Pursuit of Happiness - classical vs modern definiitions
On this day in 1666, Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary the following:
“I all the afternoon at home doing some business, drawing up my vowes for the rest of the yeare to Christmas; but, Lord! to see in what a condition of happiness I am, if I would but keepe myself so; but my love of pleasure is such, that my very soul is angry with itself for my vanity in so doing.”
Pleasure and happiness are at odds with one another in Pepys’ psyche, something that today’s commercial culture would not grasp.
Samuel Pepys and Thomas Jefferson, though writing more than a century apart, would perhaps understand happiness from reading the classical Greek and Roman moral philosophers; they understood the pursuit of happiness as a quest for being good, not feeling good — the pursuit of lifelong virtue, not short-term pleasure.
Clearly there’s room for both definitions, but it seems that one definition has taken precidence over the other at some point.
Related
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- I'm applying for my part of the Trump Slush Fund — 21 May '26
- I tramp a perpetual journey (Whitman) — 21 May '26