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Happiness is a complex emotion and mental state, one that has been pondered since the times of the Ancient Greeks. Many have wondered what it means to be happy and to achieve happiness through either virtue or pleasure. Is it for the good of the individual or the benefit of society? Those who believe virtue is the key to happiness argue that it is important for the well-being of both the individual and society, as touted by the Founding Fathers and the Stoics and inspired by Jeffrey Rosen’s book “The Pursuit of Happiness”, as one should strive for a life of moral virtue and rationality. Those who believe pleasure is the key to happiness see it as the maximization of pleasure and the minimization of pain. Quoting philosophers such as Epicurus and John Stuart Mill and touting Roger Crisp’s “Reason and the Good”, they also argue that everyone should have the liberty to define their sources of happiness and seek them as they see fit.
With this background in mind, we debate the question: The Pursuit of Happiness: Virtue or Pleasure?
John Donvan
This is Open to Debate. I’m John Donvan. Hi, everybody. Today for this episode, my good friend and colleague, Nayeema Raza, is guest moderating for a fascinating debate, exploring the perennial mystery of happiness, that ever elusive state so many of us seem to be striving for in our lives. These days, it feels like seeking happiness has become a shared national obsession. There are podcasts to help us be happier. There are self-help books. Even these days, there are some very popular college classes aimed at helping students better attain happiness in their lives.
And yet, for all that effort, we don’t seem to be getting very much happier. Depression levels are at record highs. Loneliness has skyrocketed. Younger people in particular are reporting pretty dramatic decreases in happiness. So it feels like this might be a good moment to be reevaluating the very definition of happiness. So what you’re gonna hear is a great philosophical and historical reckoning with the concept of happiness. Nayeema Raza, as I’ve mentioned, will be guest moderating. She’s a journalist with New York Magazine and Vox Media. Now, onto the show.
Nayeema Raza
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, it’s a familiar refrain and a trifecta enshrined in the United States Declaration of Independence. Three unalienable rights that are endowed to man and secured, we’re told, by the institution of government. Yet happiness feels increasingly elusive. Over a quarter of American adults report having experienced depression. The Surgeon General has described loneliness as an epidemic. And just weeks ago, the World’s Happiness Report was published ranking more than 140 countries. It was the first time in a dozen years that the United States was not amongst the top 20, and a key challenge was lower rates of happiness amongst people under the age of 30. So it’s a good time to revisit this enshrined document and ask how exactly do we pursue happiness? Is it via virtue, which is this idea that maybe we become happy by being good or doing good? Or is it pleasure that we become happy by making ourselves feel good?
This is a kind of debate that you could have in a philosophical realm between stoics and hedonists. But today we’re approaching it with two divergent perspectives. We’re exploring the pursuit of happiness with a legal scholar who brings a historical lens for the primacy of virtue, and a philosopher who will argue for the value of pleasure. Let me introduce our debaters. On the virtue side of this conversation, we have Jeffrey Rosen. He’s the CEO and President of the National Constitution Center, and the author of the recent book, The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of Founders and Defined America. He also happens to be a returning debater. Hi, Jeffrey. Good to have you here.
Jeffrey Rosen
Hi. Great to be back.
Nayeema Raza
And arguing that pleasure is the key to happiness, we welcome Roger Crisp, who’s a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Oxford, where he’s also a Uehiro Fellow and a tutor in the philosophy at St. Anne’s College. Roger is the author of several books, including Sacrifice Regained: Morality and Self-interest in British Moral Philosophy from Hobbes to Bentham. Roger, thank you for being here today.
Roger Crisp
Thank you for the invitation, Nayeema. It’s great to be here.
Nayeema Raza
Excellent. I’m gonna get to opening arguments in a moment, but before that, I have a quick question because I’ve just run through a number of credentials you both have very esteemed, but there’s one I think would be important for our listeners to understand as well, which is whether you’re happy. So, Roger, let me start with you. Just a quick question. Are you coming to this debate happy and what does that mean to you?
Roger Crisp
I am happy, and that means I’m enjoying positive mental states through participating in this interesting debate.
Nayeema Raza
Excellent. Jeffrey, let me ask you, are you happy?
Jeffrey Rosen
Well, I have learned that happiness includes virtues like industry. So this morning I got up and I did my reading and writing, and I was industrious, and therefore I’m happy.
Nayeema Raza
Excellent. And having read your book, I believe you’re happier yet for having studied happiness ’cause it got you into sonnet writing and memorization. Excellent. So I wanna, with that established, with your happiness credentials established and the definitions thereof, let’s dive into opening statements. Uh, we want each of you to take a few minutes to explain your position. So Jeffrey, I’ll invite you up first and based on your research, how would you articulate the virtue side of this conversation that happiness is doing good rather than feeling good?
Jeffrey Rosen
So during COVID, I set out to read the books on Thomas Jefferson’s reading list that he said informed his understanding of happiness as being good rather than feeling good. And this was an unusual project. I’d noted that both Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson had made lists of 12 or 13 virtues for daily living, and both of them chose as mottos for their project, an excerpt from Cicero’s, Tusculan Disputations that said, essentially, “Without virtue, happiness cannot be.” So during COVID, I set out to read Cicero, which I’d never read before, despite my wonderful liberal arts education, as well as the other books in the natural philosophy or religion section of Jefferson’s reading list.
