“The Pursuit of Happiness: The Root of America’s Civil Ethic”
(WPS Presidential Address, 2005)

Dr. Barry E. Bryant
Chair of Wesleyan Studies
Memphis Theological Seminary

            Etched in the cornerstone of American government are the words taken from what is known as the “Jefferson draft” of the Declaration of Independence. 

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 -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to 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.[1]

It is well known that Jefferson was not the sole author of the Declaration.[2]   By his own admission, neither were its ideas unique to him.[3]  But the draft submitted by Jefferson on behalf of the committee of five was so much his work it has been labeled the “Jefferson draft.”[4]  For this reason many Americans revere Jefferson as the author of “American Scripture.” Maier uses this theologically provocative phrase in an attempt to demonstrate how the Declaration has defined the United States as a nation, while becoming the moral standard by which American law has been shaped.  In other words, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” comprise the ethic of American civil religion. Many Americans have come to expect that it is the duty of government to protect those rights and in doing so to preserve that ethic.  More to the point, in Jefferson’s view, “the only orthodox object of the institution of government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated under it.”[5]  There was nothing vague or private about his notion of pursuing happiness.  He had in mind a measurable public happiness.[6]  This is a decidedly pluralistic view and with such a view we are left with the possibility of what is one person’s rights may well be another person’s oppression, a possibility recognized as far back as Aristotle, as we shall see below.[7]

There are many, particularly those on the Christian right, who hold to the view that “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are concomitant, if not synonymous with Christian values.  For many there is no dissonance between “America Scripture” and “Christian Scripture.”  So esteemed are these values some think they should even be exported to other peoples, by cultural, economic, even military means.  So “self-evident” are these rights, some are shocked when not everyone recognizes them and eagerly adopts them as truths. 

The ethical crux of it all seems to be the “pursuit of happiness.” Francisco Martinez has suggested that the theological issues cannot be ignored.

To explore the subject of “the Christian faith and the search for happiness” is to broach the most acute pastoral and doctrinal problem of the Church in our time.  In it is manifested, in a privileged form, the problem of the relationship between Jesus Christ and the concrete man [sic]- of each and every one of us and our contemporaries, between faith and the meaning of human life; between the Church and the world; between religious Christian practices and the ways of the world; between Christian ethics and modern ethics; between Christianity and culture.[8] 

On the other hand, there are those who raise the question, should Christians even be concerned with the pursuit of happiness?  Or should we simply agree with John Alexander, who calls it the “big lie” and suggests that what we actually have is an “inalienable right to misery”? [9]  Regardless of what one’s civil rights may be, do Christians have a moral right to pursue happiness?  Put another way, are Christian values irreconcilable with the American civil ethic? 

            There are some rather astonishing claims in the Declaration such positions have come to take for granted.  They cannot be weighed against Christian values until we better understand the context of their origins.  The pursuit of happiness needs to be investigated.

Jefferson and the “Pursuits of Happiness”

The American pursuit of happiness began long before Jefferson’s use of the phrase.  For example, Jones has rightly pointed out that among theological writers important to American thought is the Anglican’s Anglican, Richard Hooker.[10]  Hooker was convinced every person has a natural desire to be happy and that happiness expresses the highest degree of human perfection.  It seemed unreasonable to Hooker that God would put such a desire in human hearts and not provide the means of attaining it.[11]  So, he concluded,  “happiness is…that estate whereby we attain, so far as possibly may be attained, the full possession of that which simply for itself is to be desired, and containeth in it after an eminent sort the contentation of our desires, the highest degree of all our perfection.”[12] Hooker demonstrates that implicit to Anglicanism was the pursuit of happiness, and to pursue happiness was to pursue perfection.  The significance of Hooker to Jefferson if further pointed out by Becker who concluded,

