Poverty and wealth

Use in the book

The woman’s imagined luxurious objects remove her feeling of poverty only for a moment; neither poverty itself nor her circumstances are said to disappear. The philosopher-and-banker comparison criticizes aiming only at enriching peoples, preserving a distinction between material gain and moral purpose. A long historical comparison contrasts the pursuit of fictitious riches with bounded true goods and pleasures. Its idealized categories and sweeping claims about peoples belong to Joubert’s argument, not to this lexicon’s ethnography. These uses keep wealth’s felt attraction, its social power and its actual usefulness distinct.

Places to read

1. I, p. 41, entry 4, ¶1Imagination briefly suspends a woman’s feeling of extreme poverty.
2. II, p. 828, entry 7, ¶1Enrichment alone is challenged as a legislator’s aim.
3. II, p. 921, entry 1, ¶1An idealized comparison distinguishes fictitious riches from bounded real goods.

Translation in this edition

The English translation preserves the temporary relief in the first scene, the final only restriction in the national argument and the blank in the historical comparison. The last is undated; its separate group marker supplies no calendar date. Enrichir is represented by enriching in the selected passage.