And these included Marcus Aurelius Epictetus Seneca’s letters, um, as well as enlightenment philosophers like Locke, Lord Bolingbroke, [inaudible
] essays, and a few others. And what I found after a year of reading these books of classical moral philosophy is that for all of them, uh, first of all, they contained the phrase, the pursuit of happiness. And Jefferson and the other founders relied on these sources in drafting the declaration and all defined happiness, not as, uh, feeling good, but being good. The pursuit of virtue, not the pursuit of pleasure.
And broadly virtue meant different things over the ages, of course, but it had to do with self-mastery, character improvement, self-improvement, using your powers of reason to moderate your unreasonable passions and emotions so that you could be your best self and serve others to use the modern formulation. It’s a, it’s really a form of impulse control, resisting your immediate urges and, and, uh, unproductive emotions like anger, jealousy, and fear so you can achieve the calm self-mastery that makes us productive and self-possessed citizens. And then I set out to see how the founders applied these lessons in their own lives. And again, what, what I learned came as a revelation. They talked constantly about their efforts to achieve virtuous self-mastery to calm their anxieties.
They fell short in important respects, uh, in, in most notoriously slavery, where the enslavers acknowledged their own hypocrisy. Patrick Henry said, is it not amazing that he owns slaves even as he viewed slavery as violating natural rights? But, um, he confessed that it was simple avarice or greed that made it impossible for him to give up the lifestyle that slavery afforded. And yet despite that hypocrisy, um, the founders were remarkably productive into their old age. And if they had a virtue that they continued to practice, it was industry. Jefferson’s reading list is so inspiring and it’s rigor in prescribing what you should read and at what time of day. And it’s inspiring to see Jefferson Adams as old men exchanging the latest books they’ve read. And, and Adams so excited to learn that Pythagoras, the, a founder of Greek moral philosophy, had traveled in the east and read the Hindu Vedas and Adams extracting from the wisdom of the East and West, this idea that we are what we think life is shaped by the mind.
And only by abandoning attachment to external results can we, uh, control the only thing we can control, which is our own thoughts and accents, and achieve the calm self mastery that defines happiness. Uh, this project changed my life. It changed the way I thought about both, uh, personal and public happiness. I came to see it was important to be a good citizen, uh, uh, and to be a good person. The personal self-government was necessary for political self-government. But the biggest takeaway was just changing my reading habits and now inspired by the founders. Every morning I try to wake up and do actual deep reading rather than browsing and surfing. And I found that more than anything else, this immensely improves my happiness and has convinced me that the pursuit of happiness requires the pursuit of virtuous self-mastery.
Nayeema Raza
Thank you very much, Jeffrey, for those opening remarks. Um, Roger, I’m gonna hand off to you right now to make your opening argument. Please tell us your case for why happiness is about feeling good rather than doing good.
Roger Crisp
Uh, well, thanks very much, Nayeema, and thank you, uh, Jeffrey for that outline of your position. The debate we’re taking part in is, uh, an ancient one, and I think one could see it beginning with the death of Socrates. At his trial, Socrates insisted several times that virtue was the only thing that mattered in one’s life. It’s the only constituent of happiness. This view was defended by many of the followers of Socrates, including of course, Plato and Aristotle. But in the case of Aristotle, he took time to explain how being virtuous is also bound to give you the most pleasure, because he realized how plausible it is to say that pleasure is good and suffering or pain is bad. That just seems to me a very clear, uh, intuitively plausible position. So I think we need to be clear that Jeffrey’s position is interpreted in one way, a very strong one.
He’s saying that there’s nothing good about pleasure, and there’s nothing bad about pain or suffering, and that is what, uh, Socrates said. But of course, Socrates had a pupil called Aristippus, who’s often identified as the first hedonist, who ran with that idea that pleasure is intuitively not, not only a good, but, but the good. In other words, anything, anything else is good, only insofar as it gives you pleasure, that could include virtue. So there’s nothing to stop a hedonist saying the virtuous life is the best one, but it’s the best one because it gives you the greatest balance of pleasure over pain. So I think what I would ask people to do is just reflect upon that question. Are you really ready to deny that pleasure is good and pain or suffering is bad?
I’d also like to stress that we’re not talking just about bodily sensual pleasures, we’re talking about any kind of enjoyment. So it could be the enjoyment of virtue. It could be the enjoyment, enjoyment of accomplishing something with your life. It could be the enjoyment of spending time with your friends and your, your family. The enjoyments that Jeffrey there appeared to be admitting to having experienced early in the morning of, uh, reading these great works of, of philosophy and history and so on. We also need, I think, to remember that there’s a difference between saying, saying that enjoyment is the only thing that matters on the one hand and saying on the other that you should always be aiming consciously at enjoyment in your own life. The chances are, if you do that, you’ll fail.
So if you imagine, uh, somebody who becomes a tennis player and then tries always to gain maximum enjoyment from any game that they’re playing, they’ll probably enjoy the games less than if they concentrate on playing the best tennis. So there’s no reason for a hedonist not to take many of the goods such as virtue or accomplishment or knowledge or friendship and advocate that they be pursued, but they’re advocating that just because pursuing those goods indirectly will give you the greatest balance of pleasure over pain.
