Pursuing Happiness

Once upon a time, I had a great interest in Indiana's Bill of rights. My particular interest was in Article I, Section One. That Section reads as follows:

 Section 1. WE DECLARE, That all people are created equal; that they are endowed by their CREATOR with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that all power is inherent in the people; and that all free governments are, and of right ought to be, founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety, and well-being. For the advancement of these ends, the people have, at all times, an indefeasible right to alter and reform their government.

If you have read the Declaration of Independence, then that language should be familiar.  What eluded me was finding anything in Indiana's cases explaining the pursuit of happiness. Which interested me in The Los Angeles Review of Books  The Habit of Interestedness: On Eva Brann’s “Pursuits of Happiness” by Peggy Ellsberg
 

For John Locke and his disciple Thomas Jefferson, happiness is not pleasure. Like those precursors, Brann teaches Americans to free themselves from attachment to superficial gratifications and to pursue a higher-quality contentment with life. She locates this contentment in our “interestedness.” We are, she implies, morally, what we eat. She believes that Americans own the birthright of happy freedom, a conviction she reveals especially in Homage to Americans. As an American, my encounter with Brann’s work calls me back to a sense of my own good fortune. Against a keening background noise of lament — over the economy, the climate, the pandemic, the predations of technology, crime — Eva Brann’s bright witness lifts me up and out.

A happy freedom? That seems a good idea to pursue, not so much chasing after material goods as it is the right to seek what is the  moral and philosophical and religious good for ourselves without harm to others.

sch 1/8/23