Ascetic austerity

Use in the book

The explanation of adversity’s formative power locates it in austere conduct and severe treatment, acknowledging Bonald’s suggestion. A separate spatial image distinguishes destruction of the senses’ places from the soul’s absence from them through prayer, recollection or austerity. The distinction allows withdrawal without treating it as bodily death. The late judgment on the Genevans places a sharper condition on discipline: only the tender and ardent virtues austerity can produce recommend it. Mere regularity can usurp virtue’s appearance. The article therefore cannot define austerity as automatically virtuous or describe all religious discipline as rejection of the body.

Places to read

1. I, p. 323, entry 6, ¶1Austerity and severity are offered as the formative elements of adversity.
2. II, p. 700–701, entry 11, ¶1Spiritual discipline makes the soul absent from sensory places.
3. II, p. 899, entry 8, ¶1Austerity is evaluated by the tender virtues it can produce.

Translation in this edition

The English translation keeps religious or philosophical as two possibilities and preserves can, only, and perhaps in the evaluative passage. The Genevan characterization is Joubert’s generalization. Bonald’s contribution remains an acknowledgment within the main text.