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Moral life

Honesty

honnête; honnêteté

Honnête often means morally honorable or socially decent here, rather than merely truthful or financially honest.

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 wordHonnête often means morally honorable or socially decent here, rather than merely truthful or financially honest.
  • In JoubertThe dispute about useful and honorable is recast by distinguishing usefulness from profit: changing the terms is meant to expose an ethical choice that the broader wording obscures.
  • In this editionThe English translation uses honorable for the ethical end of action and decent/decency for honnête/honnêteté in the criticism of reasoning.
  • A place to beginHonorable is contrasted with useful, profit and lucrative.
English renderings
honorable; decent; decency

Meaning

Honnête often means morally honorable or socially decent here, rather than merely truthful or financially honest.

Use in the book

The dispute about useful and honorable is recast by distinguishing usefulness from profit: changing the terms is meant to expose an ethical choice that the broader wording obscures. Another note connects honorable action with the soul’s pleasure in exercising its nature and with honor in showing itself. The argument announces two utilities but does not label their completion neatly. Finally, a criticism of reasoning without pudeur distinguishes decency of manner from truth: indecent reasoning is not thereby declared false. This semantic range explains why one English equivalent cannot safely replace every honnête.

Places to read

  1. I, p. 135, entry 8, ¶2Honorable is contrasted with useful, profit and lucrative.
  2. I, p. 337, entry 2, ¶1Honorable action gives the soul pleasure and honor.
  3. II, p. 760, entry 10, ¶1Decency in reasoning is separated from its possible truth.

Translation in this edition

The English translation uses honorable for the ethical end of action and decent/decency for honnête/honnêteté in the criticism of reasoning. It preserves not all in the philosophical dispute and leaves the announced two utilities in their uneven form.

Source note

Beaunier 1938, I, pp. 135, 337; II, pp. 760.