The Pursuit of Happiness and the American Regime

Understanding the American Pursuit of Happiness

Happiness is now the serious study of human well-being. As the study of happiness becomes more serious and exact, happiness researchers become flush with optimism. They are optimistic that their findings will help individuals and policy makers make decisions that will contribute to happier results. For all of happiness’s gauzy connotations, happiness can be thoroughly understood as a subject and pursued rationally as an objective. Happiness demystified can be the sound basis of policies that will actually work to improve people’s well-being. In this way, happiness research promises to be a better, surer guide to happiness than classical liberalism. Liberal theorists assume that questions concerning the meaning of happiness are subjective and, therefore, should be left to individuals. Thus, the United States provides little guidance concerning what happiness is and the ways of its pursuit. Liberal theorists teach that individuals are politically free to pursue happiness by their own lights.

Moreover, they posit that the attempt of government to define happiness will pose a major threat to liberty. Even well-intentioned policy based on happiness studies risks becoming doctrinaire and manipulative. That has not worked out so well.[i] Happiness researchers, on the contrary, have identified poor guidance concerning happiness as one of the main shortcomings of liberal nations. People do not often make good decisions about what will make them happy.[ii] Liberalism and happiness studies appear to be at an impasse. We seem caught in between choosing either to have guides for happiness or to preserve individual liberty. What we need are guides that are capable of providing insights into the shortcomings of how we understand and pursue happiness, but that are also compatible with liberalism’s commitment to protecting the plurality of voices within the United States.

My argument is that we have guides already. Our American novelists have offered us insights about the prospects for happiness in a liberal regime and the difficulties we face in attaining it, and how through their literary works, they have called upon their fellow citizens to engage in this inquiry. Our novelists anticipate many of the criticisms happiness researchers have observed in the liberal pursuit of happiness. Through their literary reflections on the American pursuit of happiness, our novelists supplement happiness research by providing a fuller picture of the pursuit of happiness in American life. In addition, as I shall show, the way in which the novelist engages the reader in reflection of the pursuit of happiness is more compatible with our liberal values than the potentially doctrinaire application of happiness research. The study of American literature, thus, is a fruitful avenue toward self-understanding that complements and deepens other forms of inquiry. I have chosen for American representative novelists—Tom Wolfe, Walker Percy, Edith Wharton, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, moving from the twenty-first century to the early nineteenth—in order to demonstrate how our novelists can engage us in our understanding and pursuit of happiness.

As part of this introduction, I will begin with an overview of happiness research that tells us about the characteristics, causes, correlates, and consequences of happiness—the “what” of happiness—and the potential for happiness studies to shape policy. Secondly, I shall turn to how liberal theory encourages political liberty for the sake of allowing individuals to pursue their varied understandings of happiness. Finally, I shall argue that our American novelists are better guides to the pursuit of happiness than happiness researchers, because our novelists present an approach to understanding the pursuit of happiness that is compatible with liberalism. By reflecting on the pursuit of happiness in their stories, our novelists present alternatives and corrections to the pursuit of happiness that preserve liberty and varied understandings of happiness.

The Promise of Happiness Research

Psychologists use the term subjective well-being (SWB) to refer to happiness.[iii] Less romantic of a term, to be sure, but SWB captures more accurately what can measured. SWB describes self-referential reports of well-being that includes “people’s emotional responses, domain satisfactions, and global judgments of life satisfaction.”[iv] Here is how it works. When an interviewer asks an individual if he is happy, it is up to the individual asked to evaluate whether or not he is happy. The answer that the individual gives to the interviewer is his opinion of his happiness, or his subjective well-being. The questions, obviously, are often more complicated, but in every instance it the opinion of the individual asked that counts. Self-referential reports of well-being avoid the sticky predicament of finding a single, global understanding of happiness. Each individual assesses his well-being according to his terms and feelings and not to any set objective standard.

One of the key concepts associated with happiness research is hedonic adaptation. Hedonic adaptation is that an individual’s well-being may fluctuate in the short term, but that in the long term the individual adapts to changes in his environment and return to a set-point of well-being.[v] Adapting to major life events, especially the bad ones, is considered a healthy and necessary psychological function, because it shields individuals from the potentially harmful consequences of heightened and prolonged emotional states.[vi] The downside for happiness is that the individual gets used to good and bad experiences alike and returns to a set point of SWB.[vii] Although hedonic adaptation does not preclude changes in an individual’s baseline, it does mean that altering an individual’s happiness is more difficult than one might think.[viii]

More importantly, it might mean that individuals overestimate the extent to which a thing will bring them happiness—particularly money. Richard A. Easterlin, whose writings on happiness and economic growth have framed much of the debate, claims that people are likely to overestimate the importance of money to their happiness.[ix]  Individuals underestimate the extent to which hedonic adaptation reduces the impact of wealth on their well-being. Consequently, they spend a disproportionate amount of time pursuing wealth to the amount of happiness it provides. Individuals pursue wealth at the expense of other goods that are more likely to contribute to their well-being such as family and health.

The question, of course, is what is to be done? Individual preferences are badly ordered, and, as Easterlin sees it, the only way to get off the “hedonic treadmill” is to consider how individual preferences can be altered through policy.[x] Easterlin realizes that most economists do not consider altering individual preferences an appropriate task for policy. Economists assume that the individual is the best judge of his interests. Yet, as Easterlin argues, the very heart of the problem for human happiness is that individuals are ignorant of the effect that hedonic adaptation has their pursuit of happiness. Consequently, the individual is not able to make properly informed choices. Easterlin suggests that a more active role should be taken by researchers to discuss how to adjust individual preferences, but he leaves relatively unspoken how individuals should be guided or by what institutions.

