Diotimos Reading Desk

Tap the page, move to the top or bottom edge, swipe down, or press Tab to reveal reading controls. Use the arrow keys or swipe sideways to turn pages.

← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

[On Voltaire.]

It is well to cut what one thinks into pieces. But one must not cut one’s subject into pieces before thinking about it. That is a fault, and a fault apt to bring cutting into disrepute.

August 8.

This language that is at least suited to teaching men that there are things they do not understand in lofty matters; an impression always useful!

August 10.

They say we can know nothing, and they will be satisfied with no idea they cannot in some way demonstrate, aspiring to know everything perfectly.

August 11.

Of things that are no longer true, at a certain height.

August 12.

Animals. Animated clocks that do not know the hour. They strike it, so to speak, without knowing it.

Mr. de Bonnal’s metaphysics is like the despotic government of which Montesquieu said that it can tolerate no neighbor. Nothing is so exclusive or so tyrannical; but it also has force.

Sunday, August 14.

Ideas. God’s are models or molds of what does not yet exist. Men’s are impressions of God’s. Their thoughts are only a judgment. An idea is a knowledge.

What they understand too well and what they can counterfeit. Neither memory nor mind delights in what costs it no work. The soul has nothing to do there.

August […].

Passion prevents progress. It sums up the soul, but arrests its growth. A follower of J.-J. R. will never know anything beyond what his master has said. An admirer of Plato, on the contrary... That is because the one fills with fire, and the other with light.

August […].

Perhaps the Soul is born of collision, like lightning, like fire.

It is by boundaries, by enclosures, that ownership is established!

One should never try to solve a question from the side that makes it seem difficult. In that case, look for one of its other aspects and turn it around or go around it.

T87.The repeated physical cutting image is preserved in découper and découpure. Joubert distinguishes dividing thought after thinking from dividing the subject in advance.

T344.Clipped right-edge word endings are restored from surviving fragments; the text has been checked against the facsimile. The punctuation at the damaged right edge after élevées is read as a semicolon, with uncertainty; no completed governing clause is supplied.

T88.Height remains a metaphor without an added scale or a completed proposition. The opening Of retains the form of a topic for reflection.

T89.Animated retains the relation to life in animées and the mechanical clock image. Do not know translates ignorent as a state of unawareness, not an act of ignoring.

T90.The name is retained in the printed form Bonnal. The final it returns to his metaphysics, which Joubert credits with force after criticizing its exclusiveness.

T91.Models, molds, and impressions preserve the sequence of shaping images. The contrast between thoughts as a judgment and an idea as a knowledge retains Joubert’s singular nouns and their articles, including the unusual countable English knowledge. Their refers to men.

T92.Sums up keeps the unusual résume with the soul as its object. In context it suggests concentrating or gathering the soul into one passion while halting its growth; it is not rendered as revives. J.-J. R. remains abbreviated in the text; the contrast with Plato points to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The missing object of fills and the interrupted admirer clause remain uncompleted.

T350.The damaged left edge obscures the day numeral; no complete day is reconstructed. Clipped initial letters of l’accroissement, son and l’un are restored. The source’s scaura and the unfinished Platon clause remain.

T93.Collision preserves the physical choc beside lightning and fire. The fragment does not identify what collides or establish a mechanism; the opening Perhaps remains explicit.

T351.The damaged left edge obscures the day numeral; no complete day is reconstructed. The enlarged facsimile shows the surviving terminal part of a numeral, possibly 6, but its form is not secure enough to certify. The capital Ame is printed without a circumflex.