In a nation that held certain truths to be self-evident, according to George Washington “there is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness.” Illustration: Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States, Howard Chandler

""In his remarkable book The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America, Jeffrey Rosen has documented the Founders’ deep understanding of virtue as an essential antecedent to human happiness.""

""Rosen, the dynamic president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, devoted recent years to the study of the books the Founders read. He delved into classical works of moral philosophy from Greece, Rome, the ancient Eastern writers, the Renaissance, and the Scottish Enlightenment. It was from these works that he discovered the rich literature of virtue-based happiness that runs throughout the history of the world and that so profoundly shaped the minds of the Founders and other leading Americans over the past 250 years.""

""Rosen is careful to note the ethical failures and blind spots of the Founders he profiles, especially of those who professed to stand for equality and liberty even as they enslaved fellow human beings. The Pursuit of Happiness is a catalog of people who aspired to virtue and happiness as they understood it but who sometimes lived and led in utterly contradictory ways.""

""Rosen contends that we have lost touch with a classical understanding of happiness, in part because of a shift of cultural emphasis from “being good to feeling good.” Fortunately, social and behavioral psychologists have recently recovered old insights on human flourishing, though with newer vocabulary like impulse control and emotional intelligence. If this bodes well for a renewed awareness of the linkage between virtue and happiness, Rosen’s book calls us back to explore the older sources of understanding about that 'indissoluble union.'” - Hans Zeiger

Book Review: “An Indissoluble Union Between Virtue and Happiness”: A Review of The Pursuit of Happiness