That studies show that more money does not automatically mean more happiness has sparked much interest among economists and other policy thinkers.[xi] The calls for rethinking, nay, restructuring our national and global economic systems have not been timid. Not only have individuals spent too much time pursuing wealth so have nations mistakenly pursued economic growth as a proxy for well-being.[xii] British economist and “happiness tsar,” Richard Layard heralds the new science of happiness for its potential to inform policy making to make societies happier.[xiii] Layard claims that we are at a crossroads. Although economic growth can contribute to a nation’s well-being, economic growth follows the law of diminishing returns. At some point, increases to a country’s GDP cease measurably to increase its happiness. Chasing after an ever greater GDP will not make western industrialized countries any happier. Progress must be redefined as more than economic growth. Instead it should be “measured by the overall quality of people’s lives.”[xiv] Domestic and international economic policy should be restructured to aim for happiness over mere productivity. New metrics, other than GDP, are needed that can better reflect non-market activity (such as care-giving), progress, well-being, sustainability, and for the political leadership to advance a global initiative to shift toward broader well-being metrics.[xv] Bhutan is widely admired for instituting Gross National Happiness (GNH) over GDP in which every policy is assessed according to its impact on national well-being.[xvi]

Deeply impressed with the findings of happiness research, Derek Bok believes it represents the fulfillment of the utilitarian project to measure happiness. Jeremy Bentham’s “felicific calculus” may have been an object of bemused philosophic interest for the last two hundred years, but now psychologists have succeeded where Bentham did not.[xvii] Consequently, happiness researchers can assist policy makers to “decide which legislative programs are most likely to improve the well-being of the citizenry.”[xviii] Bok claims that happiness research will help craft better legislation, reprioritize our goals by locating “sources of persistent unhappiness, such as mental illness and chronic pain,” that deserve heightened legislative attention, and even lead to new institutional changes in operation of government.[xix]

Bok cheerfully announces that the fruitless debates of philosophers and liberal thinkers have been transferred to more capable hands. Happiness research promises to clarify old philosophic and theological debates by putting their claims aside the findings of happiness researchers. Bok grants that the findings of happiness research may “echo” the insight of a thinker, but that given so much disagreement among thinkers, happiness research can settle (more or less) these tired debates. The great advantage of happiness research is that it is based on empirical research that can yield consensuses among researchers and indicate clearer practical applications.

Not only does happiness research put to bed many old philosophical and theological debates about happiness, it gives us reason to stop fretting about old claims about justice and inequality. Liberal thinkers, such as John Rawls, advocated for redistribution of wealth or other such massive re-structuring of society measures. Happiness research suggests that inequality of income does not have much of an effect on well-being and higher incomes do not bring greater happiness. One problem, Bok identifies, with liberal thought is that they still over-emphasized the role of money in well-being.[xx] Moreover, liberal thinkers base their arguments on differing moral opinions which yield as many ways to allocate resources as there are liberal thinkers.[xxi] Being based on empirical studies and being more akin to the behavior sciences, happiness researchers are more like to reach greater consensus and so can be more useful to lawmakers.

Bok draws two main findings from his survey of happiness research. The first main finding to be gained from happiness research is that “people are often surprisingly bad judges of what will make them happy.”[xxii] The second significant finding is that high incomes do not contribute much to life satisfaction. Consequently, the central political problem is to convince Americans that more money generally does not contribute to happiness. Preoccupation with accumulating wealth causes Americans to neglect the things that do increase happiness like personal relationships, health, and employment. This is unfortunate on an individual level. On the national level, this means that the United States pursues economic growth, which is an imperfect proxy for well-being. Imperfect because it may include harmful goods and services and does not account for other activities that benefit society. For example, the manufacture of cigarettes contributes to productivity under the GDP’s measurement, but child-care is not counted at all. Moreover, economic growth has occurred at the expense of environmental sustainability and so threatens the welfare of future generations. Additionally, economic growth has contributed to undesirable phenomena such as urban sprawl, crowded highways, stress, insecurity, and long work hours.

However, the difficulty remains that most Americans believe economic growth is desirable. The trouble with a democratic society is that little can be done in opposition to public opinion. Bok discusses whether lawmakers ought to forgo the wishes of their constituents’ opinion for the sake of following happiness experts when public opinion is contrary to what happiness studies demonstrate (presumably conclusively) to make people happy. Should lawmakers base policy on public opinion or should they follow happiness research and do what will make the public happy? Bok realizes that legislators are unlikely to oppose public opinion on very prominent issues. Less prominent or polarizing issues in which there is no strong public opinion offer an opportunity. In such cases, legislators exercise discretion to follow happiness research. Moreover, because there are other legitimate instances in which legislators can, in good faith, go against their constituents, following happiness research may be another.[xxiii] Box expects that “[m]ost voters would probably prefer to be happy rather than have their representatives mechanically accept their mistaken impressions of how to reach this goal.”[xxiv]

Ultimately, though, Bok understands that legislative discretion is not the optimal way in which to increase the influence of happiness findings on legislation. Nor does it accomplish the main task to persuade Americans to know better what contributes to happiness. Since Americans often do not know what will bring them happiness, a sound chance at a happy life begins by being properly educated. Bok argues that the current focus of k-12 education is skewed too heavily toward preparing children to be productive and competitive workers to the neglect of nurturing lifelong interests and beneficial activities. While studies show that employment contributes greatly to satisfaction, it is most often a means to other ends. Studies show that on a daily basis the activities Americans enjoy most generally take place outside the workplace such as socializing with friends and eating meals with family. By fostering many interests and abilities, education should aim for more than merger workplace readiness.

At the collegiate level, however, more can be accomplished to educate young adults about making satisfying life decisions. Bok takes special aim at great books programs and why these programs unhelpfully raise more questions than they answer.[xxv] Happiness courses taught by behavioral scientists, on the other hand, present empirical findings to students for their consideration. Students can explore and weigh the likely impact different circumstances and decisions on their lives. It is true that happiness courses cannot tell students how to have a happy life any more than great books courses can. Happiness studies do not present a blueprint for life; individual circumstances vary.[xxvi] But they do students a greater service by putting in their hands real findings not theoretical about what likely increases happiness. The further benefit of educating students in this new way is that students as voters will see the wisdom of using happiness for policy-making.

Bok downplays the possibility that happiness research could used to justify undesirable policy and points to the Declaration and the Constitution to provide the necessary safeguards against oppressive and unjust legislation. For example, although studies show that people who attend church and engage in community service are happier than those who do not, the government cannot require non-churchgoers to attend a church. That would be a clear violation of the Establishment Clause. However, Bok notes that civil rights and basic liberties like free speech “must be upheld whatever the effects on happiness.”[xxvii] Apparently, there is a theory of justice and not mere utilitarianism undergirding his teaching. Bok hopes that policymakers will use happiness research to inform policy-making and he expects that the courts will continue to uphold the rights and liberties protected in the Bill of Rights. Why judges would not draw from happiness studies to inform their opinion is not adequately explained. Bok fails to recognize how constitutional safeguards depend on a liberal understanding of the limits of the state to promote a comprehensive public good. Bok tries to sever ties with liberal thought and its so-called preoccupation with material goods, but takes for granted that constitutional safeguards can survive independent of their theoretical grounding.[xxviii] As I shall argue, liberal theory cannot be so quickly dismissed, but informs our understanding of how we should collectively and individually pursue happiness. Liberal theorists are mindful of the limits of the state’s ability to provide for the happiness of all, because individuals disagree about what happiness is. Since pluralism characterizes understandings of happiness, liberal theorists advocate a significant measure of political liberty for the sake of encouraging individuals to pursue happiness as they understand it.

