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Literature

Erudition

érudition

Erudition is learned investigation and possession of historical or literary materials.

From the book

The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II

Joseph Joubert · Diotimos Editions · 2026

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Orientation

At a Glance

  • The wordErudition is learned investigation and possession of historical or literary materials.
  • In JoubertThe wings-without-feet fragment gives imagination a need for erudition.
  • In this editionThe English translation retains erudition, the open parenthesis in the early fragment and its broader English [it] for the supplied French [l’].
  • A place to beginImagination without erudition has wings but no feet.
English renderings
erudition

Meaning

Erudition is learned investigation and possession of historical or literary materials. Joubert asks both what grounds its claims and what kind of benefit its accumulated fragments provide.

Use in the book

The wings-without-feet fragment gives imagination a need for erudition. The severe Dupuis discussion then refuses to treat learning as certainty: abundant research, little system and a modest claim to probability are praised in the Academy’s memoirs. Traits of manners or imagination can be worth finding, while reconstruction of a complete antiquity from fragments is called a useless undertaking. The claim that half is better than whole follows from what survives, not a recommendation to falsify a complete text.

Historical truth receives its appropriate place in erudition beside moral and physical truth in their domains. The criticism of the Travels of Anacharsis offers another danger: learning can drown in frivolous charms and become neither instructive nor agreeable. Joubert approves that criticism’s truth while finding its wording less than good. Both indiscriminate accumulation and pleasing presentation are therefore tested by their actual use.

Places to read

  1. I, p. 87, entry 4, ¶1Imagination without erudition has wings but no feet.
  2. I, p. 228, entry 1, ¶1Moderate research is preferred to confident reconstruction.
  3. I, p. 228, entry 1, ¶2Traits are distinguished from a recovered whole.
  4. I, p. 228, entry 1, ¶8The surviving fragment limits claims to complete reconstruction.
  5. I, p. 464, entry 1, ¶1Historical truth belongs to erudition’s domain.
  6. II, p. 767, entry 5, ¶1Frivolous charms can drown learning.

Translation in this edition

The English translation retains erudition, the open parenthesis in the early fragment and its broader English [it] for the supplied French [l’]. The judgments on Dupuis and Anacharsis remain Joubert’s. The account does not certify the cited newspaper issue or independently establish the priority claimed for Geoffroy.

Source note

Beaunier 1938, I, pp. 87, 228, 464; II, pp. 767.