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 wordMechanism is a working arrangement or explanatory construction; machine can name bodily, political, or argumentative machinery.
- In JoubertA mechanism does not resemble movement as death does not resemble life.
- In this editionThe English translation uses modern English mechanism for the printed méchanisme and keeps the crank and spring images.
- A place to beginMechanism can fail to preserve the movement being explained.
- English renderings
- mechanism; machine
Meaning
Mechanism is a working arrangement or explanatory construction; machine can name bodily, political, or argumentative machinery. Joubert often asks what such an account leaves out.
Use in the book
A mechanism does not resemble movement as death does not resemble life. This warning resists dissecting the phenomenon until its defining activity disappears. Political states without feeling become crank-driven machines, lacking a spring within themselves. The trained pig’s mechanism, however, still includes a limited intelligence joining words to movements. Criticism of mechanism therefore does not always mean the absolute exclusion of mind from whatever is mechanical.
Places to read
- I, p. 235, entry 3, ¶1Mechanism can fail to preserve the movement being explained.
- II, p. 504, entry 1, ¶1Political feeling supplies life missing from a crank-driven state.
- II, p. 933–934, entry 1, ¶3The animal’s trained mechanism includes a narrow associative intelligence.
Translation in this edition
The English translation uses modern English mechanism for the printed méchanisme and keeps the crank and spring images. It does not turn every machine comparison into a claim about literal machinery.
Source note
Beaunier 1938, I, pp. 235; II, pp. 504, 933, 934.