ИПИ Библиотека

A modern classic and one of the most recommended books in recent years "In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government" returns to print in a handsome new edition and raises fundamental issues, which 200 years after the American Revolution are yet to be resolved. What is government's role in our lives? Do the solutions to some of our society's most persistent problems lie in the natural responses of individuals or in massive government efforts? "In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government" lays out a bold plan for how we can all reconnect with our families, our neighborhoods, and our communities, and can determine the role of government should play in our lives. In his entertaining, readable style, Murray shows how "the pursuit of happiness" was not a vague platitude for our nation's founders, but a precise and revolutionary concept - the cornerstone of human existence and the central justification of governance.

In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government, first published by Simon & Schuster in 1988 and now released in a new edition by the Liberty Fund, is Charles Murray’s classic application of the Founders’ thinking to postindustrial America. Murray proposes a radically different way of thinking about success in modern social policy: success is not to be measured by economics or equality of outcomes. Rather, social policy succeeds when it provides the best possible framework for individuals to pursue happiness.
Murray takes the reader on a rich intellectual journey that begins with the concept of happiness itself, drawing on the Aristotelian tradition of happiness as “lasting and justified satisfaction with life as a whole.” He then uses Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs to lay out the enabling conditions for the pursuit of happiness. Murray then turns to the ways human nature inevitably dictates what government can and cannot do, invoking the work of the Scottish enlightenment and American Founders. Finally, through a series of fascinating thought experiments about contemporary policy issues, Murray illustrates how this new criterion of success for assessing any specific policy—does it foster the individual’s pursuit of happiness?—changes the calculus for choosing among options.

Charles Murray

Charles Alan Murray (born 1943) is an American libertarian political scientist, author, columnist, and pundit currently working as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, DC. He is best known for his controversial book The Bell Curve, co-authored with the late Richard Herrnstein in 1994, which argues that intelligence plays a central role in American society.

He first became well known for his Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950–1980 in 1984, which discussed the American welfare system. Murray has also written In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government in 1988, What It Means to be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation in 1996, Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 in 2003, and In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State 2006. He published Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality on August 19, 2008.

His articles have appeared in Commentary Magazine, The New Criterion, The Weekly Standard, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. Murray has received a doctorate honoris causa from Universidad Francisco Marroquín.