Ethos. Kwartalnik Instytutu Jana Pawła II KUL
article
The current article presents an attempt to grasp the essential similarities and differences between the scopes of the concepts of happiness, joy and pleasure, which are very important in Karol Wojtyła’s moral philosophy. The author stresses that the capability of joie de vivre is a mental disposition which is ontologically significant not only due to the fact that it is inherently bound up with the...
article
This essay has three parts, corresponding to the three concepts announced in its title: happiness, joy, and unhappiness. “Happiness” does not refer only to a feeling or subjective state, but designates as well an evaluation of a life or the narrative of a life. Accordingly, in representing the lives of fictional characters, novelists invite their readers to assess both what happy or flourishing lives...
article
Extract from an interview with Abp. Józef Życiński made during the Holy Week 2010.
article
Joy and agony constitute two leitmotifs of the Book of Psalms, the former being expressed predominantly in the hymns, which comprise songs of adoration and worship. It is God, through his various doings, that provides the essential source of joy in the Psalms. The fundamental doing of God is the work of creation, which inspires delight in its magnitude and stimulates exultant praise of the Creator...
article
In her philosophical and autobiographical writings, Edith Stein, philosopher and Carmelite nun, made many significant remarks concerning the phenomenon of joy and the experience of joy as such. Her pursuit for the source of joy comprised three stages: the period of her philosophical growth, the time of her focus on metaphysics, and the final period in which she was above all a mystic and in which...
article
For the Middle Ages, the best−known tradition concerning joy is that found in the love poetry of the troubadours and trouvères. Yet alongside this secular celebration of erotic joi developed a religious tradition which taught that God had created the human soul in His image and likeness in order to make it capable of sharing His joy. The soul as imago dei, as long as it avoided sin, would enjoy God...
article
In the current essay, the author analyzes various planes of joy in human life, its various causes and manifestations. Joy as such springs from a virtuous, fulfilled life, it is a fruit of life’s spiritual dimension. For a Christian, the ultimate source of joy lies in the truths of the faith, in particular in the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God and in the opportunity to encounter him in...
article
A current tendency in the research on culture is to approvingly explain the concept of carinval as denoting a phenomenon which consists in contesting the already existing and «official» forms of art and custom. Carnivalization is in turn seen as the way to accomplish this end. As a consequence of such a research perspective, however, laughter may be confused with the joy that results from human interaction...
article
In its first part, the article briefly presents the relation between laughter and joy in medieval and early modern culture, in order to focus, in its main part, on the categories of facetudo and urbanitas, significant to Polish humanistic literature and considered by the Renaissance and Baroque writers to be an implementation of the social virtue and the “sharing of joy.” The author observes that...
article
In the first and main part of the article, the author presents three kinds of joy described in the Pali Canon. The first one is part of the experience of sensual pleasure and ultimately turns out illusory. The second one comes to light and develops as a result of the practices recommended by Buddha, in particular as the fruit of the progress of meditation. The third one includes the greatest happiness...
article
Biblical subject matter has been an important source for opera authors since the advent of this genre. The vertical dimension of culture, as well as the ubiquity of reference to the biblical motifs in literature, painting, theatre, and in the other musical genres, made opera authors naturally draw on this most universal cultural code. Indeed, the earliest theatrical creations, such as liturgical dramas,...
article
According to medieval writers, there are many kinds and many causes of joy. Yet the fact that earthly existence has its beginning and its end was the source of the feeling that joy is merely provisional and that the permanence of happiness is thus threatened. As a result, perceived as limited in its nature, joy almost lost its significance. However, laughter was still considered to be an external...
article
Music is called to reveal the beauty of being and, as such, to infuse joy into the human soul. One can say that in the respect of joy music differs from the other arts: in poetry, painting, sculpture or architecture joy appears as a merely occasional visitor, while in music it feels «at home.» In the current article, the author first analyzes the forms and means of expressing joy in music and then...
article
We have already heard many times from St. Paul that “joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit” (Gal 5:22), as are love and peace, which we have discussed in earlier catecheses. It is clear that the Apostle is speaking of the true joy which fills the human heart, and certainly not of a superficial, transitory joy, which worldly joy frequently is. It is not difficult for an observer who operates solely on...
article
The Canticle of Mary, also called the Magnificat, is counted among the «pearls of Biblical literature.» It expresses the joy of Mary over the glory of the works of God done for herself as well as for the world and its history. An exegetical analysis of the Magnificat reveals that the joy of Mary is not merely a manifestation of her momentary enthusiasm; neither does it express a spontaneous and uncontrolled...
article
Article to commemorate the late Abp. Józef Życiński (1948−2011).
article
Speaking of the holiness of an eminent person is always risky, since holiness is in every case part of the sphere of the human being’s intimate contact with God, to which no «outsider» has access. I nevertheless dare present some – deeply personal – remarks on the subject of the holiness of John Paul II, because he himself as if encouraged it by the fact that he was living his life before the eyes...
article
When he awakens to the world, does not man feel, in addition to the natural desire to understand and take possession of it, the desire to find within it his fulfillment and happiness? As everyone knows, there are several degrees of this «happiness.» Its most noble expression is joy, or «happiness» in the strict sense, when man, on the level of his higher faculties, finds his peace and satisfaction...
