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 wordDogme can mean a revealed religious teaching, a reasoned metaphysical position, or the doctrinal force that makes morality binding.
- In JoubertThe explicit contrast between revealed and reasoned dogmas shows that the word alone does not certify a claim’s origin.
- In this editionThe English translation preserves the compressed and awkward order rewarded…or punished for the evil or good in the immortality paragraph.
- A place to beginRevealed theological dogmas are contrasted with reasoned metaphysical ones.
- English renderings
- dogma
Meaning
Dogme can mean a revealed religious teaching, a reasoned metaphysical position, or the doctrinal force that makes morality binding.
Use in the book
The explicit contrast between revealed and reasoned dogmas shows that the word alone does not certify a claim’s origin. Joubert assigns religion fuller promises of reward and punishment than the bare thesis of immortality. Another note contrasts morality as sayings with morality as precept, obligation and necessity when dogma accompanies it. Finally, an unidentified controversy is separated into old dogmas and a new explanation of them: bad explanation need not imply new teaching. These are contextual distinctions within arguments about religion, not a neutral survey of what all religions teach.
Places to read
- II, p. 538, entry 9, ¶1Revealed theological dogmas are contrasted with reasoned metaphysical ones.
- II, p. 704, entry 5, ¶1Dogma supplies obligatory force to moral statements.
- II, p. 914, entry 4, ¶1A new explanation is distinguished from a new dogma.
Translation in this edition
The English translation preserves the compressed and awkward order rewarded…or punished for the evil or good in the immortality paragraph. It does not rearrange that sequence to repair the argument. The final witness does not identify the unnamed dispute.
Source note
Beaunier 1938, II, pp. 538, 704, 914.