Liberal Theory on Happiness

Bok objects to contemporary liberal theory because it overlooks happiness and is preoccupied with autonomy and justice. Bok is not wrong about that. Yet, liberalism has its roots in deep concern for the prospects for happiness. Early liberals investigated how political liberty advances the cause of happiness and the pursuit of happiness. The social contract that secures the more useful political liberty over natural liberty enables the individual to pursue his well-being, but leaves it to the individual’s ability. Nowadays liberal theorists prefer to praise liberalism for the promotion of other social goods such as neutrality, pluralism, justice, autonomy, freedom, deliberation, choice, and privacy. Heirs to Rousseau’s and Kant’s critiques of liberalism, many contemporary theorists regard happiness as an unworthy, lowly goal for political liberty. Consequently, they have traded in happiness for these supposedly higher, nobler goals. Yet, liberal theorists of all stripes recognize the state’s essential role in creating the optimal conditions for the individual to realize his highest potential, but also admit that achievement of an individual’s highest potential lies outside of the state.

What Hobbes and Locke get right is that we are more than citizens of the state and that our good lies outside the reach of the state to achieve. (The state, however, by trying to push a comprehensive doctrine of the good, can really damage our prospects.) They point us beyond the state in our search for happiness. Additionally, they confirm that liberty is an essential component of happiness—happiness is happiness because it is freely pursued. On the other hand, what Hobbes and Locke present the pursuit of happiness to look like does a lot to confirm critics that it is shallow and probably not effective.

With great economy of words, Hobbes describes happiness, or felicity, as he prefers, as “a continual progress of the desire, from one object to another; the attaining of the former, being still but the way to the later.”[xxix] Since our desires are in constant motion, once we gain a thing we want, we are already reaching out to another desired thing. For Hobbes, there is no highest good with which felicity can be identified. The significance is that there is no content that makes for happiness. And as if to emphasize the point, he clarifies that “felicity of this life consisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied.”[xxx] So for Hobbes it is not happiness that matters as much as its pursuit.

Hobbes blows up the idea of a single, final happiness that can bring peace of mind to all who seek it. He blasts it to pieces so as to create maximum diversity of the ways happiness is pursued so as to justify great political liberty for the pursuit of happiness. There are two reasons why individuals pursue happiness differently. First, individuals have a “diversity of passions” that spark different desires to be satisfied.[xxxi] The second reason arises from “from the difference of the knowledge, or opinions each one has of the causes” that can bring about the things that we desire.[xxxii] Put simply, people have different desires and their knowledge (or opinions) differs on how to satisfy their desires.

Hobbes inserts a big dose of uncertainty in any pursuit. He distinguishes between knowledge and opinion. He is fully aware that people can have wrong opinions about the means needed to achieve their goals. Moreover, he suggests there are even gradations in the quality of knowledge individuals may have. Some individuals will pursue their desired things better or worse given the quality of their knowledge. Continual success at acquiring the means necessary to satisfy our endless succession of desires is not an easy task. Hobbes gives a rather bookish suggestion. The surest way to improve felicity is through by increasing our knowledge of the causes of things, particularly desirable things. However, since passions differ among individuals, it may be that some are more easily gratified than others. Some individuals may be saddled with passions that are more challenging to accommodate. Even within Hobbes’ liberal state, it seems unlikely that many individuals would be able to use their political liberty so well as to experience felicity frequently. Nevertheless, Hobbes concludes that every individual has his irreducible way of pursuing happiness that cannot be subsumed into any state policy.

The trouble that John Locke sees is that our desires are, more often than not, really sources of unease or of pain. Once one desire or unease has been relieved, another is soon felt. The task of relieving immediate sources of unease is like playing whack-a-mole. Consequently, we are waylaid from pursuing a greater good (or relieving a greater if less pressing pain).[xxxiii] Building on Hobbes’ suggestion to study, Locke suggests that individuals suspend the satisfaction of immediate desires and wants for the sake of securing some other future and presumably more desirable good. For Locke, in addition to political liberty, the most meaningful liberty we have is mind’s power “to suspend the execution and satisfaction of any of its desires” (italics in original).[xxxiv] We should pause to reflect on the outcome of satisfying a desire and to judge whether indulging a desire will cause more pain or pleasure so that we might act with our long-term happiness in mind.

Because we must suspend enjoyment in order to go after long term satisfactions, Locke removes pleasure for the chain of choices, decisions, and events leading up to these better desires. Moreover, there is the possibly that as we approach the long awaited object of our desires that enjoyment must be further delayed in favor of yet another long-term goal. In this respect, Locke’s pursuit of happiness starts to look more like Hobbes’ felicity. As Locke says, we “can be at leisure for nothing else, till every uneasiness we feel be perfectly removed: which in the multitude of wants, and desires, we are beset with in this imperfect State, we are not like to be ever freed from in this World.”[xxxv] In this respect, a Lockean pursuit of happiness resembles a “joyless quest for joy.”[xxxvi] So the pursuit of happiness is weirdly not very happy.

Happiness fell out of favor with liberals after the criticisms of Rousseau and Kant that happiness and pleasure are vulgar, low, and do not indicate real inner liberty. The take away lesson for later liberal thinkers was to elevate liberalism towards loftier goals for political liberty.[xxxvii] Here are just a few examples. Benjamin Constant argues that “self-development” not happiness is the true aim of liberalism.[xxxviii] Instead of happiness, Constant argues, the better part is to find contentment with the “noble disquiet which pursues and torments us.”[xxxix] John Rawls’s image of a happy life is the carrying out of “successful (more or less) rational life plan.”[xl] Individual rational life plans will differ.[xli] Rawls explicitly distinguishes justice as fairness’s conception of happiness from the Declaration’s, which is, according to him, hedonistic and primarily concerned with one’s welfare without consideration for the welfare of others. The Declaration’s ideals are uncomfortably noncommittal with regard to justice as fairness:  “To say of someone that he seeks happiness does not, it seems, imply that he is prepared either to violate or to affirm these restrictions”[xlii] While liberalism consistently defends political liberty to protect the many ways in which individuals choose to live, they recognize that political liberty is insufficient for happiness. As we shall see, this may mean that the most thoughtful insights on happiness are to be gained from our novelists who consider the pursuit of happiness within the American experience.

