From the book
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Joseph Joubert · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Experience
expérience
Expérience ranges from lived or accumulated experience to an experiment.
Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordExpérience ranges from lived or accumulated experience to an experiment.
- In JoubertTheories are said to cause more experiments than experiments cause theories: rational inquiry can generate tests, so the passage does not derive all knowledge passively from observation.
- In this editionThe English translation uses experiments in the theory comparison, experiences for the transmitted inheritance and experience in the inward and ethical passages.
- A place to beginExperiments can arise from rational theories.
- English renderings
- experience; experiences; experiments
Meaning
Expérience ranges from lived or accumulated experience to an experiment. Its value depends on how it is used and understood.
Use in the book
Theories are said to cause more experiments than experiments cause theories: rational inquiry can generate tests, so the passage does not derive all knowledge passively from observation. The arts are elsewhere children of experiences transmitted by centuries and common needs, emphasizing collective inheritance. Yet experience carried within a person may remain unknown without self-observation. Nor does age or exposure guarantee wisdom: the terse warning that most let experience corrupt them refuses automatic moral improvement. The history gloss names one route from trials to experience, not a definition that cancels experiments elsewhere.
Places to read
- I, p. 244, entry 8, ¶1Experiments can arise from rational theories.
- I, p. 178, entry 9, ¶1The arts inherit collective experiences and shared needs.
- I, p. 399, entry 8, ¶1Unobserved inward experience can remain unknown.
- I, p. 119, entry 4, ¶1Experience can corrupt its possessor.
- II, p. 642, entry 7, ¶1Personal trials and history provide experience.
Translation in this edition
The English translation uses experiments in the theory comparison, experiences for the transmitted inheritance and experience in the inward and ethical passages. Observation of oneself is a substantive subsidiary here: it makes available what mere possession has not made known. M. de Luc’s quoted history gloss remains a reported source, not an externally verified definition.
Observation
French: observer.
Experience may be carried within a person yet remain unknown until that person observes himself. Observer here means attending to oneself; it should not be confused with observing a rule, which means conforming to it. The notebook therefore distinguishes having undergone something from having recognized it as experience.
Places to read: I, p. 399, entry 8, ¶1.
Source note
Beaunier 1938, I, pp. 119, 178, 244, 399; II, pp. 642.
From the book
Centuries of Meditations
Thomas Traherne · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Experience
experience; trial; exercise; knowledge proved in living
Experience is knowledge acquired or confirmed through actual apprehension and exercise.
Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordExperience is knowledge acquired or confirmed through actual apprehension and exercise.
- In TraherneThe remembered apprehensions of infancy offer an experiential teaching that cannot simply be transferred as information.
- In this editionDo not turn the appeal to experience into a rejection of reasoning or revelation.
- A place to beginInfant apprehensions are to be taught through experience rather than obtained from books alone.
Meaning
Experience is knowledge acquired or confirmed through actual apprehension and exercise. Traherne can oppose it to what a book alone can give without rejecting books as sources of wisdom.
Use in the book
The remembered apprehensions of infancy offer an experiential teaching that cannot simply be transferred as information. Later, principles are tested by what happens when the heart’s judgement is restored or allowed to stray. Even the soul’s extraordinary capacity remains hidden until exercised: an immense object may seem unmanageable before the mind discovers its power to apprehend it. Experience therefore concerns the active trial of faculties, not merely the accumulation of impressions or the authority of age.
Places to read
- III.1Infant apprehensions are to be taught through experience rather than obtained from books alone.
- IV.41The connection between a rightly ordered heart and enjoyment is confirmed in lived practice.
- IV.46Experience is invoked to make the value of creaturely liberty intelligible.
- IV.97The soul’s secret sufficiency is disclosed only by trial and exercise.
In this edition
Do not turn the appeal to experience into a rejection of reasoning or revelation. Its role here is often to verify a principle by enacting and discovering its consequences.