.460 in tusculent and sets out to write a manual amazingly it's on grief and on the management of grief and it's

00:12:25.320 really striking that the central source for the founders understanding of the pursuit of happiness

00:12:29.140 was a book about grief management and it is divided into chapters about how to focus on controlling

00:12:38.020 the only thing we can control which is our own thoughts and emotions and not the activities or

00:12:43.780 fate that befalls others this is the famous stoic dichotomy of control and cicero is applying it to try

00:12:51.300 to console himself after the death of his daughter in its most rigorous form the stoic advice about death

00:12:58.280 was even grief over the loss of a loved one is not reasonable because if you look at things reasonably

00:13:05.160 you want to accept whatever is as it ought to be and be grateful for the happy times you had with

00:13:12.400 your daughter and recognize that things cannot be in any other way this is unrealistic for for most

00:13:19.900 people abigail adams thought that the stoic advice of completely overcoming grief was too rigorous but

00:13:27.900 jefferson finds it very consoling when his dad dies and he's about 14 years old and his beloved father

00:13:34.220 peter jefferson has just died and jefferson copies out in his commonplace book passages from cicero

00:13:40.960 to console himself and it's just remarkable to watch his mind work as he copies out these passages

00:13:46.900 including the famous passage about how happiness is virtue which is tranquility of soul which is an old

00:13:54.060 man in his 70s he would send out to young kids who wrote to him asking about the secret of happiness

00:14:01.000 how did you think this book influenced you know thomas jefferson when he was developing the

00:14:06.980 declaration of independence well when jefferson was developing the declaration he said he wasn't

00:14:13.100 doing anything original but was just channeling the philosophy of the american mind by distilling

00:14:19.720 ideas that were commonplace from public writers such as and he cited in particular cicero aristotle john

00:14:28.060 lock and algernon sydney what i did is set out to read all the sources that jefferson relied on by

00:14:36.040 looking first with the moral philosophy on his reading list and doing word searches for the pursuit

00:14:40.940 of happiness and what just really was striking is that almost all of those sources the stoic and the

00:14:46.500 enlightenment sources actually contained the phrase the pursuit of happiness and defined it as virtue rather

00:14:52.920 than pleasure seeking and then i set out to read the other documents that jefferson had in front of

00:14:57.900 him when he wrote the declaration that talked about happiness including george mason's virginia

00:15:02.240 declaration of rights and james wilson's reflections on the extent of legislative authority in britain and

00:15:08.680 they also contain the phrase pursuing happiness or pursuit of happiness and defined it in this sense of

00:15:14.460 virtuous self-mastery so what's so striking is cicero is just one example and really the most frequently

00:15:21.580 cited example because so many of the enlightenment sources themselves cite cicero but but one example of

00:15:28.180 overwhelming consensus about the understanding of happiness as virtue shared by the classical sources the

00:15:35.840 christian enlightenment sources whig revolutionary sources and civic republican sources and blackstone the

00:15:43.300 legal commentator in other words this is everywhere it's completely a ubiquitous universally shared

00:15:48.840 understanding of happiness but jefferson roots it in cicero okay so cicero had a very stoic idea

00:15:55.960 of virtue and i i think it's interesting that he used in these other classical philosophers and

00:16:02.140 as well as enlightenment philosophers and later thomas jefferson they said the pursuit it wasn't achieving

00:16:07.900 happiness it's the pursuit like there's a virtue in just trying to be virtuous in

00:16:13.180 if you think of virtue or being having a flourishing life as a practice instead of an acquisition

00:16:19.160 that's what we're going for exactly and cicero himself says that the goal the quest is in the

00:16:26.280 pursuit not in the obtaining because by definition perfect virtue is unattainable jesus enjoins us to

00:16:33.860 attempt to be perfect but only jesus can be perfect or socrates there's a pythagoras a handful of sages

00:16:40.520 throughout history can approach perfection but for ordinary humans it's just the quest and every day

00:16:46.420 you're gonna fall short and fail but you can attempt to be more perfect as franklin so memorably said when

00:16:52.980 he imagined life like a series of uh printer's errors that he hoped could be corrected in a future edition

00:16:59.680 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

00:17:10.060 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

00:17:17.580 so you can achieve your potential all the time recognizing that we're we're going to fall short and that the quest itself

00:17:24.680 is the pursuit of happiness so one of the things that most the founding fathers did

00:17:29.940 in this pursuit of happiness in this pursuit of using reason to temper their passions is they did