A Liberal Regime Devoted to the Pursuit of Happiness

The pursuit of happiness is inextricably linked to the United States as a reason for its creation and also as a measure for its success or failure as a regime. The Declaration of Independence clearly asserts that among the “unalienable Rights” endowed to humans are “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” and furthermore claims that security of these rights is both the impetus for establishing government and also the cause for the “consent of the governed.” If a government fails to facilitate the pursuit of happiness, then the people have a right to alter, abolish and institute a new government that is hopefully better suited for the task. (In practice, the Declaration advises that this dramatic and revolutionary proposition should be guided by and exercised with prudence.) The Declaration supposes that the reason the people choose a particular form of government is because they believe it will secure their rights. Not all governments perform equally well. The Declaration assumes that not only are the people able to form governments to secure their rights, but that they can evaluate and ought to evaluate their governments. The people have the right to institute whatever form of government that they judge “most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” Taking the Declaration seriously also means exploring and evaluating how well our regime succeeds in providing for the pursuit of happiness for the sake of our present, continued consent. The Constitution formally sets forth the organization of government by which individual rights are protected. However, the Constitution chooses to leave the pursuit of happiness largely to the individual. Without looking into the American pursuit of happiness, we neglect part of the theoretical justification of our form of government and the political principles that support our continued consent to it.

Liberal theorists are not in agreement on what goal political liberty is meant to serve—whether it is happiness, nobility, or a rational life plan—but they recognize that the possibility of realizing the goal of political liberty belongs, in part, to individual effort and agency. Liberal theorists remain self-aware of the limits of political liberty to promote human well-being. In light of that self-awareness, our political order anticipates its limits and expects individuals to receive guidance on happiness and seek happiness through other resources. Our political order does not leave Americans isolated and without guides, but expects and encourages on-going discussions concerning the relationship between our government and the pursuit of happiness. As Joseph Cropsey observes, our liberalism makes us a self-reflective nation, not only because it provides the freedom for reflection on our individual and collective goals as human beings, but also because it itself does not undertake to define those goals for us.[xliii] The United States is an incomplete regime, or limited political order, that acknowledges and invites criticism for the sake of promoting the highest ends. Americans are guided in their pursuit of happiness not simply by our founding and other public documents—our “parchment regime”—but by a host of ungoverned resources, such as art, science, and religion, that shape and form how we live and pursue happiness.[xliv] Thus, Americans are continuously and collectively, if not through Congress and other official public avenues, participating in deliberations about the various goods we seek and how well our political order facilitates our pursuit of happiness.

Since Americans find guides for the pursuit of happiness from many sources, any attempt to evaluate how well our liberal regime supports the pursuit of happiness must look at how these sources supplement and critique our liberal political order. We must, as Cropsey claims, look at our regime “in the wide sense that includes not only our great political documents but the important influences on our way of life that emanate from unofficial thought” to understand how Americans live.[xlv] We need to look at the American regime “in the wide sense”—to arrive at a fuller and more satisfying understanding of happiness.[xlvi]

Although happiness studies and liberal theory both offer significant insights into happiness, they are unable to consider the whole American regime and the individual’s experience within it. Happiness studies and liberal theory cannot provide the wide lens needed to evaluate the pursuit of happiness. Happiness studies help us see what happiness consists of and how states may better assess well-being. Even as happiness studies aim to be more encompassing a measure and guide to human well-being, it risks being doctrinaire and manipulative. Liberal theory cautions against holistic, all-encompassing attempts to promote human happiness—especially in large, diverse, and pluralistic societies. Moreover, political liberty is necessary for the pursuit of happiness, but also allows for the possibility that individuals will use their liberty poorly. Consequently, in a liberal society such as the United States, our way of life is only partially shaped by our political order and the other part shaped countervailing sources that both serve to correct the deficiencies within the state and to promote the pursuit of happiness.

We need another way of considering how the American regime affects the pursuit of happiness. As I shall demonstrate, our novelists depict the individual’s pursuit within the American regime as a whole—informed both by liberalism and critical voices. Through their deeds, our novelists show us how the unofficial part of our regime contributes to and acts in concert with our official political order to promote the individual’s pursuit of happiness. As I shall argue, our novelists offer us constructive criticism concerning the pursuit of happiness that highlights the deficiencies of liberalism and helps correct those deficiencies by exploring other resources and ways for the pursuit of happiness.

Our American Novelists as Political Thinkers

Our American novelists, I argue, offers insights into the pursuit of happiness, because they offer stories about particular individuals trying to find happiness in America. Because our novelists “raise questions about the fundamental assumptions of liberal democracy” in their fiction, we can see our advantages, but also our flaws and limitations.[xlvii] Their imaginative depictions of the conflicts that individuals may encounter as a result of America’s liberal principles explore the impact liberalism has on the pursuit of happiness.[xlviii] In this way, they anticipate many of shortcomings observed by happiness researchers, but have also uncovered problems and more subtle complexities that quantitative studies cannot easily reveal.

Novels cannot be read like treatises. Theory teaches by abstraction and generalization. The teaching of a novel is given within a particular context and thus cannot be simply applied to reality. Authors engage not in political theory, but present a “very special or peculiar kind of political thought” (italics mine).[xlix] Edith Wharton is not Thomas Hobbes, but she considers how the individual satisfies his desires in society by imagining a character, Undine Spragg, with unrestrained desires seeking power after power to fulfill them. How then does a novel’s contextualized teaching have application beyond the borders of the book? A novel’s particularization of character and location is the precise reason why novels excel at exploring political themes. Theory is abstracted unnaturally from the particularity of human experience. Art presents the remedy to theory’s defect because it depicts particular persons and places. In this way, our novelists can “‘test’ theories or general ideas, in effect, by showing what happens to the characters who take these ideas seriously enough to live by them.”[l] Novelists thus allow us to see the consequences and effects of theories applied to particular persons and places. Thus, art, or poetry in the broad sense, is the necessary complement, and sometimes correction, to political theory. Moreover, stories are personal. People in books are patterned after people in real life who try to sort out what they ought to do.[li]

I will look at how American novelists explore the political preconditions for happiness, how our political order promotes happiness, and how we may guard against the dangers to happiness arising in our political order. Our novelists’ differing diagnoses of the pursuit of happiness illustrates the variety of understandings and ways of pursuing happiness.[lii] In Chapter 2, beginning in contemporary America, we shall see how in Tom Wolfe’s novels economic success and intellectual prowess fail to satisfy our human need for greatness, distinction, and friendship. Wolfe dramatically depicts the downfall of his characters due to their failure to recognize and pursue satisfying human goods. Wolfe shows us the power of society to shape our lives and goals through rewarding certain activities with high status. Wolfe reveals that Americans do not merely pursue wealth per se, but primarily for the status and power it brings.

