Скачать или смотреть Are we alienating an unalienable right?

The origin, history, and significance of "the pursuit of happiness"

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What is “the pursuit of happiness” actually? And where did this idea come from?

The American and French revolutions were products of the Age of Enlightenment. This was the age when science and reason were to replace superstition and blind faith. One of the drivers behind this movement was the notion of Natural Law.

Enlightenment thinkers in America such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine among many others began to see first-hand how “natural law” and “natural rights” flowed logically from the “natural state” of indigenous peoples like the Iroquois.

Europe, at that time, had no such laboratories of observation. Indigenous cultures had long since been dispensed with in Europe. But they imagined their own ancestors lived in just such a natural state before monarchial rule. John Locke wrote, “We must consider what state all men are naturally in…born to the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another.”

This thinking, rooted in the natural world, gave rise to Locke’s famous philosophy that government existed for the sake of protecting life, liberty, and property. Thomas Jefferson borrowed Locke’s list but adapted it. To Jefferson mankind’s natural rights, or unalienable rights, included life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Jefferson, of course, included those now famous unalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence. Still the last of these rights has never been properly defined and never taken truly seriously. In fact, it strikes the reader as a kind of poetic excerpt with nothing more than aspirational significance. Or in any event, doesn’t compete in real terms with “the pursuit of property.”

We humans know that our well-being is predicated upon a sense of meaning and a healthy social interaction with others, especially in helping each other. Yet, despite our rational understanding of this purportedly unalienable right, we seem to have alienated ourselves from it. Instead, we have chosen property.

What if we could somehow reclaim Jefferson’s third unalienable right more seriously than Locke’s third role of government? What if the reciprocal pursuit of happiness could become more important than the competitive, self-centered quest for property in all its forms?

Surely this must be a prerequisite to solving, or at least mitigating, the host of serious problems humanity faces.

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