Books, Routines, and Habits: The Founders' Guide to Self-Improvement

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Art of Manliness

Key Takeaways

• Happiness is not about feeling good, but being good; it is not about pursuing immediate pleasure, but instead about pursuing long-term virtue
• The Enlightenment profoundly influenced the Founding Fathers of the United States by shaping their ideas on government, individual rights, and democracy
• The Founding Fathers’ keys to self-improvement
  • 1. Read great books
  • 2. Practice daily self-improvement
  • 3. Improve alongside others
• The Founding Fathers believed that they needed to achieve harmony in their minds before they would be able to achieve harmony in the constitution of the state
• Pythagoras keys to seeking perfection: mindfulness, discipline, and moderation
• Perfect virtue is unattainable; the value is in the pursuit of it
• Cicero believed true happiness is found through virtue and moral integrity; he argued that happiness comes from within, emphasizing self-sufficiency, wisdom, and rational thinking
• “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” – Aristotle

Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.org

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A lot of self-improvement advice and content feels empty. And there's a reason for that. It often offers routines and habits to practice, but doesn't offer a strong, overarching reason to practice them.

That's why the self-improvement advice of the Founding Fathers is particularly compelling. Though they were imperfect men, they had a clear why for trying to become better than they were. For the Founders, life was about the pursuit of happiness, and they equated happiness with excellence and virtue — a state that wasn't about feeling good, but being good. The Founders pursued happiness not only for the personal benefit in satisfaction and tranquility it conferred, but for the way the attainment of virtue would benefit society as a whole; they believed that political self-government required personal self-government.

Today on the show, Jeffrey Rosen, a professor of law, the president of the National Constitution Center, and the author of The Pursuit of Happiness, shares the book the Founders read that particularly influenced their idea of happiness as virtue and self-mastery. We talk about the schedules and routines the Founders kept, the self-examination practices they did to improve their character, and how they worked on their flaws, believing that, while moral perfection was ultimately an impossible goal to obtain, it was still something worth striving for.

Resources Related to the Podcast

• AoM's series on Benjamin Franklin's 13 Virtues
• Ben Franklin Virtues Journal available in the AoM Store
• AoM Article: Young Benjamin Franklin’s Plan of Conduct
• AoM Article: Thomas Jefferson’s 10 Rules for Life
• AoM Article: The Libraries of Famous Men — Thomas Jefferson’s Recommended Reading
• AoM Article: The Best John Adams Quotes
• AoM Article: George Washington’s Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation
• AoM Podcast #366: Teach Yourself Like George Washington
• AoM Article: The Spiritual Disciplines — Study and Self-Examination
• Tusculan Disputations by Marcus Tullius Cicero
• The Golden Verses of Pythagoras

Connect With Jeffrey Rosen

• The National Constitution Center website
• We the People podcast
• Jeffrey's faculty page
• Jeffrey on X