From the book
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Joseph Joubert · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Duty
devoir
Devoir names what ought to be done, and is not automatically identical with social propriety or present inclination.
Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordDevoir names what ought to be done, and is not automatically identical with social propriety or present inclination.
- In JoubertThe earliest maxim states that duty and propriety do not always agree.
- In this editionThe English translation gives propriety for bienséances, retaining its distinction from duty.
- A place to beginDuty can conflict with propriety.
- English renderings
- duty; duties
Meaning
Devoir names what ought to be done, and is not automatically identical with social propriety or present inclination.
Use in the book
The earliest maxim states that duty and propriety do not always agree. The moral program calls duty morality’s object and virtue its end, then separates one’s own virtue from others’ happiness. A later analogy says faith and virtue can require going against sensory testimony or impression because duty would sometimes otherwise remain unfulfilled. The adverb “sometimes” prevents the claim from becoming a universal denunciation of sense experience.
Places to read
- I, p. 33, entry 1, ¶4Duty can conflict with propriety.
- I, p. 298, entry begun p. 297, no. 2, ¶4Duty is the object of morality, virtue its end.
- II, p. 859, entry 6, ¶1Fulfilling duty sometimes requires resisting sensory impression.
Translation in this edition
The English translation gives propriety for bienséances, retaining its distinction from duty. It preserves object and end as separate terms, and the conditional failure of duty in the sensory comparison. The grammatical verb devoir elsewhere may mean must or ought and should not be counted indiscriminately as this noun.
Obligation
French: obligation.
Two passages distinguish an obligation one must impose on oneself though nothing seems to prescribe it from an imaginary obligation one can privately cancel. Their tension makes the ground of self-prescription a real question. The English translation preserves seems, nevertheless and the repeated on one’s own; the lexicon does not supply a universal test absent from these notes.
Places to read: II, p. 574, entry 11, ¶1; II, p. 740, entry 6, ¶2.
Source note
Beaunier 1938, I, pp. 33, 298; II, pp. 574, 740, 859.
From the book
Centuries of Meditations
Thomas Traherne · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Duty
duty; office; obligation; what is due
Duty is an act or disposition owed in a relationship.
Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordDuty is an act or disposition owed in a relationship.
- In TraherneThe first defining duty is to prize things according to their value.
- In this editionThe imperative to be happy is not a claim that every painful feeling is sinful.
- A place to beginGiving created things their due esteem is named the reader’s office and duty.
Meaning
Duty is an act or disposition owed in a relationship. Traherne repeatedly derives it from the nature and worth of a gift rather than presenting obligation as an arbitrary burden.
Use in the book
The first defining duty is to prize things according to their value. This binds righteousness directly to enjoyment: failure to appreciate is a failure to render what is due. Later, happiness itself becomes a duty in a damaged world. The person must learn an active charity capable of living among injuries, not wait for society to become innocent. Meeting any one person also calls forth an obligation to mankind, because the individual can be treated as its representative. Duty thereby joins accurate valuation, resistance to resentment, and an enlarged social imagination.
Places to read
In this edition
The imperative to be happy is not a claim that every painful feeling is sinful. Its immediate subject is the formation and practice of principles under difficult moral conditions.