Vanity

Use in the book

Joubert explicitly distinguishes vanity as a passion from dissimulation as a vice learned through experience. In writing, pretension attaches to the writer’s vanity, whereas affectation concerns words more directly; the two receive different judgments. The personified vanity that seeks affronts by seeking success exposes a danger within ambition for approval. These passages make vanity neither harmless in every setting nor intrinsically the same vice as orgueil.

Places to read

1. I, p. 257, entry begun p. 256, no. 6, ¶3Vanity is classified as passion, unlike dissimulation.
2. II, p. 578, entry 4, ¶1Writerly pretension is linked to vanity.
3. II, p. 841, entry 7, ¶1Seeking success brings vanity into the path of affronts.

Translation in this edition

The English translation maintains vanity, affectation and pretension as separate terms. It preserves “she” in the affronts fragment because vanity is personified, and does not supply a particular vain person behind that pronoun.

Use in the book

Paradise Lost names Empedocles among those whose ambitions lead to foolish acts, pairing his leap into Etna with Cleombrotus’ leap into the sea in pursuit of Plato’s Elysium. The pairing is literary classification by misdirected desire, not independent evidence about either event. Its wording resembles the Horatian exemplum that gives the desire for immortal reputation as Empedocles’ motive. The appendix identifies that route of reception, but the selected Milton lines alone cannot document every stage of borrowing. What is clear is the removal of the ancient dossier’s uncertainty: within this poetic judgment, the leap and motive serve as established material for satire. The contrast with Arnold is then interpretively useful. Arnold preserves the crater while replacing the ambition for reputation with a voice seeking release from distress. Neither later poem supplies evidence with which to settle the historical death.

Places to read

1. Appendix II Milton (reception)John Milton, Paradise Lost III 469–473. Pairs Empedocles and Cleombrotus as examples of foolishly directed aspiration.
2. A 16 (reception)Horace, The Art of Poetry. Supplies the ancient satirical motive of wishing to be thought immortal.
3. Appendix II Arnold (reception)Matthew Arnold, Empedocles on Etna II 402–416. Provides the later contrasting dramatic motive.

In this edition

Reading “fondly” as affectionately would reverse the point. The Limbo of Vanity setting is supplied by the editorial contextual note, while the short printed passage gives the named examples and their motives.