The lineage is direct: Jefferson copied Locke and Locke quoted Hooker.  In political theory and in political practice the American Revolution drew its inspiration from the parliamentary struggle of the seventeenth century.  The philosophy of the Declaration was not taken from the French. It was not even new, but good old English doctrine newly formulated to meet a present emergency.  In 1776 it was commonplace doctrine, everywhere to be met with, as Jefferson said, ‘whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or the elementary books of public right.’ And in sermons also, he might have added.[13]

The ideas of Hooker were brought to America long before 1776.  Jack Greene has suggested that English colonialism brought Anglicanism and with it a desire to pursue happiness to America between the years of 1660-1760.  As a result of Perry Miller’s work, much of the focus in the past has been on the development and influence of Puritanism during this period.  However, in his reinterpretation of American social development, Greene has suggested that there were actually two models for pursuing happiness that need to be taken from English colonization.  There was the “declension model” in New England, associated with the Puritans.  They were the more traditional with “low mortality, population growth, a benign disease environment, and a far more fully and rapidly articulated Old World-style society, the intensely religious colonies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven, moved by powerful millennial and communal impulses, exhibited rapid community and family development.” The extended family structures were led by men who were both visible and authoritative, providing rapidly emerging social institutions such as churches, schools, and an emerging democratic form of government. The wealth was derived mainly from cereal agriculture and was egalitarian in its distribution.[14] 

On the other hand there was the “developmental model” in Chesapeake.  This society was materialistic, more secular, highly competitive and exploitive, while being committed to a commercial agriculture for overseas markets.   “Its high demand for labor and high mortality rates combined to produce a population that was disproportionately male, young, single, immigrant, and mobile.  The process of family formation was slow.  Social institutions were weak, authority was tenuous and individualism was strong.”  All this developed a “marked proclivity toward public discord.”[15]  Greene has suggested  that these were two colonial models for pursuits of happiness- New England declension model, which was  religious, communitarian, and theological in nature; the Chesapeake developmental model which was secular, individualistic, and capitalistic in nature. 

These two cultures contributed so significantly to producing such a prevalent and widespread belief in happiness that Commager called the phenomenon “the religion of happiness.”[16]  Could this be the emergence of a civil religion, or if not a religion itself, at least the teleos of the new ethic of the civil religion?  By 1776, so saturated was the literature, culture, and philosophy of both Europe and America with the phrase “pursuit of happiness” Jefferson would have had to have been illiterate not to read it, and unable to speak English not to hear it.[17]  His challenge was to draft a political theory that would accommodate the varying ways one may choose to pursue happiness.

That challenge notwithstanding, within the context of these models one may see where Jefferson may have more easily fit.  Given his heterodox views of religion, his attitudes toward agriculture and his position on slavery, his ethos was more in keeping with the developmental model.  Greene argues further that it was this model that may be seen in the south, with its similar attitudes toward agriculture and slavery.  In the mind of the developmentalist, capitalism, exploitation, and slavery were easily reconciled. 

Greene’s work also makes Wesley’s views on the matter relevant.  Unfortunately, we do not have the time to fully explore the importance of Wesley’s views or the need for a fuller comparison between Wesley and Jefferson. There are several reasons why Wesley needs to be juxtaposed to Jefferson.  First, in his own way Wesley also advocated the “pursuit of happiness.”  He did so when he equated happiness with holiness.  Outler has noted that the linkage of holiness with happiness is one of Wesley’s “most consistent themes, early, middle, and late, with nuances very much worth noting, for if holiness is active love toward God and neighbour, then happiness is one’s enjoyment and security in such love.”[18]  In just the sermons alone, there are no less than thirty that make the point only the holy are truly happy.  The equation of holiness with happiness had a long history in the Anglican tradition.  It can be seen in the writings of John Norris, Richard Lucas, John Tilllotson, and William Tilly, just to name a few.[19]  In preaching his sermon, “God’s Love to Fallen Man” Wesley wrote, “…the more holy we are upon earth the more happy we must be (seeing there is an inseparable connection between holiness and happiness).”  Wesley’s pursuit of holiness is a well document thing.  It was to be the goal of each Christian’s life.  He set up societies to pursue holiness and happiness.  But not as much has been made of his “pursuit of happiness.” 

