Unbelief

Use in the book

The contrast with impiety is important even within Joubert’s disapproval: unbelief is a mental disposition, whereas impiety is called a vice of the heart. Dogmatic or systematic unbelief receives a more elaborate polemic, imagined as war against education, family, public order and past time, with the future becoming its idol. A heavily damaged passage then compares faith after reasoned unbelief with chosen chastity after lost innocence. Its argument depends on voluntary restraint of attention, not on a demonstration that objections have disappeared. These distinctions prevent treating all uncertainty or intellectual doubt as the same religious condition.

Places to read

1. II, p. 669, entry 5, ¶1Unbelief is distinguished from impiety without being approved.
2. II, p. 765, entry 4, ¶2Systematic unbelief is polemically described as perpetual war.
3. II, p. 800, entry 3, ¶2Recovered faith is compared with chosen restraint after innocence.

Translation in this edition

The English translation uses incredulity in the mind/heart contrast and unbelief in the systematic and recovered-faith passages. The latter contains numerous contextual English brackets and wholly unresolved gaps. The lexicon neither supplies its missing connectors nor resolves its shifting pronouns.