From the book
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Joseph Joubert · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordThese phrases name historical physiological agents.
- In JoubertJoubert’s first-person contrast gives him more vital than animal spirits and says those going to his head are no longer in his stomach.
- In this editionThe translation note identifies these as period physiological terms and distinguishes their arterial and nervous associations.
- A place to beginThe two kinds of spirits are distinguished within a head/stomach distribution.
- English renderings
- vital spirits; animal spirits
Meaning
These phrases name historical physiological agents. They are not interchangeable with the soul, with intelligence, or with someone’s cheerful “spirits.”
Use in the book
Joubert’s first-person contrast gives him more vital than animal spirits and says those going to his head are no longer in his stomach. The terms organize an account of distribution within the body. In the later quotation about imagination’s vertigos, animal spirits and brain fibers explain intellectual effects; Joubert immediately asks whether the soul alone can have no part. The objection is to explaining everything through matter alone, and remains compatible with his use of bodily vocabulary elsewhere.
Places to read
- I, p. 379, entry 5, ¶1The two kinds of spirits are distinguished within a head/stomach distribution.
- I, p. 447–448, entry 7, ¶1A quoted physiological explanation prompts an objection to exclusive material explanation.
Translation in this edition
The translation note identifies these as period physiological terms and distinguishes their arterial and nervous associations. The explanation follows the translation note. Vertiges remains “vertigos,” not the conjecturally smoother “traces”; the quoted sentence’s source wording and Joubert’s response stay distinct.
Source note
Beaunier 1938, I, pp. 379, 447, 448.