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

YEAR 1804

In Malebranche. “we do not reason about these beings, but about their ideas.” This is fertile in consequences.

May 4.

“They have (says Malebranche of certain truths) more need of explanation than of proofs.” Every excellent proof must arise from explanation, and every excellent explanation produces the proof.

On badly — imagining and on those who imagine badly. — Those do not imagine through imagination, but through combination. They imagine without imagination.

Mathematical clarity, practical clarity: the latter suffices.

Descartes. His imaginary world is not an imaginable world. Everywhere in it the mind finds matter and figures rather than forms. (For form is the figure of the figure, the figure is the body of form, form is the outward soul of a body.) Descartes has therefore made imagination do what it does not like to do. He has made it arrange stones. It wishes to be an architect: he has forced it to be a mason.

Privation of repose has great meaning for the soul. Repose is not a nothing for it. It represents to it a state in which it is given over solely to its own movement, without foreign impulses.

Descartes. His subtle matter is too coarse and too strongly figured. He had a very patient mind and a very mechanical genius. He would have been a great machinist! No, for...

Therefore to have a mind into which truth can enter naked and from which she comes out adorned.

Malebranche, born in Paris in 1638, entered the Oratory in 1660, publish[…] his book in 1673, that is to say, at 35. Let us not be surprised if he sometimes put so many frivolities into it and if the book is so long. It seems that his mind reached what is good in it only by induction and by way of consequence from Cartesian principles. His independence of Descartes’s own opinions is wholly Cartesian, and he is rebellious through fidelity. In a word, everywhere he is only a skillful pupil of his master.

May 5.

The infinite! We have the sight [of it?] rather than the idea.

All those women who take pleasure in being with men. “Viris audet concurrere virgo.” (Virg.).

Sunday, May 6.

Space, time, movement, extent, infinite; God, soul and body, world and mind, matter. From the right use alone of these words and their ideas, comes good metaphysics; bad metaphysics comes from their abuse.

T26.Explanation and proof recur in reversed relations. The first plural proofs and the later singular proof follow the source; an explanatory gloss is not substituted for the repeated terms.

T27.The source has Ceux without a following relative pronoun in the visible text. Those is therefore kept as a demonstrative subject rather than expanded to Those who. The interrupted badly — imagining and the repeated imagination remain.

T292.The first line ends at visible Ceux. No following relative pronoun is supplied; the damaged right edge means a lost short continuation cannot be ruled out. The source’s spaced mal — imaginer remains; the clipped continuation of imaginent is restored from surviving letters.

T28.The distinction between figure and form is repeated throughout the parenthesis, including form as the outward soul of a body. It is not collapsed into shape. The architect and mason retain different roles.

T29.Un rien remains a nothing rather than becoming unimportant. Repose is compatible with the soul’s own movement; the foreign impulses are not inserted as an explanation of a particular illness or outside influence.

T30.Subtle contrasts with coarse and strongly figured matter. In historical usage machiniste includes one who invents or operates machines, as the Académie’s 1762 dictionary records; machinist is not limited here to a modern workshop trade. The final No, for... retracts the preceding exclamation without completing its reason.

T295.The source prints méchanique with h. Clipped endings of fortement and méchanique are contextually restored; the final car clause remains unfinished.

T31.The infinitive remains a fragment. Truth is personified as feminine, entering naked and leaving adorned; the English preserves the clothing image.

T32.The French facsimile preserves publi but loses the verb ending. The English publish[…] leaves its tense uncompleted; neither published nor publishes is certified. The years and age remain as printed. Rebellious through fidelity preserves the paradox of independence achieved through Cartesian principles.

T297.The facsimile loses the ending of the finite verb after visible publi at the right margin. The loss is retained as publi[…] rather than deciding silently between publia and publie. The printed years and age 35 remain as stated, not corrected from external chronology. Other clipped right-edge endings in a, semble, induction, indépendance, cartésienne and habile are restored from surviving fragments.

T33.The source editor tentatively supplies [en?]. Its English counterpart remains bracketed with a question mark; sight remains distinct from idea.

T298.The source’s tentative supplied [en?] remains bracketed with its question mark. An enlarged facsimile confirms the diaeresis in vuë.

S1.Source editor’s annotation“and — Mme de C[u]st[i]ne —” then two or three words I cannot read.

T34.The Latin means the maiden dares to contend with men. Joubert retains it after his remark about women’s pleasure in men’s company. The allusion is to Penthesilea in Aeneid I.493, where the Latin reads audetque viris concurrere virgo; the notebook’s different word order and omitted connective are not silently corrected.

T35.The first-person report of unreadable words is Beaunier’s, in the separate source apparatus. C[u]st[i]ne retains the edition’s partial supplied vowels.

T36.Extent and infinite remain separate items beside space, time and movement. Their use, rather than a newly supplied definition, is the stated basis of the distinction between good and bad metaphysics.