For example, in The Bonfire of the Vanities, Sherman McCoy pursues wealth, but he cares most for the sense of mastery and social prestige it brings him. The pursuit of wealth is connected to more than lust for acquisition. (A point happiness studies tend to overlook.) For Wolfe, the greatest threat to the pursuit of happiness is social pressure. Sherman learns that his mastery was illusory and that his social standing depended on the opinion of people who cared very little about him. Status and power prove to be an unstable foundation for happiness. Sherman finds the courage to resist political and social forces bent on depriving him of his freedom for the sake of preserving his liberty and eventually re-claiming his family. In Bonfire as well as A Man in Full and I Am Charlotte Simmons, Wolfe stresses the importance of finding the courage to stand up to social pressure for the sake of pursuing happiness.

In Chapter 3, taking a Christian existential perspective, Walker Percy suggests alternatives to modern life through the “conventionally” unhappy lives of his alienated and lonely protagonists. Percy faults the pursuit of happiness for defining the object of the pursuit. He replaces the pursuit of happiness with the search so as to create a freer foundation for inquiry into the highest human aspirations. In The Moviegoer, for example, Binx recognizes the superficiality of the materialistic pursuit of happiness that alienates individuals from each other and from realizing the futility of their pursuit. Binx searches for an alternative to his family’s aristocratic and fatalistic perspective and liberalism’s lowly concern for material well-being that will ennoble and provide meaning to his life. Through his search, Binx partially overcomes his alienation and finds a fellow searcher in his cousin Kate. As we shall see, in Lost in the Cosmos and The Thanatos Syndrome, Percy shows sympathy for the Stoic life of aristocratic honor, which offers a sanctuary from modernity’s baser assumptions about human nature, but ultimately rejects it. Instead, Percy tries to make us aware of our condition as fellow pilgrims and wanderers—a way of life that is not specifically liberal, but possible within a liberal political order.

In Chapter 4, Edith Wharton brings to light how love of equality detaches individuals from time and place and unleashes endless and restless desires that dissolve the old social classes that salutarily had constrained individual liberty for the effect of creating a coherent and enduring life with others. For Wharton, the pursuit of happiness is an ugly justification for self-gratification. In The Custom of the Country, Wharton shows Undine Spragg in an endless, futile pursuit of pure, untroubled pleasure. Not only does Undine’s selfishness wreck the lives of her family and child, she fails to find the happiness she wants. In contrast, Newland Archer, in The Age of Innocence, sacrifices his deepest desire, because he recognizes his social and paternal duty. In turn, Newland realizes—if not happiness—a deep life satisfaction. Wharton sought ways to resist the detachment and restlessness that are the products of democracy through an appeal to family responsibility and the virtue of moderation that may detract from momentary happiness as it makes possible a more lasting and stable contentment.

In Chapter 5, Nathaniel Hawthorne teaches the reader how to be a friend in “The Old Manse” by presenting himself as a friend. He turns to America’s Puritan past to explore the connection between freedom and privacy, and our need to pursue happiness in association with others. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne depicts how the Puritan community violates Hester Prynne’s heart by its public punishment of her private sin and, furthermore, isolates her from society through the badge of the scarlet letter. Yet, if the Puritans practiced excessive social intrusion into individual lives, Hawthorne’s contemporary society as depicted in “The Custom-House” sketch that introduces the main story of The Scarlet Letter depicts the deficiency in which individuals enjoy little community with each other.

Both societies, Hawthorne argues, fail to recognize that the heart’s mystery provides the basis of our moral and political freedom. Political health is served by acknowledging the sacredness of the human heart and limiting the reach of society, but also encouraging individuals to form freely private relationships and friendships to mediate the individual’s relationship to society as a whole. In The House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne shows that happy endings are possible. A persistent risk to happiness is our American hope that the past can be expunged and that society can be remade anew. He fears that we will miss out on the happiness offered to us in the present. Instead, we should remake the relationships closest to us. It is Hawthorne, I shall argue, who provides the more positive view of the potential of American freedom to allow human happiness—with guidance from artists or poets.

Our novelists, like happiness researchers, observe that Americans pursue material goods excessively and fail to cultivate the social and personal relationships that contribute to well-being, but go further in their inquiry. Moreover, unlike happiness researchers, our novelists engage the reader as a participant in their critique of the pursuit of happiness and offer alternative possibilities for the pursuit of happiness. Since our novelists offer ongoing reflection and conversation about the meaning of happiness and how we might secure it for ourselves and for others, I argue that they provide a model for investigation into the pursuit of happiness that is more compatible with liberalism’s commitment to respecting pluralism.

Notes

[i] Happiness researchers focus on the 2008-2009 financial crisis as one species of evidence. The 2008-2009 financial crisis fortuitously propelled happiness research to the frontline of international economic policy discussion. While the shortcomings of GDP have been known prior to the financial crisis, the crisis highlighted the pitfalls of relying so heavily on market metrics to approximate social well-being and to guide policy decisions. See, for example, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, and Jean-Paul Fitoussi, Mis-measuring Our Lives:  Why GDP Doesn’t Add Up (New York: The New Press, 2010).

[ii] See, for example, George Loewenstein and David Schkade’s “Wouldn’t It Be Nice? Predicting Future Feelings,” in Well-Being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology, ed. Daniel Kahneman, Ed Diener, and Norbert Schwarz (New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation: 1999), 85-105.

[iii] Happiness research is relatively new subfield in psychology within positive psychology. Historically, psychologists have devoted more research to human pathologies than to positive mental states. Consider that although Freud agrees that the individual seeks happiness, he says that “[t]here is no possibility at all of its being carried through; all the regulations of the universe run counter to it” in Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans and ed. James Strachey (New York:  W. W. Norton & Co., 1961), 25. For Freud, the individual is hardwired to follow the pleasure principle and be frustrated by the reality principle. In the battle of the id and ego, happiness, in the sense of the satisfaction of id, is never achieved. Consequently, Freud’s own case studies diagnosis many unhappy states. Martin Seligman is widely considered the founder of positive psychology and promoter of happiness as learned optimism. See Martin Seligman, How Positive Psychology Happened and Where It Is Going (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2016) and Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment (New York, NY: Free Press, 2002). Ed Diener, Eunkook M. Suh, Richard E. Lucas, and Heidi L. Smith also observe that the increased interest in happiness research mirrors broader social interest in the individual, new emphasis on subjective research, increased awareness that non-economic factors contribute to well-being. See Ed Diener, Eunkook M. Suh, Richard E. Lucas, and Heidi L. Smith, “Subjective Well-Being: Three Decades of Progress,” in Psychological Bulletin 125 (1999), 276-302. Probably my preferred explanation, Ruut Veenhoven offer another reason for the growth of interest in happiness and claims that it began as “by-product of the so-called ‘Social Indicator Movement’” in Conditions of Happiness (Hingham, MA:  Kluwer Boston Academic Publishers, 1984), 2.