Nayeema Raza
Thank you very much, Roger for that. Um, thanks to you both. We now know where you stand and why. So we’re gonna take a quick break and when we’re back, we’re gonna dig deeper into this question of whether the pursuit of happiness is rooted in virtue or in pleasure. I’m Nayeema Raza. This is Open to Debate and we’ll be right back.
Welcome back to Open to Debate. I’m your moderator, Nayeema Raza, and we’re debating the pursuit of happiness virtue or pleasure. We just heard opening remarks from our two debaters, Jeffrey Rosen, the CEO and President of the National Constitution Center, and author of the book, the Pursuit of Happiness, and Roger Crisp, a Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford University and author of the book Sacrifice Regained. I wanna take a moment to just summarize a bit of your positions that you articulated. Jeffrey, you, your position really comes from the founding fathers, but also actually from before them. It looks at the sources, the primary sources that the founders consulted in reading lists like Jefferson. So everything from Cicero to Locke, and even moving towards Eastern literature wisdom. The root is that it is by doing good, that you will become happy, that it’s self-mastery and this idea of being your best self and helping others that will give you industry, good citizenship, that will give you that market happiness.
And it really, it’s a basis in kind of recognizing your own limits, your own agency and self-control. And that kind of self-control and discipline can transcend oneself and create a society that is controlled, happy, and masterful in some way. And Roger, I understand your argument saying, your acknowledge, look, this is a dominant historical perspective that dates back to Socrates. However, there are offshoots early on in that philosophy that we really need to consult. Um, one being Aristotle, and then much more so Aristippus, who’s this kind of father of hedonism as you called him, who looked at virtue as a potential for pleasure, but also really looked at other pleasure. So virtue could be a path to pleasure, but it’s not the only path to pleasure. And your key basis for this argument is, look, virtue is a part of pleasure. Pleasure is bigger than we… how we conc- conceive it.
And also, if we don’t acknowledge that that pleasure is critical in the pursuit of happiness, we really have to deny that pleasure is good and that pain is bad, which is the premise upon which Socrates and the stoics kind of came out on this. I do wanna, um, dig into the debate now because Jeffrey, I’m, I’m just saying your argument is firmly rooted in this historical definitions of the pursuit of happiness. You acknowledge in your opening statement that look, the… there was some hypocrisies here, the founders, mo- most of them practiced slavery, for example. I also, in reading your work, notice that they seem they were con- constantly anxious, not necessarily the happiest people in their writings. And also that they have an incentive here. That these founders were looking for control in some way. They were looking to erect government. And so it was in their interest for people to be self-regulated so that they could regulate them. So I just wanna start with asking you, Jeffrey, why are these founders the right source on happiness and on virtue?
Jeffrey Rosen
Well, they may or may not be, but it’s not the founders who are our source, but all of ancient philosophy. And it’s, my argument is that this was the understanding of happiness that persisted from earliest times through perhaps the 1960s. And what’s so striking is that, uh, the classical understanding is not at all inconsistent with the hedonism that Roger Crisp so thoughtfully outlined. But the idea that arose in the 1960s, that immediate gratification is the source of happiness. Uh, whether it’s sex, drugs, and rock and roll or, or just, uh, pe- you do you or, um, let it all hang out.
The idea that just by, uh, greed is good, by, by gratifying our immediate desires without the sober second thoughts that can lead us to serve our long-term interests, um, that that’s the key to happiness. And, and, and that’s, uh, a position that I, I think is not either supported by the founders, by the classical philosophy or by modernist bot- and happiness literature. And that’s the position that I’d argue against.
Nayeema Raza
That makes sense. In psychological terms, we would say deny yourself the marshmallow in that famous experiment, not instant gratification.
Jeffrey Rosen
Absolutely. It all comes back to the marshmallow test, and it’s really striking how, whether classical or enlightenment, that idea of sober second thoughts is, was really the definition of, of happiness.
Nayeema Raza
Right. I’m, I wanna bring it to a contemporary lens because I, I think there’s a very important cultural conversation. The 60s is, is one key moment, but there’s something happening right now amongst millennials. Uh, millennials, uh, there’s this cultural shift, but toward wellbeing, you hear a lot about boundaries, self-care, quiet quitting. Uh, you do you. And so I wonder whether this is virtuous or it’s pleasurable and whether it will ultimately result in happiness. Roger, maybe I’ll ask you to address this first.
Roger Crisp
Absolutely. Um, I think there is that movement, and I think Jeffrey and I may be on the same page here in that we might both agree that the best way to live your life is not to pursue immediate, central pleasure. That will not, that will not give you the, the, the greatest happiness. What will give you the greatest happiness, as far as I’m concerned, is having meaningful work, having a, a decent income, uh, family and friends and so on. I don’t think it’s anything mysterious. I think we actually know what the sources of happiness are, and people have known for thousands of years what the sources of happiness are. But these, uh, sources are, are b- are being forgotten by some people who claim that we should aim for short-term pleasures. Or for example, we should aim for the maximum income we have at the cost of other goods in our lives.
