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 wordLimites and bornes can be physical boundaries, limits of competence, or constraints upon action.
- In JoubertThe claim that reason knows its bounds while animal instinct does not makes awareness of limitation itself a distinction.
- In this editionThe English translation preserves “as it were” in the mutual-limits sentence and renders bornes concretely as “boundary stones” in the fragment.
- A place to beginKnowing its bounds distinguishes reason in a comparison with instinct.
- English renderings
- limit; bounds; boundary stones
Meaning
Limites and bornes can be physical boundaries, limits of competence, or constraints upon action. Borne may retain a concrete boundary-stone image.
Use in the book
The claim that reason knows its bounds while animal instinct does not makes awareness of limitation itself a distinction. The action of an unnamed “he” and human freedom are elsewhere said to serve as limits to one another, with life, illness, and death set apart from the domain of freedom. A fragment about moving boundary stones retains an image of disturbing what ought to stand fixed. These uses should not be merged into one numerical or spatial boundary.
Places to read
- II, p. 570, entry 10, ¶1Knowing its bounds distinguishes reason in a comparison with instinct.
- I, p. 280, entry 6, ¶1Action and freedom serve as limits in a qualified relation.
- II, p. 682, entry 5, ¶1Boundary stones make limit concrete in an unfinished accusation.
Translation in this edition
The English translation preserves “as it were” in the mutual-limits sentence and renders bornes concretely as “boundary stones” in the fragment. Its missing context is not supplied. A divine referent is plausible in context, but the paragraph supplies only pronouns.
Source note
Beaunier 1938, I, pp. 280; II, pp. 570, 682.