00:17:36.800 self-examinations daily self-examinations you mentioned ben franklin's we can get into this a little bit more

00:17:42.680 but the guy that inspired these daily self-examinations

00:17:46.680 was pythagoras tell us about the pythagorean self-examination and what the founding fathers

00:17:54.300 took from that pythagoras is so inspiring and i hope listeners will check out his 76 golden verses

00:18:03.560 because they were really well read in the founding era they're really accessible and just good practical

00:18:10.760 advice about how you can try to be more perfect and the core of the pythagoras system is

00:18:16.660 daily self-examination every night before bed pythagoras says make a list of how you how well

00:18:24.380 you've done and how well you've fallen short of trying to achieve the virtues of temperance prudence

00:18:30.100 courage and justice and try to do better the next time a pythagoras you know i thought of him as the

00:18:37.840 triangle guy but he lives on the isle of croton as a guru as a divine figure he's surrounded by

00:18:45.120 disciples who emulate his rigorous asceticism in drink and eating he's a very committed vegetarian

00:18:54.840 as ovid describes in his great account of pythagoras in the metamorphosis he has this weird exception for

00:19:02.260 beans you're not allowed to touch beans and his disciples rather dive and touch beans which he

00:19:08.800 thinks resemble fetuses and have the spirit of life in them but it's all about try to achieve

00:19:15.960 perfection as a human being pythagoras tells his disciples to first be good and then live like

00:19:22.060 gods and the way that you live like gods is by reverencing yourself that's pythagoras's motto and you do

00:19:29.580 that through extraordinary mindfulness and self-discipline and moderation and that was his contribution and

00:19:39.120 his central distinction between reason and passion as i said ends up being the core of classical moral

00:19:46.040 philosophy we're gonna take a quick break for a word from our sponsors

00:19:49.480 and now back to the show well tell us about some of the founding fathers pythagorean self-examinations

00:20:00.520 they did so ben franklin famously had his 13 virtues and even developed this chart to track how he was

00:20:06.960 doing we at we did a whole suit when i first started aom back in 2008 we did a whole series about ben

00:20:11.760 franklin's 13 virtues i even made a um a ben franklin's virtue journal that people could buy but tell us more

00:20:18.740 about this for those who aren't familiar that's so great that you did that i first encountered the

00:20:23.760 virtues a few years ago in the hebrew version it turns out there was a hasidic rabbi in 1808 who

00:20:30.040 really admired franklin and translated the virtues into hebrew and offered them up for jewish seekers of

00:20:36.640 character improvement or musar which is the hebrew word and a local rabbi in washington dc recommended

00:20:42.300 it to a friend and i and we tried it for a bit making a list every night of how we've fallen short

00:20:48.500 with the various virtues of temperance and prudence and so forth like franklin we found it really

00:20:53.560 depressing because you're always losing your temper and falling short every day but it was helpful in

00:20:59.900 creating mindfulness about how to live and franklin got it not only from pythagoras but also from john

00:21:08.320 locke whose book on education recommends a kind of self-examination and virtue this led franklin to

00:21:16.320 form his famous club or junto to join of of men who are devoted to self-improvement in the hope of

00:21:24.320 creating a united party of virtue of fellow self-improvement seekers around the world and and

00:21:31.320 the basis of it is they're they're kind of uh support groups you're supposed to do it with friends

00:21:36.100 and look closely at yourself and share what you find with others and try together to engage in

00:21:43.420 self-improvement uh franklin although he gave up the virtues project in his 20s because he found it

00:21:50.340 so rigorous never abandoned his hope of writing a book called the art of virtue until the end of his

00:21:56.460 days he hoped that he would bring all of his wisdom into one place he never quite did but the the virtues

00:22:02.320 project is the most enduring legacy that he could give us because it tells us in a practical way how to

00:22:08.380 practice the art of virtue yeah so he had these 13 virtues that he focused on and he developed a

00:22:12.940 chart for himself where he would put a black dot if he didn't live up to that virtue and the idea was

00:22:20.100 to have the chart as blank as possible the more dots on it the more bespeckled his character was and so

00:22:28.440 yeah the 13 virtues for those aren't familiar we had temperance silence order resolution frugality

00:22:34.020 industry sincerity sincerity justice moderation cleanliness tranquility chastity then he added

00:22:41.260 humility at the end and as you said thomas jefferson jefferson had a similar set of virtues he tried to

00:22:47.140 live in his own life and the other thing that franklin did in addition to you know developing this virtue

