<>Jefferson’s ill chosen phrase from the Declaration of Independence has been interpreted as applying to the pursuit of happiness on a worldly plane. Today not only America, but the whole Americanized world seems haunted by this “pursuit of happiness.”<>
Ill chosen? Liberty isn’t license.
Yes, there does seem to be some strawmanning here. Happiness in a more or less Christian context mirrors the Beatitudes. The term “makarios” used there can be rendered blessed or happy.
The problem is wrenching the whole affair out of a God believing context.
In 1776 the definition of “happiness” which came from the Greeks as the “highest good” meant “human flourishing” which included all the cardinal virtues.
The Greek word “eudaimonia” which is translated to “happiness” is not a simplistic, 10 min orgasm type of “happiness” and Jefferson and the Founders understood it as the Greeks and the Christians after them. It never has meant a hedonistic, simplistic, materialistic, evil satanic version of ‘happiness” which is always evil and destroys long term happiness/flourishing always.
All the educated Greeks knew that without Virtue, there could be no Freedom. Vice makes slaves only so hedonism was thought as vice and all Just Laws promote only public virtue or else it is unjust law (unconstitutional).