From the book
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Joseph Joubert · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordQuiétisme is a named religious question treated through its moral consequences and its relation to an inward state.
- In JoubertThe complaint against dismissing the affair as scholastic subtlety makes perfection practically consequential: small errors, if erected into principles, could harm even the best.
- In this editionThe English translation retains shivering for transi and brackets [is] where the source is damaged.
- A place to beginQuietism is treated as a consequential question of religious morals.
- English renderings
- quietism
Meaning
Quiétisme is a named religious question treated through its moral consequences and its relation to an inward state.
Use in the book
The complaint against dismissing the affair as scholastic subtlety makes perfection practically consequential: small errors, if erected into principles, could harm even the best. The conditional is central; no particular erroneous proposition is identified. The comparison with Jansenism describes quietism as shivering love of a state that the other movement fears. The state itself remains unnamed, and the bodily word transi does not settle whether coldness, trembling or bashful intensity predominates. These bounded observations explain Joubert’s use of the label without substituting a doctrinal history for what he actually wrote.
Places to read
- II, p. 653, entry 8, ¶1Quietism is treated as a consequential question of religious morals.
- II, p. 823, entry 1, ¶2Quietism and Jansenism are contrasted through love and fear of one state.
Translation in this edition
The English translation retains shivering for transi and brackets [is] where the source is damaged. It does not assign the passage to a specific controversy. The surrounding unit’s ambiguous pronoun sequence is not repaired by forcing named doctrines into its gaps.
Source note
Beaunier 1938, II, pp. 653, 823.