Faith and pleasure are not incompatibles. I remember a word of James de Coquet, journalist and gourmet : "The Good Lord created the good meals for pleasure of good and honest people, not for vilains".

In my studies on medieval texts, I have used a model with three levels of moral action, not only happiness: religious salvation, social duty and, effectively, individual happiness, etc .See. "La pourpre et la glèbe...". My personal purpose is to assume the three dimensions together and harmoniously. Inside the happiness, we can distinguish also between integral happiness and material pleasure (hedonism).

Vincent Serverat. Thank you for your reply, It's Right that every person see the Value of Happiness in different ways and Views. And maybe it lies in all these facts we mentioned above.

Thank you for your intellectual generosity. I can add a notation of lexic for these axiologies or value's sytem in european Middle Ages

-"Beatitudo" for the religious happiness, her and in the future life.

-"Officium" for the social duty.

-"Gaudium" and anothers fort the human happiness, taken in the unity of soul, emotions and body.

-"Delectatio" for the level of somatic pleasure.

In my Habiltation, I proved to classify the social imaginaries in letters around this three or four axiologies or levels.

Right, The Moral Values of Knights in Middle Ages was distinguished.

I wish you happiness forever

Dear Dr.Suaad Thank you so much for you nice reply, I wish you too all the Happiness in the world.

It is well known that not all people are religious, wise, wealthy or faithful. So they will have happiness only in areas that lie within the horizon of their life circle and their experience. Feelings of happiness can be expressed in different ways. The phenomenology of happiness is a wide field of experience, there is the great happiness and the small happiness, the ordinary happiness (to live in peace and relative security) and the extraordinary happiness, the unique and short-term happiness and a long-term happiness situation. There are even people who no longer expect happiness on Earth, but want to go to the Moon or Mars to meet it there. There are many possibilities.

Hein Retter, nice answer, every person looking for happiness depending on what he lacks and need.

Good and difficult question!

Satisfaction seems to be a basic need and requirement of human life (need of Walter, food, sleep, sexuality)...

I daresay everybody has this AIM or cannot survive...

Some persons are not Faithful and some do seither have no wisdom OT do not care...

Possibly Maslow's pyramid of needs helps to answer this question, See URL

https://de.slideshare.net/mobile/Sternaugen/fom-mediation-and-conflict

It is amazing that the middle-class people who are doing well have a special longing for happiness and constantly ask this question.

Many groups of people and families wish only to get from their suffering and misery into normal living conditions.

You answer to me if the virtues and values for knights were the same than for other people. More or less. But I have worked, in the books of knighthood, on the relevance of one emotion, the shame ("vergogne"), that make the man to acomplissh good and valiants actions, not for God or for his conscience directly, but for preserve the image and consideration of the others to us. A man with shame makes a good knight, better than a tall and strong man. We speak of one emotion, shame ("verecundia" in latin) , from the family of fear, not about a moral virtue. You can found this code "pre-ethic" for knights in Vegecius, Ramon Llull, Don Juan Manuel, Las Partidas, El Victorial, etc,. You may see: "L'honneur et la honte..." in my research.

Vincent Serverat

Thank you for pointing that out. Surely there are references to happiness in the French and the European troubadour lyric. It was the young knight's task to embark on a journey and pass adventures in order to become famous. But to be victorious in adventures against other knights or against fate was also luck. Siegfried had the bad luck that he had a vulnerable spot. I am not a specialist for medieval courtly poetry, but I know very well the "Carmina Burana" (Carl Orff set it /some pieces/ to music, I sang it in the choir). The vagante song plays an important role: "O fortuna, velut luna, statu variabilis" etc.

I know quite well the first autobiographies in the 16th century of later scholars from the German-speaking countries, such as the Swiss Thomas and Felix Platter, as well as Lucas Geizkofler - I edited their writings on there life as poor pupils wandering through Europe, that was dangerous at that time for some youn people, alone. In their youth they were "travelling pupils", who attended a distant university and had a changeful fate on the way. Here happiness becomes visible in its double role, as a very changeful, not permanent, unexpected, but desired event, which does not last long, so that secondly the longing for constant happiness is stirred up.

The theme of happiness is also addressed in some preserved songs from the 16th century.

On the one hand it is about love, faithfulness and infidelity, on the other hand it is about the experiences of wandering journeymen. These were wandering craftsmen with wavy fates. The "happiness" (or misfortune) one experiences can refer to the master who took in a wandering journeyman, just as it refers to the "virgins" the pale journeyman meets in the place where he is. I sing such songs to the lute (which were set in tablature at that time) or to the guitar.

Also in the courtly song culture of England of the late 16th and 17th centuries the happiness of love, but also sadness and pain plays a special role. Composers like Thomas Morley, Peter Rossetter or John Dowland gained international importance, in that time. Their compositions are available as 4- to 5-part choir movements, but also as compositions for the lute.

Good

Hein Retter, in the trobadour's poetry, the perfect hapiness is named "joi", with a wide semantic spectrum, often linked with love. There are many studies on the matter. The word seems "secular" without moral or religious roots.

for me l feel happiness when l success in everything

Regards,Azzam

I follow. In Middle Ages, the shame to the disaproval of anothers, be cause his bad and ugly actions, is the first step to acces at the "honour's service" of the knight. The shame is then more important than physical force. It seems to me very realistic to recognize thant the codes of morality are also socials and externals, not only personals and internals. We can remind the works of Bergson about the two sources of morality, extrinsic and intrinsic,

I think that the Relativity is what make thing clear. As one philosopher said "Happiness like a mirror which felt down from God's hand and broke to a pieces so every one who take a piece will concederd it the whole truth".

