>>6802418Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716)
The idea of the "pursuit of happiness," in the Declaration of Independence, comes
directly from Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), one of the philosophical architects of the
American republic, who posed this to contradict Locke's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of
property." Where Locke defines happiness as “the utmost pleasure we are capable of,” Leibniz
objects:
I do not know whether the greatest pleasure is possible. I believe rather that it can grow ad
infinitum… I believe then that happiness is a lasting pleasure; which could not be so without there
being a continual progress to new pleasures. . . Happiness is then, so to speak, a road through
pleasures; and pleasure is merely a step and advancement towards happiness, the shortest which can
be made according to the present impressions, but not always the best. The right road may be
missed in the desire to follow the shortest, as the stone which goes straight may encounter
obstacles too soon, which prevent it from advancing quite to the centre of the earth. This shows
that it is the reason and the will which transport us towards happiness, but that feeling and
desire merely lead us to pleasure…
“True happiness ought always to be the object of our desires, but there is ground for doubting
whether it is. For often we hardly think of it, and I have remarked here more than once that the
less desire is guided by reason the more it tends to present pleasure and not to happiness that is
to say, to lasting pleasure..
As the leading scientist and philosopher of his day, Leibniz was well known to republican leaders
of the American colonies, like the Winthrops and Mathers, with whom he corresponded. In 1710,
Cotton Mather's An Essay Upon the Good, spread Leibniz's notion of the science of happiness
throughout America. Benjamin Franklin paid tribute to this book as the single most important
influence upon his life.