Secondly, when he spoke of “the general spread of the gospel” he envisioned “The loving knowledge of God, producing uniform, uninterrupted holiness and happiness, shall cover the earth; shall fill every soul of man.”[20]  Ruffle has suggested that this spread of holiness and happiness has become one of the trajectories of Wesley’s theology of mission evangelization.[21]  This became particularly relevant when Methodism took roots in the American soil.   It would be the declension model that would rise to oppose slavery.  Wesley the abolitionist resembles better the declension model.  Could it be that Wesley changed America by equating holiness with happiness?[22]

These were competing visions of happiness from the start. 

For now, let’s just make note that are some obvious questions arise from this equation.  To what extent does the exchange of these words change the meaning of holiness, or even happiness for that matter?  What are the ethical and philosophical implications of such an equation?  Wesley’s doctrine of entire sanctification is always seen from the soteriological view point.  What would happen to the doctrine if it were seen from the vantage point of eudaimonia? 

            The prevalence and inescapability of the culture of happiness probably lead Jefferson and others to presume its assumption.  As Jones has pointed out, “In asserting the right to pursue happiness or to pursue and obtain happiness and safety, the eighteenth-century men asserted an absolute they failed to determine.  This failure was natural…For them the common sense of the matter was sufficient, and that which is sufficient requires neither casuistry nor metaphysics to defend it.”[23]  While the phrase was near universal and Jefferson certainly assumes its truth there had to be more direct influences on Jefferson.  Who and what were they? 

Classical Influences

Like most other well-educated individuals of his day, Jefferson was thoroughly exposed to classical philosophy.[24]  We know for certain he owned a copy of the William Ellis’ 1776 translation of Aristotle’s Politics, and even cited Aristotle as one of the sources he used for the Declaration.[25]  Identifying the sources of influence on Jefferson begins with the Greek concept of eudaemonism.  The first of these influences are Plato and Aristotle.

Eudaemonism is typically translated as happiness, but it actually is an attempt to convey an understanding of “well being.”  The Greek search for well-being always led to ethics.  A fundamental question raised by ancient ethics is “how people can find satisfaction in their own lives.”[26]  Or, to put it another way, “How ought I to live?”[27] Naturally, there were competing visions of what the good life should consist of.  On one hand there were the hedonists, who said pleasure is the highest good and happiness the main aim of the good life.  On the other hand there were the Stoics.  To the Stoics, Epictetus in particular, happiness is the ratio of satisfied and unsatisfied desires.[28]  The key to happiness is through either increasing the number satisfied desires or simply decreasing the number of desires.  The Stoic way to happiness is to learn the discipline of not to yearn for things that are beyond our control.  If you are not happy it is your own fault.  God has made all people to be happy.[29]  In this context Plato and Aristotle tried to find the place of happiness in their philosophies.  (Immediately, perhaps one may see some of the similarities between the declension and developmental models of English colonialism.)

Plato’s idea of happiness is centered on the conviction that everyone desires it.[30]  To obtain happiness one must practice virtue.  Knowledge alone produces virtue, and virtue alone produces happiness.  Nothing more is required for the happy life than that.[31]  Plato admits that some may see their happiness being attained through different forms, such as moneymaking, gymnastics, or philosophy. But, he warns, if the identification of these things is with pleasure or selfishness, little good can come of them.  The “happy are made happy by the acquisition of good things.”[32]  Those who would be happy must “not only have the good things, but he must also use them; there is no advantage in merely having them…”[33]  Simply put, happiness is desired for its own sake.  But one cannot be happy and not be just also.  Happiness depends on justice, along with gentleness and goodness. [34]  The greatest happiness is awarded to the most just, and the most just people are the happiest of all people.[35] In one of the dialogues, Tyrtaeus commented he would not have a brave warrior if it meant he were unjust.[36]  When it comes to the state and the making of laws, it is the duty of the state to make good laws.  Good laws, “fulfill the object of laws, which is to make those who use them happy, and they confer every sort of good.”[37]  But the happiness of the individual must be subordinate to the happiness of the state.[38]   The happiness of the many outweighs the happiness of the individual.  Even so, there is a teleos that transcends the state.  To the “just and holy” acquiring the virtues is the best thing, and when they are acquired, happiness is consummated and the individual becomes immortal.[39]  Plato’s good, just, and happy person is caught between the forms of heaven and the shadows of earth.[40] 

