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The marvelous

merveilleux

The marvelous is what opens wonder beyond ordinary experience or gives discourse an arresting quality.

From the book

The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II

Joseph Joubert · Diotimos Editions · 2026

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Orientation

At a Glance

  • The wordThe marvelous is what opens wonder beyond ordinary experience or gives discourse an arresting quality.
  • In JoubertThe palpable and marvelous are required to exclude one another in the physical-science discussion.
  • In this editionThe English translation retains marvelous.
  • A place to beginThe marvelous is opposed to palpability in physical science.
English renderings
the marvelous; marvelous

Meaning

The marvelous is what opens wonder beyond ordinary experience or gives discourse an arresting quality. Joubert’s treatment depends on the domain: its role in public writing differs from its intrusion into physical science.

Use in the book

The palpable and marvelous are required to exclude one another in the physical-science discussion. Fables there seem to invite gullibility and presumption rather than good faith. By contrast, the reported St Lambert distinction explains why unfamiliar kinds of beings can be admitted more readily than extraordinary events: imagined space outside the known world gives illusions room. In public discourse, the marvelous is made a condition of lastingness. Joubert defends the ancients’ attention to it against a quoted criticism, then qualifies the defense with “in a certain sense.” These statements do not authorize the conversion of unsupported physical claims into knowledge; they locate different demands on science and imaginative language.

Places to read

  1. I, p. 197, entry 1, ¶1The marvelous is opposed to palpability in physical science.
  2. I, p. 197, entry 1, ¶2Scientific credulity is distinguished from good faith.
  3. I, p. 474, entry 5, ¶1Kinds of beings can admit wonder more readily than events.
  4. II, p. 878, entry 2, ¶1Public discourse requires something marvelous to last.
  5. II, p. 878, entry 2, ¶2Ancient attention to wonder receives a qualified defense.

Translation in this edition

The English translation retains marvelous. Species in the St Lambert quotation means kinds of beings in its contrast with events, not a supplied modern biological classification. The Calmet and Boileau quotations are reported as Joubert gives them; their sources and the abbreviated pointer are not independently certified.

Source note

Beaunier 1938, I, pp. 197, 474; II, pp. 878.