I’ll plow on, shall I?
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that ... among these [Rights] are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Here’s a question for you, Gentle Reader: do these seem reasonable to you? Because it has taken a lot of training and effort to make it seem outrageous to me. I don’t know if all of that struggling has created a problem that isn’t there, or if I really have busted out of the shackles of memorization and indoctrination. This is one place where I simply cannot imagine the response of our Connecticut farmer. I believe, and I could well be wrong, that the pursuit of Happiness is new to this document, that Mr. Locke did not consider Happiness as relevant to his conception of natural rights. And, as I think I’ve said before in this Tohu Bohu, although it may seem obvious (and self-evident) that one has a right to Life, at least in the sense that one has the right not to be killed, surely that right to Life is the one thing from which we will all inevitably be alienated. The state doesn’t grant it, and although the state can end it, the state cannot really defend it. Liberty? Well, yes, depending on one’s definition of liberty, I can see it fitting in as a natural right, at the very least in the negative sense (as we discussed before) as something that a state must overcome a presumption in order to restrict. Overcoming that presumption by prosecuting for crimes is one of the chief jobs of the government. I can see that Life and Liberty, particularly when contrasted with Tyranny and Murder, are undeniably Good Things, and that the destruction of those Good Things is, somehow, vaguely defined, a violation of some sort of natural order. I guess. But the pursuit of Happiness?
The famous Protestant Work Ethic doesn’t seem to take into account the importance of the pursuit of happiness, does it? Is the Yankee land-holder supposed to be impressed by the centrality of happiness to the revolution? If Happiness is mighty suspicious as a motivator for revolutionaries, is the pursuit thereof any less disconcerting? Is the implication only that people will be happier after the revolution, or is there something else going on?
Look, if Mr. Jefferson and his associates had included a dozen of these rights, and the pursuit of happiness was included with, oh, the right to choose friends and associates, the right to choose one’s heirs and the right to security against war, poverty and deprivation, well, then I wouldn’t be so interested. But there are only three such examples, and I think they must be chosen for a reason. But for the life of me, I can’t figure out what the reason is. Mr. Jefferson is about to state that the purpose of government is to guarantee those rights. This will ultimately lead me to get muddled up in a tautology, since the only way I can make any sense of the idea of natural rights is to view them as restrictions on or prescriptions for government actions. That is, I can’t see saying that everybody has the right of freedom of movement, since that would imply that everybody simultaneously has the right to visit Mount Rushmore, and we can’t all go at once. The logic is actually more complicated than that, but the way I can get my head around the concept of freedom of movement is to say that it means that (a) the government must not restrict freedom of movement unless it shows a real and pressing need, not just a good-for-the-state sort of thing; (2) the government must not differentiate freedom of movement for one person or group of people, either as a class or as individuals, without unbelievably real and pressing need, I mean a serious danger to actual people, and (iii) when non-government forces restrict freedom of movement, the government should be inclined to step in to protect it, insofar as it is possible and would not have a dire effect on other greater rights. This gets tautological if government is instituted to secure those rights, and that the rights are defined by things that governments can (and should) secure.
Still, with Life and Liberty, the case is pretty persuasive. A government that arbitrarily deprives people of one or the other (well, one or both) is going to be a bad government, and a government that works to secure both for everybody is likely to be good. However, I can’t quite imagine a government that exists to secure the right of individuals to pursue Happiness, nor one that exists to deny individuals that right. I mean, I can imagine such a government, although it’s a specfic kinda thang. I can certainly imagine governments indifferent to the ability of their subjects to pursue Happiness, and am aware of many such in history. I can even imagine some who take tyrants who take glee in the misery of their subjects, although such misery would likely be incidental to other, more obviously gainful motives. Anyway, although I would be against a government interfering willy-nilly with the pursuit of happiness, happiness being defined fairly restrictively and not purely as sensory gratification, I can’t say I consider the pursuit of happiness, however defined, to be a sort of natural right that defines the responsibility of a government.
All of that, however, is a ramble. Probably, yes, the authors of the Declaration were just saying that (a) the government after the Revolution would be less restrictive generally, and (2) people would be happier.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
Let’s add in the other reference to happiness in that paragraph: once a People separate themselves from their governement, they
“…institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
In this context it seems more clear to me that by “happiness” he doesn’t necessarily mean, you know, the state of being happy. Merriam-Webster includes a definition “good fortune; prosperity” which it marks as obsolete. Jefferson means that having a government should make your life better, and that a government should be conceived as a way to make your life better.
As you say, Jefferson is obviously referencing Locke. It seems to me that he must have intended “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to be more inclusive than Locke’s “life, liberty, and property”. The right to your property, then, is somehow included in the right to the pursuit of happiness.
So when a government interferes with your ability to travel, or work, or own property, or express yourself, or assemble, or worship, or raise your children the way you want, the catch-all phrase to describe what it’s taking from you is “happiness”, or the right to do the things that will bring you happiness. He doesn’t mean “joy”.
Anyone have an OED handy?
i plugged “jefferson definition happiness” into google and got this on top. it didn’t quite answer my question but bonked me on the head with a different approach.
we’re so conditioned by our times to think of government as needing restraint. what would be a radical approach to government at the time? not leaders who serve to enrich the population, or nobly limited government, because those were not new ideas. really rad would be: a government that serves at the pleasure of the population, to meet popular needs as popularly seen fit.
life, liberty, and true run of the world for their own reasons.
Well, and I knew I should have OED’d the word before I wrote, damn your eyes. As I suspected, and as you point out, the word had the meaning success or prosperity or good fortune or luck or mazel or some such thing, and still does, on occasion. However, this is simultaneous with the use “The state of pleasurable content of mind, which results from success or the attainment of what is considered good.” Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton and Pope get quoted with that sense. I think (and my own opinion on this shouldn’t carry any great weight) that the sense of happiness to mean success derives from the pleasure sense, and that it connotes pleasure in a way that prosperity does not. Surely, in changing property to happiness, he can’t have meant to avoid the notion of pleasure. After all, if he meant prosperity or fortune, he could have chosen them. I think he either meant happiness in the sense we understand it or meant to imply or connote happiness in that sense.
As for happiness being something connected to the will of the people, that is, communal happiness, the pleasure of the people, well, there is certainly something to that. The OED suggests that happiness may be used to refer to the “greatest happiness of the greatest number”. Joseph Priestley (or Priestly), an old drinking buddy of Ben Franklin’s (and who wasn’t?) argued in 1768 that “The good and happiness of the members, that is the majority of the members of the state, is the great standard by which every thing relating to that state must finally be determined.” This was a big influence on Jeremy Bentham who
got stuffedargued in 1776 for a happiness-based (pleasure-based) theory of social utility. I’m not saying that Jefferson was referencing Bentham, who didn’t hold with natural rights or any such abstraction, but that he was referencing the school of thought from which Bentham was working.So, the inclusion of happiness may have been calculated as part of casting the Declaration as part of a philosophical, analytic, and theoretical discussion of the principles of government. Which it was, of course. But specifically, the inclusion of Priestly’s happiness over Locke’s may have been not only a break with Locke, but an attempt at philosophical inclusivity, and a nod to what would become the utilitarians (and, of course, the Unitarians, but we needn’t discuss that here). Happiness may have been a code word there, just as a reference by Our Only President to the Dred Scott decision that left me confused turned out to be a nod to foes of legal abortion.
Thanks,
-V.