            Agreeing with Plato, Aristotle holds that everyone aims at happiness.[41] 

He writes, “…we may define happiness as prosperity combined with excellence [virtue]; or as independence of life; or as the secure enjoyment of the maximum of pleasure; or as a good condition of property and body, together with the power of guarding one’s property and body and making use of them.  That happiness is one or more of these things, pretty well everybody agrees.”[42]  Put another way using a phrase Aristotle repeats many times, happiness is “activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.”[43]  Because it is an activity, “For this reason also the question is asked, whether happiness is to be acquired by learning or by habituation or some other sort of training, or comes in virtue of some divine providence or again by chance.  Now if there is any gift of the gods to men, it is reasonable that happiness should be god-given, and most surely god-given of all human things inasmuch as it is the best…[H]appiness seems, however, even if it is not god-sent but comes as a result of excellence and some process of learning or training, to be among the most godlike things; for that which is the prize and end of excellence seems to be the best thing and something godlike and blessed.”[44]   Virtue must proceed from a good character and be chosen for its own sake.[45]  Having a happy life involves more than just the choice of a single moment.  “For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.”[46]  What becomes abundantly clear is that happiness is seen as a repeated and practiced activity and not just a state of disposition.  This is where Aristotle differed from Plato.  For Plato, knowledge alone produces virtue and happiness.  Happy is as happy thinks.  For Aristotle, knowledge alone does not produce virtue and happiness. Happy is as happy does. 

            If happiness is a repeated and practiced activity, and “if ethical life is an expression of character, and character itself can be shaped by the psychologically enlightened training of parents and teachers, why can we not include our understanding of the unconscious in that training?...The unconscious is too disruptive to be contained in any straightforward account of character formation.”[47]  The unconscious must be made conscious.  For Freud this process “always involved uncovering something disturbing – and the uncovering always occurred under conditions of resistance and repression.”[48]  To what extent would the modern process of psychoanalysis then become a part of this psychological disclosure and necessarily become involved in the transformation of the soul?  Implicit to Aristotle is a need to work out a psychologically minded ethics that takes into account the “training” of a soul.

            One difference between Plato and Aristotle is that for Aristotle the soul is not something that is separable from the body.[49]  For Plato the body is seen as something of a prison house from which the soul escapes to find perfect happiness.  For Aristotle, the psychosomatic union meant that happiness is dependent on the body, which means that happiness belongs to this world alone.  The attainment of happiness is not associated with transcendent happiness.  As to whether or not is attainable in this lifetime, Aristotle thought that it was, but since it is attained mainly through education those who were capable of it were limited in number.  Since women were not educated they were ruled out, as were slaves and artisans.  Children, more specifically male children, have the potential of happiness.  Consequently, the hope of perfect happiness is limited to men of property and leisure who have the good fortune to pursue happiness.[50]

Where government is concerned Aristotle thought the best form of government consists of one “in which every man, whoever he is, can act best and live happily.”[51] The same things that make individuals happy make states happy.[52]  But the most government might do is provide the opportunity of obtaining happiness.  It does not promise to make individuals happy.  However, where Plato was convinced that there existed a body of absolute knowledge of the good and the right, Aristotle was not as convinced.  For him, political science and ethics investigate “actions and goods with regard to which judgments vary and fluctuate so much ‘that they may be thought to exist only by convention, and not by nature.’”[53]  What might be good for one group in a particular situation might be harmful for another group in a different one.  Consequently, to Aristotle there is nothing “natural” about the right to pursue happiness.  It is a political ideal.  Jefferson’s use of the term “happiness” is therefore not the same as Aristotle’s use of it.[54] 