I think pe- when people talk about wellbeing, people like Richard Layard, for example, uh, people who promote happiness, what the, what they mean by that is not short term pleasure. They mean contentment, life satisfaction and so on. And the things that I mentioned, I think are going to give you that. And that’s what I think many people will be aiming at in their life. Those, those, uh, sources of long-term happiness or enjoyment. Now, is that virtuous, that kind of life? Well, it… not necessarily because, um, you know, some rather vicious people might have some pretty good family relationships and, uh, meaningful work and so on. Uh, equally I think virtue can be a sort of satisfaction for m- many people. If you are generally contented with yourself as a decent person, you probably will have a better life.
Nayeema Raza
I wanna, I wanna remove this idea of instant gratification. ‘Cause I do think that you two will agree on that. And I want to focus on the kind of broader movement toward wellbeing. Jeffrey, I wonder how you see this shift towards wellbeing and self-care. ‘Cause I heard you reference, you do you culture, and I’m thinking about how you kind of contemplated John Adams own internal struggle between self-mastery and self-love or vanity.
Jeffrey Rosen
Yes. I, I wouldn’t so quickly set aside the shift from, uh, delayed to immediate gratification. ‘Cause that was the huge cultural shift in the 1960s. And, uh, I would be interested in fact in Roger’s, uh, thoughts about why that happened. Some have blamed Freud and the shift from character to personality, others, the romantic movement. Others just note that pop culture itself came to celebrate immediate gratification and, and blame the cultural contradictions of capitalism, uh, exacerbated by our new internet culture. But that is the shift. And, uh, t- I think Roger and I are on the same page about the, um, satisfactions of, uh, work and relationships and so forth.
We, we might debate the particular virtues that lead to long-term wellbeing. As he says, it’s quite true that, uh, vicious people can have good family relationships. It is striking that the, the 13 virtues that Ben Franklin enumerated were glosses on the four classical virtues of prudence, temperance, courage, and justice. And they were really virtues of the, of the, of the mind, of the, the soul industry, resolution, cleanliness, um, dail- habits of daily living. Uh, that, uh, jumping off of Pythagoras is 76 golden virtues that lead us to delayed gratification. Uh, and, and that’s why it’s all about habits. And that’s why it’s possible to have tremendous hypocrisy on important moral matters like, uh, slavery and, and being addicted to the avaricious lifestyle that it made possible and still be industrious and have good family relationships.
Nayeema Raza
I wanna take a moment just, uh, Roger, for you to address that question of what happened in the, the 60s, this kind of age of sex, drugs, and rock, rock and roll. And do you think it’s as dangerous or as problematic as being just simply about instant gratification? Or do you think that there were actually some good elements that emerged in that time period?
Roger Crisp
I would like to talk about the 60s. I’m not, not an expert. I was nine in, in 1970. But let, let me go back first to fifth century, fourth century Athens, because I think there’s an issue arising in what, what Jeffrey said about what counts as a virtue, how we understand the idea of a virtue. So the ancient word for that is arete, and it’s usually translated as virtue, and it’s usually understood to mean moral virtue, the kind of thing that we’d refer to as generosity or kindness or justice or something like that. But it also means excellence. So they would’ve talked, for example, about the excellence of a racehorse. And of course, it would be absurd to talk about a, a racehorse having moral virtues. It means that they’ve excelled in various ways. So I think we can extend the notion of virtues to include, um, excellences of various kinds.
And so, for example, the, the reading of the books that Jeffrey mentioned might be, uh, hard to slot under the heading of any particular moral virtue. But I, I presume that it wouldn’t be difficult to see that as his exercising his own intellectual capacities and advancing his knowledge in a way that could be described as directing himself towards excellence. Now, I take it in the 60s, that idea of living one’s life was very much in the background, and people were thinking, um, maybe as a result of the release from the pressures of the second World War and so on. And as Jeffrey was saying, the, the, the growth of capitalism and advertising and so on, people did start to focus much more on the, on the short term. And it turned, turned out for many people to be a terrible, uh, mistake.
Nayeema Raza
Jeffrey, I’m, look- I’m curious, looking at something like doctors, which is the most virtuous career perhaps I could think of. You know, you imagine medical professionals, therefore by the idea that virtue would be critical in this pursuit of happiness would be happy. And yet studies suggest that doctors are far from happy. Their burnout rates spike post COVID. Um, healthcare workers in many cases are more likely to be depressed or suicidal in the general population. I know you’re not an expert in psychology or the medical profession, but I do wonder how you square that virtuous life and its outcomes against the framers ideas that doing good is happiness.
Jeffrey Rosen
Well, I, I would resist the impulse to talk about virtue in the abstract. You could have a doctor who’s dissatisfied by the burnout of work, but is successful in practicing mindfulness and calming his anxieties or ca- or can have effective personal relationships with his kids, but is, uh, dissatisfied by health insurance. There’s no such thing as a virtuous profession, very important to stress. This is a radically empowering philosophy of self mastery. And each individual has the opportunity on not only a daily but hourly basis to try to achieve that calm tranquility that defines self-mastery, which makes possible long-term happiness. There’s such connections to the eastern traditions, and that, that idea that we are what we think in life’s shape by the mind is so important.