00:22:51.760 chart and kind of being very rational about his moral development he had a schedule that he set for

00:22:56.640 himself and as part of his daily examination in the morning he would ask himself what good shall i do this

00:23:03.700 day and then at the end of the day he would ask the question to himself what good have i done today

00:23:10.560 and he was just he's trying to do that pythagorean thing he's like how have i gotten better throughout

00:23:14.860 this day and again thomas jefferson did a similar thing as well so true and it's all about the schedule

00:23:20.620 that's the most striking practical takeaway from the way all of these founders lived they were very mindful

00:23:27.180 of time and would make lists of their schedule and would stick to the schedule they developed habits

00:23:33.820 starting in youth about waking up early franklin famously early to bed early to rise makes a man

00:23:39.420 healthy wealthy and wise he kind of condenses that from a more lugubrious version in a english

00:23:44.300 virtue source and jefferson's reading list has a really demanding schedule associated with it

00:23:51.720 and all of the founders keep up this mindful schedule of rigorous reading and writing until

00:23:58.520 the end of their days and there's something so moving about seeing jefferson and adams as old men

00:24:04.920 still getting up early doing their reading trading ideas about the latest books that they've read

00:24:12.160 keeping up their correspondence they fell short on so many levels in the pursuit of virtue as we all did

00:24:19.280 but the one virtue that many of them practiced until the end was industry just because they

00:24:24.080 developed the habits ever since they were kids yeah i found that the most inspiring thing from this

00:24:29.520 book is how these these guys really believe they can improve themselves and they they set their time

00:24:36.380 their schedule to make that happen a lot of times we have these sort of vague ideas like i want to

00:24:40.160 become better and it doesn't go anywhere because we don't make it concrete all these guys set a very

00:24:45.520 strict schedule for themselves yeah ben franklin he had a schedule he was up at five he says rise

00:24:51.120 wash and address powerful goodness contrive business and take the resolution of the day that's when he

00:24:56.740 asked himself what good shall i do this day that was from five until seven eight to eleven he worked

00:25:01.700 from twelve to one he read and overlooked his accounts did some lunch had a working lunch two to five

00:25:08.700 did some more work and then six to nine he was kind of putting things in their place supper music or

00:25:15.640 diversion or conversation and then do his examination of the day and then from ten to five he slept and

00:25:21.800 then thomas jefferson he like you said he had this schedule that he started when he was a kid

00:25:25.140 he was up early and not only was he doing the reading that he set for himself he also scheduled physical

00:25:32.060 exercise absolutely that's the most inspiring thing for me too it's so remarkable to see how much

00:25:39.580 these guys accomplished by mindfulness about time and keeping up their youthful schedules and it changed

00:25:47.100 my life i mean i i followed the jefferson schedule got up did my reading watch the sunrise i found myself

00:25:54.100 writing these weird sonnets to kind of sum up the wisdom that i'd learned just because i wanted to kind

00:25:59.540 of encapsulate it in some form and found that lots of people in the founding era wrote sonnets or poems

00:26:05.900 about this literature and since finishing the book i've tried to keep up a version of the jefferson

00:26:11.560 schedule and the simple rule that i'm carrying forward is i'm not allowed to browse in the morning

00:26:18.640 until i've done reading or some other creative work and you know there's a difference between reading

00:26:24.480 books and browsing blogs and just being not allowed to check email or do anything else until

00:26:31.080 i've read a real book it's changed my life because i've gotten out of the habit of reading for stuff

00:26:36.900 that was outside of my immediate deadlines and now reading books just to learn is transformative

00:26:44.600 and this is what would so inspired me about the founders i mean just adams and jefferson just think

00:26:50.000 of it in their in their 70s and 80s still excitedly learning about pythagorean moral philosophy and

00:26:56.220 adams exploring the connections between pythagoras and the hindu vedas and they never stopped learning

00:27:02.000 and growing and that for them was the definition of the pursuit of happiness being lifelong learners

00:27:06.860 and if they could find time with all the depredations of 18th century living and the freezing cold and

00:27:13.500 the disease and just the sheer difficulty of life and the difficulty of having access to books which

00:27:19.500 they they just had to you know yearn for to get imported and then i contrast that with the fact

00:27:26.840 that i was able to write this whole book sitting on my couch because all the books in the world are

00:27:32.300 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 1.00

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 0.99

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 0.96

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 0.96

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

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00:44:35.900 into action

The Art of Manliness - July 01, 2024

Books, Routines, and Habits： The Founders' Guide to Self-Improvement

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