Although their meanings of happiness differ slightly, both Aristotle and Jefferson saw the part government plays in pursuing happiness in a similar way.  The goal of government is happiness.  Aristotle’s idea of happiness becomes “a core concept in defining both human perfection and the goal of a community.”[55]  That Jefferson thought this also is clear in the Declaration.  But this was not just seen by Jefferson.  It was also seen by many of his contemporaries.[56] 

This understanding of the relationship between government and happiness was explored by the Rev. Jonathan Mayhew in 1754.  He preached that the purpose of government is the happiness of all people.[57]  The theological significance of this cannot be overestimated, but unfortunately that cannot be dealt with here.  But it should be pointed out that the endowing government with the political obligation to fulfill what is otherwise a spiritual need would seem to be the beginning of a trend. 

On a more secular note, another example of the relationship between government and happiness may be seen in the work of James Wilson and his essay, Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament (1774).  Parts of Wilson’s essay appeared in Jefferson’s Commonplace Book establishing Jefferson’s thorough knowledge of the work.  Wilson wrote that the “happiness of a society is the first law of every government…” and those who give their consent to be governed do so “with a view to ensure and to increase the happiness of the governed above what they could enjoy in an independent and unconnected state of nature. 

Just two years later, Jefferson colleague, Adam Smith wrote, “All constitutions of government…are valued only in proportion as they tend to promote happiness of those who live under them.  This is their sole use and end.”[58]  Drawing from Cicero and Epicures, Smith concluded “virtue alone is sufficient to secure happiness.”[59] 

Another Jefferson contemporary, John Adams wrote in that same year, 1776,

The happiness of the people was the purpose of government…and therefore that form of government was best which produced the greatest amount of happiness for the largest number.  And since ‘all sober inquirers after truth’ agreed that happiness derived from virtue, that form of government with virtue at its foundation was more likely than any other to promote the general happiness.[60]

Perhaps the most significant source of contemporary influence on Jefferson’s “pursuit of happiness” notion was George Mason, who drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1774.  The first paragraph reads,

That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into society, they cannot by any compact deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, and the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.[61]

The similar wording between Jefferson’s and Mason’s Declarations has been scrutinized by scholars.  Jefferson was much aware of Mason’s work and was significantly influenced by it.   But there are two relevant differences here.  Jefferson replaced Mason’s “pursuing and obtaining happiness” with “pursuit of happiness.”  Jefferson also omits, “…with the means of acquiring and possessing property….”  Aristotle and Plato associated happiness with virtue.  Is Jefferson dropping property for the sake virtue?  Not likely.  Now we see Mason talking about happiness and property. No longer is good government merely associated with establishing the pursuit of happiness through virtue.  Now we are talking about the pursuit of happiness through possessing property.  What is going on here?  And what is the significance of this for Jefferson?  The change can be accounted for by Locke and Scottish moral sense philosophy.

Empiricists and Moralists

            Here is where the debate among Jefferson scholars begins in earnest.  It is commonly accepted that Jefferson was significantly influenced by the Scottish enlightenment and moral sense theorists in his understanding of happiness.  The debate is over how long and by whom. 