Nayeema Raza
Right. I wanna ask about that, this idea of kind of, regardless of whatever is going on around us, because that kind of stoicism, um, I don’t know, Roger, I’m curious to explore your perspective on it because, you know, one way of looking at what is happening to medical professionals, but just anyone in a very challenging position is around pain and pleasure. So how do you think those factor in?
Roger Crisp
Well, I, I thi- I think virtue and, and pleasure are quite different. So I have to admit that a vicious person could live a very enjoyable and, uh, happy life. And equally a virtuous person, uh, might, might be very unhappy. And I take it that doctors are in that category. Um, I mean, I was struck there by, uh, Jeffrey’s mention of calm tranquility because I take it that most people we count as virtuous, or many people that we count as virtuous would live lives of calm tranquility. It’s just that you, you need more, you know, so doctors are not racked by guilt, you know, they’re quite happy with what they’re doing. It’s just that there are other sources of happiness which are not available to them, like sufficient recreation.
Nayeema Raza
Jeffrey really makes a case, I think, relying on historical definitions of the pursuit of happiness, that… and, and really these federalist papers as a kind of manual to public happiness. So a state built on virtuous and happy citizens would be a virtuous state. Um, I’m curious, Roger, if you can imagine an alternative hypothetical or make a case that a nation might be better off, might be happier if it’s citizens focused on feeling good rather than doing good and not feeling good in that instant gratification extreme version of it. But, but thinking about pleasure and pain.
Roger Crisp
Well, I think I could make a case for that. I mean, it has been made, um, by people like Richard, uh, Layard and others in, in recent years. And in fact, Keir Starmer who is, um, quite likely to be our next prime minister in the UK has said he will judge every policy, not by or not only by its effect on our gross me- domestic product, but also by its effect on wellbeing. And I do think the term wellbeing is, is perhaps better here than feeling good, because feeling good does suggest something rather fleeting, whereas what we’re talking about is, is life satisfaction. And really that’s what matters to people if they understand properly what does matter to them.
I mean, obviously some people will think it really matters to them how much they earn, and they will spend their whole lives trying to maximize their income and then realize at the end that hasn’t been worth it. But on, on the whole, I think people do understand that wellbeing, their wellbeing is what really does matter to them.
Nayeema Raza
Right. And it’s interesting to think of wellbeing as a policy lever, but also there’s another debate here, which is around kind of safety of democracy. And I think, um, Jeffrey, you get into that a bit with this idea of the Federalist papers as a kind of, uh, manual for public happiness. I’m curious, Jeffrey, how you see the country faring on that right now.
Jeffrey Rosen
It’s so striking that the founder’s main concern was demagogues who would flatter the people into seeking immediate gratification. An exchange for cheap luxuries would surrender liberty to a Caesar or a Cleon who would install himself as a president for life. And it’s so striking to see both Jefferson and Hamilton fearing a demagogue. Jefferson actually fearing that in the future, an unscrupulous demagogue might lose an election by a few votes, cry foul, and refuse to leave office. Hamilton fearing that it would take the form of a Caesar. For both of them, uh, personal self-government was necessary for political self-government. Unless citizens could resist choosing the most factionate candidate who would pro- promise them, uh, immediate gratification that they would, uh, the republic would fall.
And that’s why Washington at the end of his life says, without virtue, the republic will fall. And by virtue, he means virtuous self-mastery, learning the principles of liberty so you can, uh, defend them and having the humility to engage in, uh, civil dialogue with those you disagree with, uh, once again, resisting immediate gratification. So that cool reason can slowly prevail. This is the very philosophy of the American system of government in America and around the world. We are seeing dem- demagogues who are threatening to, uh, subvert democracy by flattering the people in precisely this way. And I would argue in this debate that the founders were correct, that unless citizens can muster that virtuous self-mastery and find personal self-government, then the republic will indeed risk falling to demagogues and authoritarians.
Nayeema Raza
And so you’re arguing that it really comes from the bottom up that a virtuous leader is not enough. It needs to be a virtuous citizenry.
Jeffrey Rosen
How can you achieve self-government on a wide scale unless citizens can literally govern themselves? And that’s why d- d- Jefferson and, and Washington and, and all the founders are so keen on education and they’re not sure the experiment will survive. And in fact, many are quite pessimistic, that the people won’t take the time to educate themselves about the principles of liberty and to vote wisely. And that’s why Madison is so excited about this new technology, the broadside press that will allow citizens to publish complicated arguments like the Federalist papers in the newspapers. So that reason can slowly diffuse across the land. And in our world of Instagram and X or whatever it’s called, and enraged to engage in a media environment that’s so polarizing, there’s a very serious question about whether or not the founders were too optimistic. And that’s why it’s so urgently important that citizens at this crucially challenging moment for democracy look to ourselves and try to find in ourselves the virtue of self-mastery that will be necessary to keep the republic.
Nayeema Raza
Thank you for that, Jeffrey. It’s very passionate, um, on that topic and seems very urgent right now given the stakes. Roger, I’m curious if you have a different perspective.
Roger Crisp
I think self-mastery is, is, is desirable, but not in itself. It’s because people who have self-mastery and autonomy are happy, and there’s a very strong correlation between good government and happiness or wellbeing.
Nayeema Raza
Thank you. We’re gonna wrap our discussion there. When we come back, we’re going to continue discussing this question, the pursuit of happiness, virtue or pleasure. And we’ll be inviting in some other voices to help probe at that right after the break.
