Community | July 03, 2011 | 19 comments

The Origin and Phrasing of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_happiness

from Wikipedia

"Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" is one of the most famous phrases in the United States Declaration of Independence and considered by some as part of one of the most well crafted, influential sentences in the history of the English language. These three aspects are listed among the "unalienable rights" or sovereign rights of man.

Origin and phrasing

The seventeenth-century cleric and philosopher Richard Cumberland wrote in 1672 that promoting the well-being of our fellow humans is essential to the "pursuit of our own happiness." John Locke, in his 1689 "A Letter Concerning Toleration," wrote that "Civil interest I call life, liberty, health, and indolency of body; and the possession of outward things..." Locke wrote in his 1693 Essay Concerning Human Understanding that "the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness." Locke never associated natural right with happiness, but in 1693 Locke's philosophical opponent Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz made such an association in the introduction to his Codex Iuris Gentium. William Wollaston's 1722 book The Religion of Nature Delineated describes the "truest definition" of "natural religion" as being "The pursuit of happiness by the practice of reason and truth." The 1763 English translation of Jean Jacques Burlamaqui's Principles of Natural and Politic Law extolled the "noble pursuit" of "true and solid happiness" in the opening chapter discussing natural rights.

The first and second article of the Virginia Declaration of Rights adopted unanimously by the Virginia Convention of Delegates on June 12, 1776 and written by George Mason, is:

That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

Benjamin Franklin was in agreement with Thomas Jefferson in downplaying protection of "property" as a goal of government. It is noted that Franklin found property to be a "creature of society" and thus, he believed that it should be taxed as a way to finance civil society. The United States Declaration of Independence, which was primarily drafted by Jefferson, was adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. The text of the second section of the Declaration of Independence reads:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_happiness
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19 comments // The Origin and Phrasing of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

  • sffsmessiah
  • thedirtman
    • 0
      thedirtman  
    • sffsmessiah:

      One of the group members added it to that group.

      My guess is that "protection of property", as Franklin stated, becomes added to role of government and makes government more essential.

      Not being an anarchist I cannot speak for how such a society works. As a social democrat, I do not look to destroy government, but to protect it from harassment that costs the government money, to educate public servants in efficiency, to make representative government more accessible to volunteers, and as a goal, to make it more lean in the process. The desire for property should be a motivator to generate enough revenue to keep government from having to pay for previous debts, but revenue collections should be applied equally after basic needs have been met.

    • 11 months ago
  • jackshin
  • thedirtman
  • warman1138
  • thedirtman
    • +2
      thedirtman  
    • warman1138:

      I don't mind putting the video up.

      My comment: that life and liberty are inherent inalienable rights, and property is a right by the consent of the governed. I believe that people should own the product of their labor too. This is a frequent failing in foreign trade matters. For example, the Chinese laborers that made my shoes were not compensated justly for the value of their labor.

    • 11 months ago
  • cmc101
  • thedirtman
  • cmc101
  • remanns
  • remanns
  • thedirtman
  • Leen61
  • Ian_Judge_Lord
    • +4
      Ian_Judge_Lord  

    • the genius of Thomas Jefferson when in an imaginative leap, It was a felicitous, even thrilling, substitution. “.’ "
      John Locke making him a man of the seventeenth century, not the eighteenth
      sadly, To them Even more sadly, Jefferson’s own “property” included about two hundred human beings whom he did not permit to pursue their own happiness.
      but concluded, “but the American idea, embedded deep in our cultural DNA, is inspiring us to pursue a much less shallow happiness.”
      Bill O‘Reilly erroneously wrote, “the Constitution guarantees us life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” He was corrected by an American kid, Courtney Yong of San Francisco, a city O’Reilly often castigates.
      Jefferson’s intellectual heroes were Newton, Bacon, and Locke, and it was actually in Locke that he must have found the phrase. in the 1690 essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke wrote:
      The necessity of pursuing happiness [is] the foundation of liberty. As therefore the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness; so the care of ourselves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty.

      “the pursuit of happiness” is the “foundation of liberty” because it is not merely sensual or hedonistic, not merely a matter of achieving individual pleasure.

      when John Locke and Thomas Jefferson wrote of “the pursuit of happiness,” they were invoking the Greek and Roman ethics philosophical tradition in which The Greek word for “happiness”, eudaimonia, is linked to aretê, the Greek word for “virtue” or “excellence.” Because they are civic virtues, not just personal attributes, they implicate the social aspect of eudaimonia, in which happiness is bound up with the civic virtues of courage, moderation, and justice.

      In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle wrote, “the happy man lives well and does well; for we have practically defined happiness as a sort of good life and good action.”

      Happiness is not, he argued, equivalent to wealth, honor, or pleasure.

      The pursuit of happiness, therefore, is That is why Alexander Hamilton and other founders referred to “social happiness.”

    • 11 months ago
  • thedirtman
    • +2
      thedirtman  
    • Ian_Judge_Lord:

      Thank you so much for this... Indeed the happy man lives well and does well. Further, the happy man contributes to a healthy society and a healthy economy.

      Above anything else when it comes to what stimulates the economy we should remember this.

    • 11 months ago
  • rhythmstick
  • thedirtman
  • remanns
  • thedirtman
    • +1
      thedirtman  

    • The notion that property is a "creature of society" (as Benjamin Franklin envisioned and Thomas Jefferson and John Adams apparently did not disagree) is a complete reversal from the ideas people hold today, especially those influenced by Tea-Party politics. It may be surprising for people who do not know history that the original tea party was not a protest over taxation at all. The original tea party was a protest over the billing of the sale of tea and the routing of tax revenues.

    • 11 months ago
thedirtman
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