On one hand there is the position advocated by White.[62]  He proposes that Jefferson was primarily under the influence of Swiss born Jean-Jacques Burlemaqui while writing the Declaration.  Burlemaqui was closely aligned with the moral sense theory of the Scottish enlightenment and had the greatest influence on Jefferson.  Burlemaqui proposed that morality is made known to humans through a type of “moral empiricism.”  That is to say the human person has the perception of the moral through senses that are similar to the five senses of the body.  These impressions were indelibly made on human hearts by the Creator.  It was an attempt to reconcile Locke’s use of intuitive reason with moral sensibility, or conscience.  To Burlemaqui, moral sensation gives rise to conscience, which is in turn verified and proven by reason.  This “moral impressionism” sounds very similar to revelation and gives priority of the moral sense over reason.  It is highly questionable as to whether Jefferson would have been willing to make that philosophical move, being the Deist that he was.  White proposes that what we see is actually a shift in Jefferson’s think and concludes that in his later years Jefferson turned to revelation as a source of moral knowledge and thus began to sound a lot like Locke in The Reasonableness of Christianity. 

If through the moral sensation one detects a God impressed duty, Burlemaqui concluded, there must be a corresponding right.  For example, if one has a desire for life, then one must also have the right to preserve one’s life.  Or, more to the making of our point, if one is given a desire for happiness, one must have the right to pursue one’s happiness.   White argues that on this basis Jefferson would have seen the right to pursue happiness as both God endowed and unalienable. 

Jayne dissents.  He argues that there is little evidence to support White’s opinion that Burlemaqui influenced Jefferson.  While it is true Burlemaqui’s Le Droit Natural was owned by Jefferson, Burlemaqui’s writings are never mentioned in his commonplace books, and neither do they appear on any of his recommended book lists.[63]  He suggests that Lord Kames provides a moral theology more consistent with Jefferson’s deism and his view of human nature seen in the Declaration.  

There is supporting evidence of Jefferson’s familiarity and endorsement of Kames.  He copied some of his writings into his Commonplace Book.[64]  Kames was also influenced by Locke and the moral sense school, linking moral sense to rational judgment and like Locke believed that morality could be improved upon through the use of rational judgment to maximize happiness.[65] 

Here is what is at stake for Jefferson.

According to the orthodox Christian concept of…men and women, because of their depraved fallen condition, [they] could not trust their own determinations of right and wrong. God was the only trustworthy source of moral knowledge, and individuals had only mediated access to that source through scripture, church, and clergy. This effect of the fall made humanity dependent upon one or more of these intermediaries for trustworthy moral knowledge.  As a result these intermediaries, especially the clergy, became the authorities over others in moral considerations.  Before writing the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson had rejected the orthodox Christian concept of human nature and adopted heterodox view.  As Adrienne Koch stated, he favored ‘systems of independent morality needing no sanction from church and state.’[66] In Jefferson’s heterodox concept of man [sic], ‘Nature’s God,’ or the God of natural theology, endowed individuals with the capacity to attain trustworthy moral knowledge independently.  This capacity made the authority of the individual preeminent in moral determinations over that of  church, scripture, and clergy.[67]

Locke’s epistemology could not circumvent the need for revelation well enough to suit Jefferson’s tastes.  Locke’s An Essay concerning Human Understanding attempted to articulate a law of nature which could be deduced by reason by self-evident propositions.  Being the empiricist that was, such propositions were obtained only through sensory perception and gave birth to ideas in the mind.  When confronted with a challenge to demonstrate how this was so, to show how the law of nature could be proven by reason, Locke was “confronted by his inability to present morality as a system of universally intelligible obligatory truths.”[68]  In The Reasonableness of Christianity Locke admitted that reason never deduced “an entire body of law of nature” and that most of humankind is not able to attain moral knowledge assisted only by their own reason.  Human reason without the aid of revelation was inadequate for the task of morality.[69]

            The way around this was provided to Jefferson by Henry Home, Lord Kames.  Kames influence on Jefferson before the writing of the Declaration was significant.  Jefferson had put in his Commonplace Book, Kames’s Essay on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion, as are tracts from Kamse’s Historical Law Tracts.[70]

What Kames did was develop the notion of “moral sense” in gaining access to the law of nature.  Kames regarded this as superior to Locke’s epistemology that was derived from reason reflecting on ideas in the mind which had been born of sensory perception of external objects.[71]

