THE ETHICAL MEANING OF THE CONCEPT “JOY”IN CHURCH-SLAVONIC AND OLD RUSSIAN LANGUAGES

The article discusses the concept of “joy” from an ethical position. An analysis of the ethical meaning of a concept is based on comparison of dictionary definitions of Church Slavonic and Old Russian languages. The author studies Church Slavonic language due to the fact that it embodied the Christian system of moral values that formed the basis of Russian ethical sphere. New in this work is a study of the concept “joy” as an ethical concept of the Russian language picture of the world. The author defines ethical notional component of the concept as “a state of inner harmony with the world, grace and zeal, care about someone with inner joy and for the joy of another”. The article installs internal semantic context of the concept “joy” with “mercy”, “light”, “happiness” and other ethical concepts. The author comes to a conclusion that the concept “joy” presents brighter ethical meaning than material ones.

concept, joy, ethical meaning, semantic components