Joy in J. A. Comenius's Conception

Abstract

When we talk about the life of John Amos Comenius, we rarely associate it with joy. On the contrary, we know him as a person who faced many very unhappy situations in his life. However, Comenius in his works often mentions joy in various forms (laetitia, gaudium, voluptas, hilaritas). It is obvious that he perceives it as a life attitude from which we can and should draw in our lives. It is not only the joy of education, but, above all, the joy of God that gives man much-needed hope in his sorrows and pains. In the following article, we will ‘immerse ourselves’ in Comenius’s thoughts and words that describe his attitude to life. We will follow the footsteps of Comenius’s work and search for his conception of joy, which is still necessary for our lives today. The article is based on the forthcoming headword Joy for the work called Encyclopaedia Comeniana. It required a thorough study of Comenius’s work mainly in the DJAK edition (Dílo Jana Amose Komenského, Praha: Academia, 1969–) and searching for this term in Comenius’s writings mainly in Czech and Latin. Due to the availability of texts in the Czech language, this work is not always quoted; other editions of Comenius’s work are also used as referenced in the footnotes.