By perception alone, without reasoning, we acquire the knowledge of right and wrong, of what we may do, of what we ought to do, and of what we ought to abstain from: and considering that we have thus a greater capacity of the moral laws than of any proposition discovered by reasoning, man may well be deemed the favourite of Heaven, when such wisdom is employ’d in qualifying him to act a right part in the life: the moral sense or conscience may well be held the voice of God within us, constantly admonishing us of our duty; and requiring on our part no exercise of our faculties but attention merely.  The celebrated Locke ventured what he thought a bold conjecture, that the moral duties may be capable of demonstration; how great his surprise to have been told, that they are capable of much higher evidence.[72]

The “function of the moral sense in Kames’s moral philosophy is similar to that of scripture in Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity, where scripture was deemed necessary to provide moral knowledge because ‘human reason unassisted failed’ to provide that knowledge.  Reason assisted by scripture, however, did play a role in determining morality in Locke’s Reasonableness, in that it gave its suffrage to and provided confirmation of what was contained in God’s revealed word.”[73]  Jefferson admired the Kames alternative because to him it “democratized” morality.  There was an aspect of the moral sense that made morality available to the easy grasp of virtually everyone.  He criticized a God who would make moral knowledge available only to the few who were capable of complex or scientific reason.  Such a God would be incompetent in Jefferson’s eyes.[74]  Herein lays Jefferson’s epistemology of rights.  They are God endowed by the moral sense and consequently unalienable.  Christian Scripture is obsolete as a moral guide.  The moral sense replaced it for Jefferson.    

            His attitudes toward the doctrine of revelation led him to less than orthodox views of Christianity.  Jefferson’s heterodox views on religion were secured through the efforts of Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke.  Through Bolingbroke, Jefferson rejected the idea that Jesus was the Son of God.  In 1820 Jefferson wrote, “Jesus did not mean to impose himself on mankind as the Son of God.”  Neither was Jesus inspired by God.  There was no reason for Jefferson to accept the teaching of Jesus as having any divine authority.[75]  His language leaves no room for doubt as to the nature of his Christology. 

In extracting the pure [moral] principles which he [Jesus] taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to themselves. We must dismiss the Platonists and Plotinists, the Stagyrites, and Gamalielites the Eclectics, the Gnostics and Scholastics, their essences and emanations, their Logos and Demiurgos, Aeons and Daemons, male and female, with a long train of etc., etc., or, shall I say at once, or nonsense. We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring off the amphiboligisms into which they have been led, by forgetting often, or misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves. There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which was ever been offered to man.  I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill.[76]

            It was Jefferson’s epistemology that directed him away from Locke and toward Kames.  Locke did have an influence on him, but it was through The Second Treatise of Government.  Many passages of the Declaration were very similar if not exactly the same as passages of the Second Treatise.  The most obvious difference to the careful reader was Jefferson’s alteration of Locke’s phrase life, liberty, and property, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Did this mean Jefferson rejected property as a means to happiness?  Not hardly.  It was more than likely because Locke’s notion of happiness was woefully underdeveloped.  For Jefferson the right to own property did not fit the description of “unalienable” or natural rights described in the Declaration.  The right to pursue happiness, however, most certainly included owning property for Jefferson.  Keller has argued rather convincingly that this means implicit to the right to pursue happiness are economic rights. 

There are several issues that arise from all this.  First there is the claim that Jefferson saw “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” as “Rights.”  Referring specifically to these rights, Alisdair MacIntyre has argued that the concept of “a right” does not exist.  They are fictions (albeit fictions with rather specific properties but fictions nonetheless) that cannot be proven or demonstrated, any more than witches or unicorns.  All attempts to give good reasons for their existence have failed.[77]  Additionally, rights are not universal as, for example, rationality is.  The concept of a “right” does not appear anywhere before the 15^th century.  It does not appear in Japanese, Arabic, or among the European cultures.  When the concept does appear rights are typically expressed as culturally bound and socially established norms that require specifically designed social institutions to preserve them.[78] 

