Join New York Times best-selling author Jeffrey Rosen for Hampden-Sydney’s Founders Commemoration Speech. Author of “The Pursuit of Happiness,” Rosen examines the meaning of happiness as understood by the Founding Fathers: “Today we think of happiness as the pursuit of pleasure. But classical and Enlightenment thinkers defined it as the pursuit of virtue—as being good, rather than feeling good. At its core, the Founders viewed the pursuit of happiness as a lifelong quest for character improvement, where we use our powers of reason to moderate our unproductive emotions so that so that we can be our best selves and serve others…Following the classical and Enlightenment philosophers, the Founders believed that personal self-government was necessary for political self-government.” In other word, to be good citizen one must first be a good man.