From the book
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Joseph Joubert · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordThe Latin expression, literally “dead head,” is a historical chemical name for residue after heating or distillation.
- In JoubertThe attack on analysis calls its products caput mortuum and compares the result with reducing the human body and the whole person to a small quantity of calcareous earth.
- In this editionThe English translation keeps the singular Latin form beneath a French plural construction.
- A place to beginChemical residue images a reductive analysis of thought and human life.
- English renderings
- caput mortuum
Meaning
The Latin expression, literally “dead head,” is a historical chemical name for residue after heating or distillation. The contextual image criticizes a reduction that leaves the desired living whole unexplained.
Use in the book
The attack on analysis calls its products caput mortuum and compares the result with reducing the human body and the whole person to a small quantity of calcareous earth. The image does not require all such chemical residue to be absolutely inert: the existing translation note explicitly warns against that definition. Nor does the passage identify the count’s observation precisely enough to reconstruct a modern experiment.
Places to read
- II, p. 703, entry 11, ¶1Chemical residue images a reductive analysis of thought and human life.
Translation in this edition
The English translation keeps the singular Latin form beneath a French plural construction. It translates pouces as inches, without inventing cubic units or changing them into a measure of weight. The count’s identity and quantitative claim remain unverified.
Source note
Beaunier 1938, II, pp. 703. Language: Latin. The translation note explains the historical chemical terminology.