Then there is the issue of their truth being “self-evident.”  Becker has suggested that it is more than likely, the term “self-evident” was introduced to the text through Benjamin Franklin’s efforts.  Others say it was inserted by Jefferson.[79]  Whatever the phrase’s source the outcome is still the same.  Just as there are no rights, MacIntyre argues that neither are there self-evident truths.  Any attempt made by a moral philosopher to make an appeal to intuition to establish rights usually indicates the argument has gone terribly wrong.[80]  This calls the epistemology of Jefferson’s “self-evident” truths into serious question. More about this will be said below. 

It is indeed an ironic thing that the self-evident truths of “American Scripture” and the revelatory truths of “Christian Scripture” should be subjected to the same epistemological accountability insisted upon by the Enlightenment.  The irony is compounded when one realizes that Jefferson the Deist rejected all the miracles of the New Testament as irrational and unreasonable, reducing it to a pithy collection of Jesus sayings.  The outcome was a one person, Jeffersonian “Jesus Seminar.”  But is Jefferson’s self-evident truth of unalienable rights on any firmer epistemological ground than the resurrection?  Conscience does not seem to be any better off than a revealed version of the Sermon on the Mount epistemologically.

If it is impossible to establish them as “self-evident” how much more difficult would it be to demonstrate that they are Creator endowed rights?  First, there is the issue of whose Creator.  Is it Jefferson’s Unitarian god of Deism?  Is it to be understood as the Triune God of Nicene Christianity?  If it is, what Biblical evidence is there to support the claim that these concepts are consistent with similar New Testament concepts? On the surface of the matter one could raise the issue of life in contemporary society.  How are we endowed with an unalienable right to life when we endorse abortion on demand and capital punishment on one hand, and stockpile weapons of mass destruction on the other as a society?  How does this measure up with the teaching of Jesus that said if you don’t hate your life you can’t be his disciple? (Luke 14.26)  Or, if we want to save our lives, we must be willing to give them away.  Then there is the matter of liberty.  It would seem the typical American view of liberty borders on the antinomian.  Or at least it approximates a position rejected by Locke but advocated by Sir Robert Filmer who said that liberty is “for every one to do what he lists, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws.”[81]   Liberty becomes a form of self-fulfillment expressed as the freedom of an individual to do what one desires. It would seem that with the recent invasion of Iraq the Bush policy values liberty more than human life.[82]  Compare this again with the teachings of Paul who argued that we have been set free by Christ, but we are not to use our freedom to indulge the sinful nature.  Rather, we are to use our liberty to become servants to one another in love (Galatians 5.13).   Obviously there are some problems here.  Whose life and which liberty are we talking about?

Perhaps the crux of it all does indeed come down to the pursuit of happiness.  There are several problems relating to a discussion of happiness.  How should it be defined?  Once it is defined how is to be discussed?  Should it be discussed philosophically, ethically, theologically, or psychologically?  Haybron has pointed out that there are at least two philosophical problems in the study of happiness.  The first problem deals with how to relate the empirical methodologies used by psychologists in their notions of happiness with methods used by philosophers.  The second deals with how one ought to conceptualize happiness as a psychological phenomenon.[83]  What is happiness?  Once one deals with the philosophical implications then there is the role happiness has played in ethics, from Aristotle, to Kant, Benthem, and Mill.  Kant has of course raised serious questions regarding happiness as the teleological aim of ethics.

Given the history of the concept it would be tempting to say that the Babylonians plundered the temple.  That is to say, Jefferson took a Christian concept mediated to him partly through Christian sources.  But the truth be told, it was a concept borrowed from the Greeks and used for Christian purposes.   It was gold that belonged to the Babylonians to begin with.

[ Home ] [ Up ]

Send mail to brint@snu.edu with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © Wesleyan Philosophical Society
Last modified: November 29, 2007