The pursuit of happiness in the founding era : an intellectual history /
"Scholars have long debated the meaning of happiness, yet have tended to define it narrowly, missing its larger context. They have focused on a single intellectual tradition, most commonly the political philosophy of Locke, and on the use of the term within a single text, the Declaration of Ind...
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Format: | Book |
Language: | English |
Published: |
Columbia :
University of Missouri Press,
2019
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Series: | Studies in constitutional democracy
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Subjects: | |
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Table of Contents:
- Introduction
- Part I : The pursuit of happiness in Blackstone's commentaries on the laws of England
- Placement and purpose : a new science of jurisprudence
- An enlightenment epistemology : Anglican theology and Scottish common sense philosophy
- Improvement and perfection of the common law : history and architecture
- Part II : The pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence
- Textual context : placement, drafting, and structure
- "No new ideas" : four strands of founding era thought
- Intermingling of the four strands
- Convergence of the four strands : the pursuit of happiness
- Part III : The pursuit of happiness : a private right and a public duty
- A single definition with dual applications
- Improvement and perfection from the Commentaries forward
- Conclusion
- Appendices. I. Historiography of William Blackstone and the Commentaries
- II. Historiography of the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence
- III. Blackstone's Commentaries, Introduction, Section the Second, Of the Nature of Laws in General, pp. 38-44
- IV. Jefferson's "original rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence with Thomas Jefferson's, John Adams's, and Benjamin Franklin's edits included, as reconstructed by Carl Becker
- V. The Declaration of Independence with Edits by the Continental Congress Marked, as reconstructed by Carl Becker
- VI. The Declaration of Independence, a transcript from the National Archives