Why We Are Restless: On the Modern Quest for Contentment (New Forum Books Book 65)

When Tocqueville arrives in America, he suddenly beholds a society that is all third estate: a world without titles of nobility or primogeniture; a world where everyone, even the richest, works because the world of work is the locus of all of life’s interest;

This nonchalance must be learned, because taking oneself too seriously comes quite naturally to human beings. Montaigne describes a man of his acquaintance who thought it a cosmic injustice to find himself on his deathbed before he could compose his history of this or that king. Montaigne thinks we are all a little like that and must teach ourselve

There are only three kinds of people: those who serve God, having found him; those who are busy seeking him, not having found him; those who live without seeking or finding him. The first are reasonable and happy, the last are foolish and unhappy; those in the middle are unhappy and reasonable.

“the inhabitant of the United States attaches himself to the goods of this world as if he was assured of not dying, and he throws himself into seizing those that pass within his reach with so much precipitation that one would say that at every instant he is afraid of ceasing to live before enjoying them.”

“Know then, proud one, what a paradox you are to yourself.” We want happiness, love, and approbation, yet wherever we turn in human life, we find ourselves facing another example of our sad and hateful emptiness. We want truth, yet we cannot even grasp the truth of ourselves, for an enormous contradiction lies at the heart of our very being. And ye

For as Aristotle pointed out long ago, it is our way of pursuing happiness that makes us who we are, both personally and politically: “it is through hunting for [happiness] in a different manner and by means of different things that individuals create ways of life and regimes that differ.”

That contrast makes the basic case for the self: modern peoples think of ourselves as selves and pursue immanent contentment in part because other ways of thinking about ourselves and our purposes seem to us prone to slip into religious violence.

For moderns, a human being is a self. Selves organize their lives around a distinctive quest: the quest for immanent contentment.

“We are never at home, we are always beyond,” Montaigne writes. “Fear, desire, and hope launch us toward the future, and rob us of the sentiment and consideration of what is, to amuse us with what will be, even when we will be no longer.”