[iv] Ed Diener, Eunkook M. Suh, Richard E. Lucas, and Heidi L. Smith, “Subjective Well-Being: Three Decades of Progress,” in Psychological Bulletin 125 (1999), 277.

[v] See Philip Brickman and Donald T. Campbell, “Hedonic Relativism and Planning the Good Society,” in Adaptation Level Theory, ed. M. H. Appley (New York:  Academic Press, 1971), 287-305 and Philip Brickman, Dan Coates, and Ronnie Janoff-Bulman, “Lottery Winners and Accident Victims:  Is Happiness Relative?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 36 (1978): 917-27. In the 1970s, Philip Brickman and Donald T. Campbell posited that individuals may experience short-term fluctuations in well-being, but regardless of good and bad fortune, individuals eventually adjust to their circumstances and return to a set-point of well-being. The implication was that individuals had relatively little control over their long term happiness and that political, social, and economic policy and conditions could not significantly and permanently affect SWB. In support of this theory, Philip Brickman, Dan Coates, and Ronnie Janoff-Bulman compared the well-being of lottery winners and paralyzed accident victims to find that in the long term lottery winners are not generally happier than paraplegics. Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman hypothesize that returns to base levels of well-being happened due to contrast and habituation. Although winning the lottery is generally considered a positive event, high happiness levels do not sustain, because now “many ordinary events may seem less pleasurable, since they now compare less favorably with past experience.” Secondly, over time, the impact of winning the lottery delivers less pleasure and, consequently, contributes less to the winner’s well-being as the winner habituates to it. Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman argue that contrast and habituation operate in the reverse manner for paralyzed accident victims. In comparison with their extreme misfortune, paraplegics perceive “mundane pleasures” more favorably; over time, they become habituated to their misfortune and so it impacts their well-being less than over time (918).

[vi] See Shane Frederick and George Loewenstein, “Hedonic Adaption,” in Well-Being:  The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology, eds. Daniel Kahneman, Ed  Diener, and Norbert Schwarz (New York:  Sage, 1999), 302-329.

[vii] Richard E. Lucas observes the set-point theory of hedonic adaptation in this strict form presents a downside to psychologists as well. If an individual’s SWB is fixed, it leaves little room for change and hope for “promising interventions” in “Personality and Subjective Well-Being,” in The Science of Subjective Well-Being, eds. Michael Eid and Randy J. Larsen, 172. Likewise, political scientist Benjamin Radcliff observes that the difficulty with hedonic adaptation is that it leaves little room for political life to contribute to happiness in “Politics, Markets, and Life Satisfaction:  The Political Economy of Human Happiness,” The American Political Science Review 95 (2001): 940.

[viii] Hedonic adaptation remains the dominant model. Revisions and refinements of the theory simply put set-point hedonic adaptation “in a broader context” as Richard E. Lucas explains in “Adaptation and the Set-Point Model of Subjective Well-Being: Does Happiness Change After Major Life Events?,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 16, (2007): 78. See Ed Diener, Richard E. Lucas, Christie Napa Scollon, “Beyond the Hedonic Treadmill:  Revising the Adaptation Theory of Well-Being,”American Psychologist (2006): 305-14; Richard E. Lucas, “Time Does Not Heal All Wounds:  A Longitudinal Study of Reaction and Adaptation to Divorce,” Psychological Science 16 (2005):  945-50; Richard E. Lucas, “Long-Term Disability is Associated with Lasting Changes in Subjective Well-Being:  Evidence from Two Nationally Represented Longitudinal Studies,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 93 (2007):  717-730, and Richard E. Lucas, Andrew Clark, Yannis Georgellis, and Ed Diener, “Unemployment Alters the Set Point for Life Satisfaction,” Psychological Science 15 (2004):  8-13. See also Paul T. Costa, Robert R. McCrae, and Alan B. Zonderman, “Environmental and Dispositional Influences on Well-Being:  Longitudinal Follow-Up of an American National Sample,” British Journal of Psychology 78 (1987): 299-306;  Marcel. Dijkers, “Quality of Life After Spinal Cord Injury:  A Meta Analysis of the Effects of Disablement Components,” Spinal Cord 35 (1997):  829-40, and David Watson, “Stability Versus Change, Dependability Versus Error:  Issues in the Assessment of Personality over Time,” Journal of Research in Personality 38 (2004): 319-50.

[ix] Richard A. Easterlin reasoned that most people believe that money, or rather the material goods it affords, brings happiness. If true, he hypothesized that the steady rise of incomes since the end of World War II should indicate greater social happiness. Comparing well-being surveys from the end of World War II and rises in national average income, Easterlin shows that despite significant increases in individual incomes, there has been no increase in national happiness. Growth and improved living standards have not contribute to greater happiness in “Does Money Buy Happiness?”, Public Interest 30 (1973): 3-10. In contrast, some economists counter that Easterlin’s thesis rests on too little data to conclude that wealth has no effect on SWB and that there is a positive connection between happiness and economic growth. See Michael R. Hagerty and Ruut Veenhoven, “Wealth and Happiness Revisited:  Growing National Income Does Go with Greater Happiness,” Social Indicators Research 64 (2003): 1-27;  Michael R. Hagerty, “Social Comparisons of Income in One’s Community:  Evidence From National Surveys of Income and Happiness,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78 (2000): 764-771; Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, “Economic Growth and Subjective Well-Being:  Reassessing the Easterlin Paradox,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (2008): 1-35, and Ruut Veenhoven, “Is Happiness Relative?”Social Indicators Research 24 (1991): 1-34. Using improved time-series studies, Michael R. Hagerty and Ruut Veenhoven argue “that increasing national income does go with increasing national happiness” (22, italics in original). Also claiming to use improved methodological tools and larger data sets, Stevenson and Wolfers argue that there is a clear positive relationship between income and SWB. In contrast to the argument that the utility of income dwindles through adaptation, Veenhoven argues that a portion of individual happiness depends on the fulfillment of “innate bio-psychological needs which do not adjust to circumstances” and that these basic needs “mark in fact the limits of human adaptability” (32). Veenhoven continues that “[p]eople cannot be happy in chronic hunger, danger and isolation: not even if they have never known better and if their neighbors are worse off” (32).

