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 wordUtilité concerns beneficial effect or capacity for use, while utile can name what is useful.
- In JoubertReligion is assigned utility alongside truth.
- In this editionThe English translation keeps the abstract noun utility in the religion formula but uses usefulness in the broken-mechanism image and “the useful” in the wisdom comparison.
- A place to beginUtility is added to truth as a property of religion.
- English renderings
- utility; usefulness; the useful
Meaning
Utilité concerns beneficial effect or capacity for use, while utile can name what is useful. Joubert does not consistently oppose utility to truth, religion or intellectual life.
Use in the book
Religion is assigned utility alongside truth. The crank-without-a-rope image makes logic without reason a cumbersome useless mechanism. Thoughts’ essential utility or inutility is then made the constant principle of their glory or oblivion. In the distinction between wisdom and philosophy, wisdom studies and loves both useful and true. These contexts make utility a relation to effective practice and enduring reception, not necessarily financial profit or convenience.
Places to read
- II, p. 672, entry 4, ¶1Utility is added to truth as a property of religion.
- II, p. 652, entry 9, ¶1Logic without reason is figured as a useless device.
- II, p. 714, entry 4, ¶1Thoughts endure or disappear in relation to essential usefulness.
- II, p. 663, entry 3, ¶2Wisdom concerns the useful together with the true.
Translation in this edition
The English translation keeps the abstract noun utility in the religion formula but uses usefulness in the broken-mechanism image and “the useful” in the wisdom comparison. It retains logic/reason as different terms and does not replace utility with a modern doctrinal label.
Source note
Beaunier 1938, II, pp. 652, 663, 672, 714.