Comparing Happiness In Jermone's Letters 'And Beowulf'

To be godly means to be happy with one’s identity. Many of us spend so much time trying to underline what the ultimate good and happiness that the general public are trying to achieve, we tend to forget that the point of going on that journey to find ultimate happiness is for ourselves. We also forget that we have different level of contentments and that there are different ways to be content. Jermone’s Letters, Augustine’s Confession, Petarach’s Secretum, Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, and the Anglo-Saxon’s Beowulf all share essentially the search for happiness; what differs is how each of these philosophers think is the best way to approach true happiness, all according to how one identify one’s self and one’s beliefs.

In Jerome’s letters, being godly is following God’s guideline. To be happy is to submit the self under the authority of a higher being and the being’s rules such as being chaste and acting chaste. There is no such thing as happiness on Earth because it is just material and temporal happiness. The only way to true happiness is to transcend away from the body that entraps the soul. What is so disturbing about Jermone’s idea of what true happiness is that there is not much human experiences around what he calls happiness and I want to know what it takes to feel ultimate happiness and to know how it differs from

temporal happiness.
God is essence the self.

So we have to find happiness within our self in order to transcend. We have to find happiness and God by finding ourselves first. Augustine’s idea of what is happiness exactly is different from Jerome’s idea. Rather than aiming for type of happiness that we do not even know how to describe, we should aim for temporal happiness and/or material happiness because material happiness is a small factor of temporal happiness. His philosophy is to be happy by doing what one wants and desire to do that is morally and ethically correct. Only through this way will we achieve the highest form of happiness that we know

of.
The only flaw Petrarch sees in the Confessions is that St. Augustine zooms in and emphasize that we need to find ourselves to be happy because God is essentially the self. However, St. Augustine undervalued the journey to find the self and that is why writing Secretum in a dialogue format is so important. It allows both views to be portrayed and shows how one view builds off of the other view. Petrarch emphasizes the importance of the search for happiness rather than simply just wanting to be happy. One often cannot simply be happy just because he/she wants to be; there has to be some effort put into it like doing certain things and aiming for certain things to be happy. This involves interaction between a community and the abundance of assets, activities, and more within that community. To be happy in this case is essentially just for the purpose of the self, but in order to achieve that, there has to interaction between the self and the environment surrounding it. This is refuted by Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy to an extent and built on by Beowulf.
In Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, being content is believing that there is a greater purpose behind one’s fortune whether it is good or bad. The search for happiness does not necessarily have to through actual interaction. Boethius made an argument within his head between Lady Philosophy and him. This shows that, yes interaction is important, but imagining such conversation is also more than adequate to do the same thing. It allows the self to argue and reason out questions rather than leaving the self with more and more unanswered questions. Consolation of Philosophy distinguish the mind and the soul as two separate entities in this case
Beowulf goes deeper into Petrarch’s idea of being happy requires actions. Being happy in this epic tale is identifying with groups and tribes through bonds and relationships. To be a hero and make his people and his allies happy, Beowulf’s objective is to help everyone on his team achieve this state of feeling godly by removing evilness. The concept of happiness in Beowulf is essentially similar to the domino effect; he will feel contentment if his people are happy. In Beowulf, one must put in the effort and do what it takes to be happy in order to feel happy like the idea behind Secretum. If he stick his mind to remove evilness, then “there’s nothing [he] wish for that won’t be [his] if [he] win through alive (Beowulf).
Being happy with one’s identity allows one to be godly. Many spend so much time trying to search for what the ultimate good and happiness that the everyone else are trying to achieve, many of us often forget that the point of going on that journey to find ultimate happiness is for themselves. There are different level of contentments and that there are different ways to be content. Jermone’s Letters, Augustine’s Confession, Petarach’s Secretum, Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, and the Anglo-Saxon’s Beowulf all share essentially the goal to search for happiness; what is different is how each of these philosophers think is the best way to approach true happiness, all according to how one identify one’s self and one’s beliefs.