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 wordOppression describes the destructive use of a superior position and the condition imposed on those beneath it.
- In JoubertThe statue that sinks its own base gives hierarchy a limit internal to its support: lowering an inferior can lower the superior too.
- In this editionThe English translation retains superposition and both sinkings rather than replacing the statue with a political abstraction.
- A place to beginA superior that destroys its base destroys its own support.
- English renderings
- oppression; oppressed
Meaning
Oppression describes the destructive use of a superior position and the condition imposed on those beneath it.
Use in the book
The statue that sinks its own base gives hierarchy a limit internal to its support: lowering an inferior can lower the superior too. Superposition must not be oppression. The verbal correction from slave people to oppressed people concerns how a description distributes blame and favor. Joubert hears reproach in the first epithet and a claim to commendation in the second. The distinction is his rhetorical and moral judgment, not a universal rule about the people to whom those terms have been applied. Read together, the passages connect dependence with the responsibility of those who possess power.
Places to read
- I, p. 332, entry 2, ¶5A superior that destroys its base destroys its own support.
- II, p. 698, entry 3, ¶1Changing an epithet changes the moral implication of a people’s condition.
Translation in this edition
The English translation retains superposition and both sinkings rather than replacing the statue with a political abstraction. It leaves the fragment about lowering an inferior unfinished. In the later maxim no particular population is identified.
Source note
Beaunier 1938, I, pp. 332; II, pp. 698.