Carsten Weerth

Thank you so much for your answers.

Vincent Serverat

Thank you so much for your answers and good points you mentioned

Dear Colleagues Scholars, I wish you the Happiness as you want

Azzam Sabah Hameed , that's right Successes is necessary to fell with Satisfaction

Vincent Serverat

I find your reference to the worldliness of the term happiness very interesting. I am, as I said, a layman in this field, also in the semantics and etymology of "happiness".

I once wrote an essay about "happiness" with biographical and literary contexts (is in RG). The culture of the Middle Ages was strongly influenced by religion and Christianity. The New Testament and the dogmas of the church based on it are strongly influenced by Paul's theology, there is no earthly happiness, it comes only in the hereafter.

Quite different with Jesus. When he said, "Let the little children come and don't fight them, because theirs is the kingdom of God", then this is related to the fact that as adults we regard children as "happy" in certain situations - be it that they still act spontaneously and not controlled, be it that the driving force is still undeveloped. Whoever looks at the face of a sleeping child will inevitably experience a feeling of peace and happiness.

So I can imagine that the non-religious root of happiness has its reason in Christianity, that in the original teaching happiness is shifted to the afterlife, and that this world is a vale of tears through which one should pass as quickly as possible. To combine sexuality with happiness has been seen as a sin, it is only allowed by the church to show offspring.

In Protestantism this has changed because faith has become strongly bourgeois. Luther gradually had sexual experiences of happiness in his marriage - and he did not demonize this experience in marriage.

Happiness is God’s satisfaction and parental satisfaction. Happiness is having a good health. Happiness is the ability to take care of your family and beloved ones and make them happy.

Hein Retter, thank you for your interest and your contribution:

In medieval times, it was a cultural space of layman, not entierely in dependance from ecclesiastical conceptions. We have the troubadour's poetry with the aspiration to the "joy d'amour", studied by Champroux. It was a place also for the pleasure, as in the tales named "fabliaux", in a manner of vulgar hedonism. But, we don`t find an academic thinking on happiness, in a manner of reflecting and cultural hedonism. At the italien "Quatrocento", the hapiness becames a matter of ethics, inside the books "de vita beata" of Fazio, Lucena, etc,

For Saint Paul, authors think that hapiness (and other human values) can take place in Philippeans 4, 8.

It is all I can write as medievist.

Where is Happiness lies, In Wealth, faith, love, Wisdom or Satisfaction?

Personally I think happiness lies on self-contentment. Reason being If you are contented with what you are having right now, higher the probability you will not compare with others, ignore the differences, don't have a lot of needs & wants and lower the probability that you will be tempted in which you can have more & continuous joys in your heart.

Hein Retter

Calvin connect between divine selection and making wealth and success. he frame this in doctrine of predestination.

Hassan Sarsak

I Agree with you.

Thank you for your answer.

Han Ping Fung

Nice answer, Thank you .

To Understand happiness Secretes keep Watching, learning, and enjoying with every page of your life chapters.

On semantics of happiness. In orman and medieval times, the words "felix", "felicitas" did´nt mean exactly happiness, but good Fortune, luck or a manner of positive predestination. One emperor or king "felix"is a Son or Beloved of Good Fortune.

(Bélla geránt aliī), tu félix Áustria nūbe, I remember my grammar school years. - And Paul's letter to the Philippians is a seldom friendly message, mostly he was angry about his communities, see the Galatians because of Paul's problems with the influence of the Jerusalem community, and in Philipper 4,8 he of course called to be "honorable". Luther translated the Greek term in German "keusch", to live without intercourse, erroneously Paul believed that the return of the Lord, the end of the world and the new basileum could come every day. The Church is grateful that he was wrong, so she can continue to exist.

Hein Retter:

Thank you for your well argumented contribution

As it is known, Ramon Llull, my matter of PhD, did,nt praise te biblical way and he preferred rational way. He influenced Nicolas Cusanus.

I am not very competent then in biblical matters, but I understand Phil. 4,8 in this manner. The world and te man are ravaged by the original Sin, but we can find nevertheless in it human values, in other words things and persons who are true, honest, just, pure, fair, honoured.

Faith and pleasure are not incompatibles. I remember a word of James de Coquet, journalist and gourmet : "The Good Lord created the good meals for pleasure of good and honest people, not for vilains".

Vincent Serverat,

nice comment.

But Unfortunately, in our time, bad peoples and evildoers do not care about the pain of the innocent and the righteous, they live with us and stolen our happiness of peace... but certainly in the kingdom of eternity, each of them will receive his just penalty.

Thanks for this question.. I think all of these things are related with each other..

In French, by "une belle vie", we understant a way of life guided by pleasure, confort, in accord to the so named hedonism. In opposite, "une vie belle" designs a way of life oriented to the honestity, esthetics and virtue.

Israa Witwit

Thank you for your reply.

Yes it could be in all these Values.

Dear Vincent Serverat

Thanks a lot for your participation , it's acceptable that there is no absolute، but Relative happiness.

everyone see it as he want and wish.

Dear Nagham Talib,

Thank you. Doubtless, I place the ·vie belle" higher that the "belle vie".

There is an Arab wisdom that says "conviction is a treasure that can not be destroyed"

هنالك حكمة عربية تقول "القناعة كنز لا يفنى"