[x] Richard E. Easterlin, “Explaining Happiness,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America 100 (2003):  11182.

[xi] Money can’t buy happiness used to be just a cliché. Certainly, it seems that self-interest plays some role in the recent popularity of happiness. William Davies makes the argument that businesses and the government have discovered that happiness is profitable in The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being (London: Verso, 2015). Not everyone is excited about the increased interest in happiness. Eric G. Wilson argues that happiness is an impediment to greater achievements in Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008).

[xii] See, for example, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, and Jean-Paul Fitoussi, Mis-measuring Our Lives:  Why GDP Doesn’t Add Up (New York: The New Press, 2010).

[xiii] Stuart Jeffries, “Will This Man Make You Happy?” The Guardian, June 24, 2008, accessed on May 29, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/jun/24/healthandwellbeing.schools and Richard Layard, Happiness:  Lessons from a New Science (New York:  Penguin Books, 2005). Bruno S. Frey, another not so dismal economist, brightly declares that economic happiness research will have nothing short of a “revolutionary impact on policy” and calls for young economists to enter the field in Happiness:  A Revolution in Economics (Cambridge, MA:  Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008), 203.

[xiv] Richard Layard, “This is the Greatest Good: We Have Only One True Yardstick with which to Measure Society’s Progress: Happiness.” The Guardian, September 14, 2009. Accessed by May 29, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/sep/13/happiness-enlightenment-economics-philosophy.

[xv] See Jeremy S. Brooks, “Avoiding the Limits to Growth: Gross National Happiness in Bhutan as a Model for Sustainable Development,” Sustainability 5 (2013): 3640-64; Laura Musikanski, “Happiness in Public Policy,” Journal of Social Change 6 (2014): 55-85; John Lichfield, “Forget GDP, It’s Time for Gross Domestic Happiness.” The Independent (London), September 15, 2009. Accessed on Mary 29, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/sep/20/economics-wealth-gdp-happiness. Lauchlan T. Munro’s article argues that Bhutan’s move to GNH over GDP was a strategic business move in “Where Did Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Come From? The Origins of an Invented Tradition,” Asian Affairs 47 (2016): 71-92.

[xvi] See, for example, Arthur C. Brooks, Gross National Happiness: Why Happiness Matters for America—and How We Can Get More of It (New York: Basic, 2008); Kai Schultz, “In Bhutan, Happiness Index as Gauge for Social Ills,” The New York Times, January 17, 2017, accessed May 29, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/world/asia/bhutan-gross-national-happiness-indicator-.html?mcubz=0.

[xvii] Happiness researchers “overcome the problems of measuring happiness” through subjective measurements in Derek Bok, The Politics of Happiness: What Government Can Learn From the New Research on Well-Being (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press, 2010), 5.

[xviii] Bok, The Politics of Happiness, 204.

[xix] Bok, The Politics of Happiness, 61.

[xx] Moreover, Bok notes liberal thinkers differ greatly with respect to what justice requires. In contrast to Rawls, Ronald Dworkin argues that justice requires equality of capabilities whereas Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen argue for equality of initial resources.

[xxi] Bok, The Politics of Happiness, 87.

[xxii] Bok, The Politics of Happiness, 5.

[xxiii] Lawmakers may vote contrary to public opinion in at least three cases: to make compromises, when the public is misinformed, and when the public is seized by passions.

[xxiv] Bok, The Politics of Happiness, 59.

[xxv] See Bok, The Politics of Happiness, 170.

[xxvi] Bok acknowledges that individual bear some responsibility to achieve happiness. There are too many accidents of life that the state cannot control to ensure an outcome of happiness. Moreover, Bok observes that much unhappiness may be beyond the reach of policy because it is genetic in origin (The Politics of Happiness, 52). Bok remains committed to the notion that through science we may be able to exert further control over the events in our lives and even over our genetic inheritance. Though it may be far into the future, universal happiness is a goal to be sought. Individuals must look forward to the day in which better technique develops for the achievement of happiness.

[xxvii] Bok, The Politics of Happiness, 55.

[xxviii] Economist Carol Graham observes that the greatest limit of happiness research for policymakers is that there is no global definition of happiness. The conceptual measure of happiness, SWB, is a subjective self-reported evaluation of well-being. It is the absence of a set definition of happiness that has contributed to the flourishing of happiness studies. But, as Graham argues, “the definition of happiness surely matters to policy,” because policy decisions require “normative choices that may be very different across countries and cultures” in Happiness Around the World: the Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 22.

[xxix] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Indianapolis, IN:  Hackett Publishing Company, 1994), part I, chapter XI.

[xxx] Hobbes, part I, chapter XI.

[xxxi] Hobbes, part I, chapter XI.

[xxxii] Hobbes, part I, chapter XI.

[xxxiii] As Locke observes, our bodies continually put us at unease for no sooner have we satisfied a hunger that our body wants rest, or we think about our next meal. We also have “adopted desires” for things like “Honour, Power, or Riches” that like natural wants also press on us as contingent and necessary to our happiness (italics in original) in Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1979), book II, chapter XXI, section 45.

[xxxiv] Locke, Human Understanding, book II, chapter XXI, section 47.

[xxxv] Locke, Human Understanding, book II, chapter XXI, section 46.

[xxxvi] Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1965), 251.

[xxxvii] Liberal theorists also distance themselves from happiness so as to put distance between themselves and utilitarians, which liberal theorists regard with suspect commitment to rights. Happiness as pleasure is too slippery a concept that may be used to justify abridgment of rights for the sake of the pleasure of others.

[xxxviii] Benjamin Constant considered liberty and happiness to be nearly incompatible; because individuals can make poor choices regarding what will make them happy. Happiness is too private a goal and too dependent on individual effort. Constant finds nobility in dissatisfaction that, he believes, is the result of political liberty. In this way, Constant attempts to rescue liberty from its supposedly sordid association with happiness as pleasure and raises political liberty’s goal above happiness to the higher, nobler goal of “self-development” in Political Writings, trans. Biancamaria Fontana (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1998), 327.

[xxxix] Constant, 327.

[xl] John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1999), §63. For qualifications to this claim, see §83.

[xli]Rawls retains the liberal belief in the individual pursuit of happiness, because of the difference of “endowments and circumstances” in A Theory of Justice, §63.