Welcome back to Open to Debate, where we’re diving into this question of happiness and whether it’s best pursued through virtue doing good or through pleasure, feeling good. I’m your moderator, Nayeema Raza. I’m joined by our debaters here today, Jeffrey Rosen, the legal scholar and author of the book, The Pursuit of Happiness, and Roger Crisp, philosopher and author of Sacrifice Regained. We’re going to bring in some other voices now, members of the audience who have been listening in on this conversation and who will wanna help probe it further I think. So first up, we have Helen Russell. Uh, she’s the author of The Year of Living Danishly. Uh, and, and the new book, The Danish Secret to Happy Kids is out July 9th. Uh, Helen, the mic is yours.
Helen Russell
Thank you so much. I wonder, we haven’t talked about inequality, and I wonder coming from the Nordic countries, I’ve lived in the Nordic countries for 11 years now. You know, the Nordic countries have topped the happiness poles, and I wonder they’re not nailing all of these 12 things that you talk about. I just wonder how much you can divorce happiness from politics, um, reducing inequality. The idea of deep reading every morning sounds lovely, but it feels like a luxury, uh, for many of us in the world, especially caregivers. I have three small children, deep reading in the morning, not an option. So I’d love yeah, inequality, uh, the semantics of that and how you feel like the Nordic countries play out in this respect.
Jeffrey Rosen
Wonderful. Well, um, a, a, a crucial question and very important to stress that this philosophy of self-mastery was the opposite of the elitist for most of American history. And it was so inspiring for me to see great figures like Phyllis Wheatley, the first published black poet who learned about the classics from her s- enslavers, uh, studying with their children and wrote poems of virtue that were acclaimed by Washington and all of, uh, London Society. And then there’s Frederick Douglass who paid for boys on the streets of Baltimore to teach him how to read with bread after his wicked master forbade him from learning how to read. And then he bought with bread a copy of this golden book, The Colombian Orator, which had excerpts from the classics and convinced him to be the greatest abolitionist of his time. So this is the opposite of, of, of an, of an elitist philosophy only available to educated white, uh, men.
It has inspired freedom fighters from Phyllis Wheatley to Douglas, to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to great figures of the Civil Rights Movement today. However, you raise a really important practical question, what about kids? And during those child, uh, raising years, simply finding time in the day for the deep reading and focus and reflection that’s necessary for this kind of growth is a tremendous challenge. That is why Justice Ginsburg always said that until men and women take equal responsibility for child-rearing, uh, women will never be truly equal. But just carving out some time during the day, an hour or, uh, uh, at least for yourself, a room of your own. And for, for deep reading and reflection, it does require some, uh, support from a spouse or from society, but it is crucial for the pursuit of happiness.
Helen Russell
I wonder in terms of the idea of, of bottom up, I guess having lived in the Nordic countries and being raised in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, I had a real mind shift coming over to here. The Nordic countries don’t come top of the happiness polls every year because it’s just a magical place where fairies rule everything. It’s because the taxes are high, uh, and there’s a welfare safety net that looks after everyone, at least in theory. So the idea of self-mastery and putting it all on the individual and this idea of wellbeing, and, um, and developing ourself is wonderful, but it doesn’t have to come from above two.
Roger Crisp
Well, I think it’s, um, I think I don’t, I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the Nordic countries always come top. And I think there is a connection there with, uh, inequality in that inequality is highly inefficient in that it essentially, once you start earning about, you know, above $75,000, it’s not gonna make any difference how much more you have. So it’s a waste, a real waste in terms of, uh, happiness. But also it doesn’t feel great to live in a society where there’s a bunch of people going around flaunting their, their wealth and make- making you feel inadequate. And I think it’s important to remember also that, um, there’s actually in itself nothing bad about inequality.
I mean, we could, we could get rid of inequality by making everybody equally badly off, and that wouldn’t improve things a great deal. What happens in the Nordic countries is that everybody is more concerned about the worse off than in most other countries. And that’s a win-win situation because if you live in a society like Norway, however well off you are, you are going to do better.
Nayeema Raza
Thank you, Roger. Appreciate that. Up next, we have Nancy Sherman. Uh, she’s a distinguished professor and faculty affiliate at Georgetown University’s Center on National Security and the Law. Uh, Nancy, welcome.
Nancy Sherman
So let me, um, ask Roger a question that sort of, uh, bounces off some of Jeffrey’s remarks. I mean, I love the stoics. I write about the stoics. My last book was Stoic Wisdom, but they are an a- austere bunch. And Cicero found the stoic self therapy not very helpful for his particular predicament, which was the loss of his daughter in childbirth. And so he is railing against them a lot for not leaving room for grief and pain. So one, so one of the questions is, uh, they’ve gotta leave room in this project of self-improvement for the feelings that are really hard and hard to digest and metabolize. And that leads us a little bit to, to pleasure.
And the question is, so where exactly does pleasure figure in this? And I would add here the si- I’m a child of the 60s in some way, (laughs) and I love dancing to rock and roll. It’s the most fun sort of thing. I love giggling with my grandchildren. I can’t think of a greater pleasure of telling… having them tell me a joke. So the question is where, Roger, where do all those figure in a good life?