[xlii] Rawls, A Theory of Justice, §83. Happiness is “the satisfaction of rational desire” (§15). Rawls emphasizes that justice as fairness keeps its distance from individuals as they execute their rational life plans. Justice as fairness does not question how individuals make use of their advantages and situations in life (whatever is given after the veil of ignorance has been drawn aside) and it does not judge among rational life plans so long “as it does not violate what justice demands” (§16).

[xliii] Cropsey argues that our preoccupation with self-reflection as a nation stems from our dissatisfaction with what self-knowledge we have. Our nation’s ideals as expressed in our founding documents and great public speeches appear incomplete with respect to the totality of our experience as Americans. Much of our dissatisfaction comes from the peculiar split in our public life, between what Cropsey calls our official or “parchment regime” and our unofficial regime. In a sense, we have not one but two regimes, or perhaps, more accurately, we have two dimensions to our American regime. The distinction between our “parchment regime” and our unwritten regime rests on the distinction between what is public and governed and what is private and ungoverned. Both dimensions, however, inform our self-understanding. We have a “parchment regime” that was deliberately selected and preserved in official documents and utterances the ends and means of our public governing institutions. Our “parchment regime” reflects mostly early modern political thought as expounded by Hobbes and Locke in our official founding documents, judicial opinions, and public speeches. Our unofficial regime of on-going thought is inherently uncontrollable and also intentionally ungoverned by our government. Together these public documents compose our public political ideals–life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our unofficial regime also serves to provide meaning to our “parchment” regime and is private but not “necessarily individual” in “Introduction:  The United States as Regime and the Sources of the American Way of Life,” in Political Philosophy and the Issues of Politics (Chicago:  The University of Chicago Press, 1980) 2. Cropsey nevertheless leaves open the possibility of a more constructive relationship between the two dimensions of our regime. Our “parchment regime,” after all, invites conversation with its critics precisely because it is an incomplete regime. By neither ignoring nor attempting to control the stream of opposing thought coming from the regime in the wider sense, our parchment regime permits an audacious goal—not the low but achievable goals of life, security and material comfort for which it has some respect and much contempt—but the creation of united political entity which ideals that require engagement with opposing thought. Our “parchment regime” does not suppress other critical thought because it knows its own incompleteness and that it does not encompass the whole of human life. Cropsey calls our parchment regime “decayed or decaying moments of modern thought,” but there is reason to suppose that such decay may prove to be a fortuitous occasion, and detects the flip side of strengths (Political Philosophy, 7). The incompleteness that allows decay also opens our regime to improvement.

[xliv] Cropsey, Political Philosophy, 7.

[xlv] Cropsey, Political Philosophy, 12.

[xlvi] Cropsey, Political Philosophy, 12.

[xlvii] Catherine Zuckert, “On Reading Classic American Novelists as Political Thinkers,” The Journal of Politics 43 (1981):  683. Catherine Zuckert is not alone in supporting the idea that political scientists can gain insight from the study of politics and literature. See Ethan Fishman, “Images of Lockean America in Contemporary American Fiction” in Reading Political Stories: Representations of Politics in Novels and Pictures, ed. Maureen Whitebrook (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1992); Wilson Carey McWilliams, “Poetry, Politics, and the Comic Spirit,” PS: Political Science and Politics 28 (1995): 197-200, and Maureen Whitebrook, “Introduction” in Reading Political Stories: Representations of Politics in Novels and Pictures, ed. Maureen Whitebrook (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1992), 6. Drawing a tight connection between the study of politics and literature in the liberal regime, Ethan Fishman argues that Locke and the American founders believed that “public virtue would emerge as a necessary corollary to a society that fostered the free and open pursuit of private goals among individuals and groups” (165). Wilson Carey McWilliams presents Mark Twain’s use of comedy in his writings as a specific case in which literature corrects a deficiency in “democratic education” by presenting the comedic figure as an alternative to the dangers of modernity’s other heroes, the scientist who controls by technique and the romantic’s self-destruction (198). Comedy serves our regime by “unmasking the human pretension to be a whole, to claim to have final answers to the great mysteries” (198). Moreover, McWilliams shows us that Twain employs comedy not to undermine our regime’s principles but to find a mode of correction compatible with democratic life. Maureen Whitebrook states that the task of “political literary criticism is to bring out the interrelationship of art and politics within the culture” (6). Art does not simply mirror its culture, but will critique and challenge it by offering alternatives to existing social and political conventions. In this way, art engages in a political task by revealing “political possibilities” heretofore unimagined (6). Novelists are particularly well-situated to examine whether and how the lives of particular people searching for happiness succeed in a liberal community.

[xlviii] Most commonly, our novelists explore potential conflicts and gaps in our regime’s liberal principles by showing us the “effects of the regime on the formation of character,” in Zuckert, “American Novelists,” 684.

[xlix] Zuckert, “American Novelists,” 688. In contrast, Irving Howe argues that American novelists are less suited to examining political ideas than European novelists in Politics and the Novel (Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 2002), 159-63.

[l] Zuckert, “American Novelists,” 689.

[li] See Peter Augustine Lawler and Brian A. Smith, “Walker Percy, American Political Life, and Indigenous American Thomism,” in A Political Companion to Walker Percy, ed. Peter Augustine Lawler and Brian A. Smith (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2013), 1.

[lii] Catherine Zuckert’s work, Natural Right and the American Imagination, is a model for my book. She focuses on how American authors have explored our regime’s relationship to natural rights and depicted various returns to and exits from the state of nature. Catherine H. Zuckert, Natural Right and the American Imagination:  Political Philosophy in Novel Form (Savage, MD:  Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1990). See also Howard Mumford Jones Howard Mumford Jones, The Pursuit of Happiness (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1953). In this unique look at the pursuit of happiness, Jones looks at literature as well as public documents to understand the American regime and the pursuit of happiness. Jones utilizes the writings of literary figures (for example, James Fenimore Cooper, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and William James) on the grounds that they are “sufficiently outstanding observers of American life”; he also makes use of juvenile literature (such as The Wizard of Oz), popular magazines, and advertisements (104). Whereas in the past happiness had political, social, or economical meanings, Jones finds, Americans now talk about happiness in the sense of a psychological well-being that depends on the individual’s adjustment (with the help of experts) to an environment largely beyond his control. This has been heretofore an unnoticed “semantic shift” in the common usage of happiness. Jones welcomes this shift in meaning, because he believes it marks a more democratic understanding—every individual finds himself in a set of circumstances to which he requires adjustment.

This excerpt is from The Pursuit of Happiness and the American Regime: Political Theory in Literature (Lexington Books, 2018) with our review of the book here.

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