Roger Crisp
Thanks, Nancy. I think you raise a very interesting question about the negative emotions. Um, so for example, if somebody’s a hedonist and somebody close to them dies, should they, should they take some kind of medication to dull the, the, the grief because there’s nothing good about it. I guess I’m inclined to think not because of the pleasure we take in friendship and the indirectness of the concern that we have for pleasure. What we’re really concerned about is our friends and the relationship with them. And it’s great to, to have those relationships and it would affect our current relationships if we were just ready to take a pill to, to dull the, the grief when one of them passes away. But that’s, that’s not to say that that grief is not bad.
Nancy Sherman
But what about the pleasure, if I can just persist for half sec. Um, is the pleasure that you experience in this whole range of things from sun on your face to, uh, to giggling to being virtuous? Is that all the same stuff so that you can just experience happiness that way?
Roger Crisp
Well, I’m inclined to say yes. Um, there are lots of different kinds of enjoyment, but it’s all, it’s all enjoyment. And that seems to correlate with what neuroscience is telling us. It’s the same circuits that fire when you’re drinking Coke or listening to Beethoven.
Nayeema Raza
Thank you, Nancy, for being with us.
Nancy Sherman
My pleasure.
Nayeema Raza
Now we have Monica. Monica Parker is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of The Power of Wonder, uh, co-founder of HATCH Analytics, which focuses on remote work. Monica, welcome. What is your question for our debaters today?
Monica Parker
I’m struck by both your arguments seem to be so wrapped up in capitalism and in this capitalistic world we’ve got Chief Happiness Officers, World Happiness Reports, Happy Planet Index, and yet the reality is we’re so terrible at making ourselves happy. I think the latest statistic is 280 million people globally suffer from depression. But I posit maybe that seeking happiness is just folly. How can we suggest to people that they should be happy in poverty, they should be happy in Gaza, people grieving or in burnout should be happy. Defend to me why you even believe we should be pursuing happiness as opposed to say a mixed emotion like wonder, um, or awe that people can achieve in any condition, both good and bad.
Nayeema Raza
Jeffrey, maybe you can answer that. And, and maybe from the perspective of the founders in particular.
Jeffrey Rosen
Wonderful question. You’re, you’re quite right that there’s nothing necessarily compatible, uh, about extreme capitalism with this rational pursuit of virtue and excellence. We’ve talked about the ways that, uh, as Daniel Bell noted, the, the cultural contradictions of capitalism may undermine the industry and work ethic on which it relies for success by creating a consumer culture that demands immediate gratification. I do think that the internet has made this so much worse. Um, so all this is to say that indeed living according to reason, which is living according to wonder and awe, which is connecting to divine harmony, may indeed be, uh, uh, the, the duty as well as the, the rights of, of life, the, the core to the unalienable, uh, right to pursue happiness. But the one thing that that’s not, and I think we’ll all agree, um, is immediate gratification for its own sake.
Nayeema Raza
Thank you, Monica, for that question. Uh, we have our final question here from Emily Austin, an associate professor of philosophy at Wake Forest University. Emily, welcome. What is your question?
Emily Austin
I just wrote a book on, uh, Epicureanism as a way of life defending Epicureanism. And so I’m, I’m kind of team pleasure. I thought I would ask you, Jeffrey, just to tell a, tell us a little bit about, um, this sort of famous friendship between an Epicurean and, um, a stoic. John Adams, uh, and Thomas Jefferson, both presidents, um, Jefferson at the end of his life identified himself as an Epicurean, and, um, though Adams adopted a kind of stoicism. And so there have been these really close friendships between stoics and Epicureans.
Like, um, Cicero had his best friend Atticus, and so most people have thought that the stoics and the Epicureans are very much alike, but where they have differed over time is the idea that the Epicurean denied providence and the idea that the world was ordered for the good and that we are a manifestation of divine will and that, um, sort of that human beings are, are animals. And so we come to arrive at virtue instrumentally through our capacities for pleasure and pain in navigating the world. And so I’m kind of curious whether you think, um, and this maybe goes to Roger as well, whether that kind of gives some sort of advantage to Epicureanism over stoicism for some people who, who do kind of reject the, um, providential model and accept a more modern scientific model.
Nayeema Raza
Thank you, Emily. So, um, propose it first to Jeffrey and then to Roger each kind of take a minute to, to answer this question of Emily’s like, do we need some new conception?
Jeffrey Rosen
Thank you for that wonderful summary, both of the differences among Epicureanism and, and, uh, stoicism and also the Adams Jefferson friendship. And you’re so right about their convergence. And what’s so striking was their theological convergence that Adam summed up his mature faith as love God and all his creatures rejoice in all things. Uh, I think you also put your finger on the fact that really the difference comes down to different conceptions of human nature. And the real consequence of this disagreement is in politics, not in theology or, um, uh, philosophies of happiness.
Both are in favor of self-mastery. As you say, they did disagree about Providence. Je- Jefferson believed in an af- afterlife, but not a providential God, where, whereas Adams did. And the, and the big difference is of the nature of government. Do you have to have a strong state in order to tame human passions as Adams insisted? Or are people basically good? Can they be perfected through education and therefore is a night watchman state necessary to unshackle human potential as, as Jefferson did? So that’s where the rubber hits the road, I think. But thank you so much for, uh, helping us understand that, uh, both of them are converging around a classical understanding of happiness.
Nayeema Raza
Thank you, Jeffrey. Uh, Roger, do you have anything to add to that?
Roger Crisp
Well, I, yeah, I mean, I think I, I would want to, uh, distinguish between, on the one hand a particular view of happiness or pleasure where I would be more inclined to side with the Cyrenaics than the, the Epicureans. I mean, I, I’m very, uh, disinclined to think that, uh, pleasure consists in the absence of pain. It’s the, it is the balance of pleasure over pain. So to detach that kind of question from the, the, the, the question about, uh, providence and, uh, evolution. And then I think once one’s done that one, one can see that, uh, something like a Cyrenaic position could be attached to, uh, an evolutionary account.
Nayeema Raza
Well, thank you for that. Thank you for that question, Emily, and to all our questioners who joined us today, uh, Helen, Nancy, and Monica. We’re now gonna move on to closing statements. This will be, uh, the last remarks we have in this conversation. And so, Jeffrey, you’ll have the opportunity to go first with a closing remark.
Jeffrey Rosen
Well, thank you so much for this wonderful conversation. We’ve agreed that the pursuit of happiness consists in the pursuit of virtue and pleasure, and that virtue consists in self-mastery. And self-mastery consists in taming our unreasonable passions and emotions like anger and jealousy and fear, so we can achieve the calm wellbeing that will allow us to achieve our potential. I am so excited to have had my life transformed by rediscovering this classical moral philosophy. I was yearning for it when I was in college and studying the puritans, uh, who failed to persuade me about the virtues of a good life through predestination or, or blind faith. And it’s a marvelous inheritance that was really core to American education for most of our history. Middle school, high school, college kids, and law students all read these great classic sources and were inspired to achieve self-mastery and to, uh, focus on reading and growing through books.
And the big takeaway that I just wanna share with all of you is the transformative power of deep reading. I was, uh, a blessing of COVID was to have rediscovered it. I’d really gotten outta the habit of reading outside of my, um, immediate deadlines and, and work and the transformative universes that are glistening and waiting for us to rediscover just by setting aside an hour a day to stop browsing and reading is one of the virtues and marvels of this internet age, where all of the wisdom of the world is now free and online. So, happy reading.
Nayeema Raza
Thank you, Jeffrey, for those closing remarks and also for the encouragement to read more. Roger, you’re gonna have the final word here, uh, in this debate. So please take a moment for your closing remarks and convince us why pleasure is the key to happiness.
Roger Crisp
I can’t resist by reiterating my initial claim, which was that, uh, al- almost anybody is going to accept, accept that pleasure or enjoyment is good, and suffering is, is bad. But I would also like to point out how many of the things that philosophers and others have listed as independently good turn out to be things that we enjoy or take pleasure in. So, for example, uh, the ancients would, would list virtue. They would list relationships, friendships, family relationships, uh, knowledge. And then in more recent times, people have stressed the importance of accomplishing something or achieving something with, uh, with one’s life. Uh, these are all things that people enjoy.
And I think on reflection, and particularly if we think about a life without any enjoyment in it, what we might call an antidonic life, which has plenty of relationships and, uh, achievement and so on, but contains no enjoyment. I think on reflection, we can see that that life is not a life that’s good for the person who’s living it, because lives that are good for the people living those lives are good because of the wellbeing that is the, uh, the pleasure or the, the happiness that we, we find within them. So I think these, these, uh, lists of other goods are helpful because they tell us which way to live our lives, which things to aim at, but it’s, it’s an indirect way to achieve the real good, which is wellbeing or enjoyment.
Nayeema Raza
Thank you very much, Roger, for that. And that concludes our debate. I’d like to thank our debaters, Jeffrey Rosen and Roger Crisp. We so appreciate you showing up, you approaching this conversation with an open mind and you’re thoughtful, um, you’re bringing thoughtful disagreement to the table. In short, you’re being open to debate. Thank you for being here.
Roger Crisp
Thank you.
Jeffrey Rosen
Thank you so much.
Nayeema Raza
And I’d also like to thank our fellow authors and interrogators for being here, for bringing their provocative questions to the table. So thank you, Helen, Nancy, Monica, and Emily. And finally, a big thank you to you, the audience, for tuning in to this episode of Open to Debate. Thank you for listening to Open to Debate as a nonprofit working to combat extreme polarization through civil debate, our work is made possible by listeners like you, the Rosencrantz Foundation and by supporters of Open to Debate. Robert Rosencrantz is our chairman. Our CEO is Clea Connor. And Lia Matthow is our Chief Content Officer.
This episode was produced by Alexis Pancrazi and Marlette Sandoval, with editorial and research by Gabriella Mayer, Andrew Foote, and Vlad Virtonnen. Andrew Lipson and Max Fulton provided production support. Mili Shah is Director of Audience Development. And the Open to Debate team also includes Gabrielle Iannucelli, Rachel Kemp, Linda Lee, Devin Shermer. Damon Whittemore mixed this episode. Our theme music is by Alex Kliment. And I’m your host, Nayeema Raza. We’ll see you next time on Open to Debate.
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